"The renaissance of capture" - A concise phrase which reveals exactly how upbeat the International Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) is regarding prospects for this integral part of the enterprise content management (ECM) process.
I say integral because capturing is, of course, the first step in managing content. While many internal company documents are born digital, external documents such as invoices, application forms and proof of deliveries all need to be scanned and captured into the electronic workflow or sent directly to storage. Capturing paper documents enables the information contained therein to be acted upon.
Unveiling its Top 10 Enterprise Content Management Trends of 2008 just a few weeks ago, AIIM used the phrase above to highlight the untapped opportunities in organisations still reliant on paper processes. In so doing, AIIM, or the ECM Association as it also referred to, explicitly recognises that data capturing and scanning still has much to offer the content management industry even though it was the original seed from which ECM sprung.
While figures for South Africa are unavailable, tantalising evidence of the renaissance of capture can be found in the fact that almost half a million document-class scanners were deployed in the North American market alone last year. Less than five years ago, that market had yet to reach 100 000 annual shipments. More than anything, these statistics indicate that the core of ECM is alive, well and growing.
As implied above, that capturing is indeed at the heart of content management can be deduced from this definition of ECM supplied by AIIM: "The technologies used to capture, manage, store, preserve and deliver content and documents related to organisational processes. ECM tools and strategies allow the management of an organisation`s unstructured information, wherever that information exists."
There are many reasons for AIIM to be upbeat about the prospects for electronic capturing during 2008. Storage costs remain high, especially in South Africa, where there is limited competition. Costs associated with physically retrieving paper-based information remain high and these include labour and legal discovery costs. With inflation approaching the 10% mark in South Africa, there`s no doubt that the cost of labour, in particular, will apply upward pressure on the retrieval of paper documents.
A negative attribute of paper and one which is not often considered is that destruction is difficult and especially risky. In South Africa last year, an average of three prohibition notices halting workplace operations were served on employers for imminent health and safety risks every single day. This illustrates that already risky South African workplaces cannot afford the added danger associated with paper storage.
Now that we have seriously punted the virtues of capturing, it would be polite to briefly mention the other Top AIIM trends for 2008:
* The evolution of Microsoft SharePoint as a serious player in the ECM infrastructure marketplace.
* The entrance of "alternative" delivery systems for document and content capabilities such as meaningful open source players.
* Supplier consolidation driven by the movement of ECM to the infrastructure.
* The three trends above add up to a dramatic decline in price point for core document functionality at the desktop.
* The rise in importance of channel and solution providers. As core technologies become viewed more as infrastructure, the capabilities of those who actually deliver and implement solutions become critical.
* An accelerating need for quantifiable best practices in the user community.
* The blurring of technology lines. What does your business need? Records management, content management, document management, business process management, and/or e-mail management? Most likely all of the above.
* Increasing tensions between "control" and "access". These will be exacerbated by the heightened power of search tools and the entry of younger workers into the workforce.
* A need to connect in new ways. End-users need to find each other and learn from each other more than ever.
By Ronald Melmed, Managing Director of Digital Archiving Systems