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FileNet
A Consultant’s
Guide to Enterprise
Content Management
Todd R. Groff and
Thomas P. Jones

AMSTERDAM • BOSTON • HEIDELBERG • LONDON
NEW YORK • OXFORD • PARIS
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SYDNEY • TOKYO

Elsevier Butterworth–Heinemann
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Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP, UK
Copyright © 2004 Todd R. Groff and Thomas P. Jones. All rights reserved.
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Recognizing the importance of preserving what has been written, Elsevier
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Groff, Todd R.
FileNet: a consultant’s guide to enterprise content management/
Todd R. Groff and Thomas P. Jones.—1st American pbk. ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7506-7816-X (alk. paper)
1. Information technology—Management. 2. Knowledge management.
I. Jones, Thomas P. II. Title.
HD30.2.G758 2004
658.4¢038—dc22
2004000583
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
For information on all Butterworth–Heinemann publications
visit our website at www.bh.com
04 05 06 07 08 09 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America

Trademarks:
PanagonTM, Image ServicesTM, Image ManagerTM, Distributed Image
ServicesTM, ValueNetTM, Document Warehouse for SAPTM, and
FileNet CaptureTM are registered trademarks of the FileNet
Corporation.
ComdiscoTM is a registered trademark of the Comdisco
Corporation.
CompuwareTM is a registered trademark of the Compuware
Corporation.
IBMTM and WebSphereTM are registered trademarks of the IBM
Corporation.
CenteraTM is a registered trademark of the EMC Corporation.
HPTM is a registered trademark of the Hewlett Packard
Corporation.
SunTM and JavaTM is a registered trademark of the Sun Micro
Systems Corporation.
FuegowareTM is a registered trademark of the Fuego Corporation.
Google WebSearchTM and PageRankTM are registered trademarks of
Google.
Microsoft OfficeTM and Microsoft WordTM are registered
trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation.
OvumTM is a registered trademark of the Ovum Corporation.
DocumentumTM is a registered trademark of the Documentum
Corporation.
OracleTM is a registered trademark of the Oracle Corporation.
PeopleSoftTM is a registered trademark of the PeopleSoft
Corporation.
KodakTM is a registered trademark of the Eastman Kodak
Corporation.
ClearswiftTM is a registered trademark of the Clearswift
Corporation.
HyperionTM is a registered trademark of the Hyperion Corporation.
CiticusTM is a registered trademark of the Citicus Corporation.
BoardVantageTM is a registered trademark of the BoardVantage
Corporation.

SteelpointTM, IntrospectTM, and eDiscoveryTM are registered
trademarks of the Steelpoint Technologies Corporation.
Nth OrbitTM is a registered trademark of the Nth Orbit
Corporation.
CognosTM is a registered trademark of the Cognos Corporation.
Other product names mentioned are used for identification
purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective
companies.

Contents

Foreword, xi

Chapter 1
FileNet Imaging Overview

What This Book Is About, 1
FileNet Company Background, 5
Technology Overview, 6
Toolsets versus Out-of-the-Box Solutions, 9
Imaging, Document Management, or Knowledge
Management?, 12
Success Story, 17

Chapter 2
FileNet Products and Services
The Company behind the Curtain, 20
FileNet ValueNet Partners and Customer Service
and Support, 23
Professional Services, 25
Disaster Recovery Hot-Site Services, 28
FileNet Education, 30
Success Story, 31

vii

viii

Contents

Chapter 3
FileNet Risks and Opportunities

Organizational Change, 34
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, 36
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability
Act of 1996, 38
Informational Responsibilities, 39
Optical versus Magnetic Storage, 41
Centralized versus Decentralized Capture, 42
Disaster Recovery, 44
Lost Cost of Paper Retrieval, 47
Content Management’s Impact on Attention, 48
Intellectual Assets, 51
Records Retention, 52
Success Story, 59

