We recently posted a blog highlighting part 1 of our interview with Ralph Gammon. Continuing reading the second part of our discussion below.
As the editor of the premier document imaging newsletter, Document Imaging Report, Ralph has a unique perspective on the trends within the document imaging and management industry.
We spoke with Ralph to discuss important issues surrounding document management.
Q: What are some common issues you've seen with businesses transitioning between software?
There are a couple of things. UI is important – an evolution we’ve seen in the market has been the increasing integration of document imaging with third-party systems.
John Mancini from AIIM and Paul Carman from Xamcor have talked about how enterprise content management is really developing into a utility – and many times it’s becoming part of a bigger process. Content management is part of an accounts payable process; it’s part of an HR management process; it’s part of a healthcare practice management system.
The ideal situation is to find software that you can integrate within the interface of your line-of-business system – the system your users are accustomed to working in every day. This way, there’s nothing new to learn.
The issue is that some organizations end up asking people to do more work when they install document imaging. You want to automate as much as possible and make processes as simple as possible. You don’t want to add five minutes to the workflow in order to add a document to your system. Any time you make a switch in applications, there’s going to be disruption. But if you’re upgrading to a new document management system, the goal is to make the UI as intuitive as possible.
An example I like is what Apple did years ago with the iPod. They asked people to adopt something new – a new paradigm and new user interface – but once people used their iPods, they only needed about 10 minutes to realize that it was better than what they had before. And they were happy with it.
If you can do that with a document management system – even if you’re transitioning from something your users have used for 10 years – make sure whatever you’re bringing in has a user interface that’s better than what you were using. There will be less grumbling if you can bring your users something more intuitive and with better features.
When this is the case, they’re going to embrace it and not complain about the change. They’ll forget about the old system.
Q: With so many specialized software systems, what should you look for in a document management system for a smooth integration? What are software red flags? read more here