Chapter 4
FileNet Implementation

Content Management versus Process Voodoo, 62
Information Repositories, 63
FileNet Replication Options, 66
Specialty Equipment Considerations, 73
Project Planning, 75
Overall Project Estimates and Total Cost of
Ownership (TCO), 80
Success Story, 81

Chapter 5
FileNet Integration
Integrating Systems, Applications, and Processes, 83
Integrating FileNet with Existing Systems, 84
Application Integration, 85

Contents

Web Integration, 86
Enterprise Resource Planning Integration, 89
Workflow Analysis, 91
Integrations and Metadata, 95
Success Story, 99

Chapter 6
FileNet Administration

100

Profiting from Your Organization’s Experience, 101
FileNet Administrator Duties, 102
UNIX Administrative Tools and Resources, 107
Typical FileNet System Structure, 108
Client Installation and Administration, 112
Success Story, 115

Chapter 7
FileNet and Knowledge Management

117

Knowledge Management, Culture, and Content, 118
Catalyst Management for Actionable Knowledge, 122
Shared Abstraction Means Common Ground, 125
FileNet—Improving Attention and Retention, 127
Applying Learning to Organizational Processes, 128
Using Workflows to Add Structure to Data, 138
Success Story, 140

Chapter 8
FileNet and Enterprise Resource
Planning
Enterprise Resource Planning, 142
Document Warehouse for SAP, 145
Client Integration, 146

141

Contents

Archiving with FileNet, 147
Success Story, 152

Chapter 9
Funding and FileNet

154

Projecting the Cost, 155
Funding Strategies, 161
Imaging Capture Center Operations, 164
Funding through Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance, 172
Success Story, 175

Chapter 10
FileNet, Knowledge Management,
and Leadership
Process and Integration, 177
Good Leaders Value Attention, 181
Transparency Improves Both Vision and Judgment, 183
Balancing Competing Objectives, 183
Decision-Making Processes, 185
Do Not Discount the Value of Documents, 188
Attention, Analysis, and Dialog, 189
Conclusion, 192
Success Story, 193

Index, 195

176

Foreword

In business, all things change except the quest for capital and the
need for accountability. The growth objectives of a business are intricately tied to the various demands it makes for greater accountability. This book, like the authors’ previous book, Introduction to
Knowledge Management—KM in Business, looks at the key issues
that cause workflow failures within organizations.
As a boy, I learned my first lessons about accountability in a battle
with polio. The polio virus inflames nerves in the brain and in the
spinal cord, causing paralysis of the muscles in the chest, legs, or
arms. In the 1950s, contracting polio led me to dependence on artificial ventilation via the iron lung. I was told that, for the rest of my
life, the iron lung would be responsible for my breathing. To the
doctors, the iron lung appeared to be a miraculous solution. To me,
success would mean much more than mere survival. I wanted to
run, jump, and play sports; and my breathing problem was just a
symptom.
Early on, I realized that although the iron lung might be responsible for the breathing that kept me alive, only I could be accountable. In other words, the duty belonged to the machine, but I would
pay the price for failure. That was when I resolved to leave the iron
lung behind. In those days, it was known that the only escape from
the iron lung was to be “weaned” off it, one minute at a time. It was
pretty scary at first, but I gradually built up my breathing strength.
Eventually, I became strong enough to go from laboring through a
few short minutes out of the iron lung to being able to make it on
my own.
As an adult, I landed a job at Amoco’s credit card billing facility
in Raleigh, North Carolina. In time, I was promoted to supervisor
over the Computer Operations Department, responsible for all data
input and scrubbing. I quickly realized that the existing system for
gas card billing suffered from massive errors, duplication of effort,

xii

Foreword

and huge costs. I began investigating ways to improve the efficiency
of this labor-intensive bill handling process. This was my first
introduction to the need for content management technology and
workflow tools.
In 1973, Amoco undertook the task of improving the efficiency of
its credit card billing by introducing imaging into the process. The
convenience of credit card purchases at Amoco’s gasoline stations
had grown Amoco’s credit card billing department to 813 employees. The problem with paper is its inability to scale and its inherent
mobility issues. Customers entered their personal information onto
paper forms that had to be retyped as input into Amoco’s computer
systems. This introduced errors into the system. Because this was a
common problem when integrating paper processes, Amoco began
investigating imaging technologies to address the issue. The idea was
that customers were unlikely to misspell their own names and
addresses, and Amoco did not have to pay them to perform this
data entry.
The plan was to scan signed receipts on their arrival at the processing center in Raleigh. The image would be used throughout the
sales capture process; and at the end of each month, an account’s
images would be combined and printed in a billing statement sent to
the customer.
To accomplish this, Amoco contracted to build a one-of-kind
printing press to print the images of the credit card receipts at 84%
of their original size (to prevent legal issues related to forgery). The
27-foot long, 11-foot high press took 63 feet of paper from end to
end with a weight of 61 tons. The press printed 1200 feet per minute
and microfilmed all output. In total, it cost $18 million to implement.
After the new billing process began, the business continued to
grow rapidly. However, the staff providing data input support to the
gas credit card business was reduced from 813 to 256 people within
two years. The project completely paid for itself in the first six
months of operation.
The paper-based, dual-data input, system that Amoco had previously used was a solution very similar to the iron lung that doctors
used to treat my respiration problems as a child. It allowed the
painful process to continue, but only with huge costs and sacrifices.
For a fundamental solution, I had to create my own success.
This book deals with the complex issues surrounding enterprise
content management (ECM), of which imaging is one of the oldest

Foreword

xiii

pieces. Improving business processes for handling paper content
requires recognizing that paper-document-based processes are symptomatic solutions to larger fundamental problems. This book
describes more than just FileNet’s approach to ECM, it discusses
many of the fundamental issues surrounding unstructured information and the managing of attention.
Fundamental solutions (like implementing content management or
building up a polio survivor’s lung strength) are often difficult and
painful. However, relying on symptomatic solutions has two major
negative side effects. First, it diverts attention away from the real
problem. Second, it causes the workability of the solution to degrade
over time, which reinforces the false need for more of the symptomatic solution. This cycle resembles the classic cycle of addiction in
humans and the results are just as destructive.
This book on FileNet’s approach to enterprise content management focuses on developing strong plans for solving fundamental
business problems while improving accountability and lowering
costs. I have worked with Todd and Thomas for years on some of
this country’s largest FileNet systems. I am confident you will find
that the technical, organizational, and strategic planning information
in this book provides key tools in creating your own success with
your company’s ECM implementation.
James E. Sparks
Business Consultant, IBM

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Chapter 1

FileNet Imaging
Overview
Beware of sacrificing your adaptability on the altar of productivity, as growth must follow survival.

Key Points

Get an overview of enterprise content management.
Recognize FileNet’s position as a market leader in its field.
Learn the basic setup of the FileNet organization.
Begin to understand FileNet’s architecture, strengths, and
limitations.
Understand the impact of document management strategies on
overall company performance.
Recognize FileNet’s proper place in an organization’s knowledge management initiative.
Compare and contrast imaging systems with other types of
electronic document management systems.

What This Book Is About
This book was written to provide an independently produced, highly
detailed, comprehensive overview of the FileNet company, its product

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

lines, and its role in the enterprise content management (ECM)
market for large enterprises. The book details FileNet’s abilities in
managing attention, distributing best practices, improving feedback
loops, and building a culture of knowledge sharing and innovation
to facilitate continuous growth and improvement. In addition, it supplies the critical technical and organizational details required to successfully implement and support this complex, unique, and powerful
system. The book also can help you avoid five key FileNet project
pitfalls.

Five Common FileNet Project Pitfalls
1. Failing to understand the FileNet corporate structure before
engaging in negotiations can add millions of dollars in unnecessary licensing fees to the project.
2. ECM products like FileNet function at the “points of pain”
within organizations, as they require input from and education
of diverse business functions such as IT, Records Management,
HR, and Legal. They seek to integrate technology, people,
and processes while challenging existing infrastructures and
assumptions. Information hoarding on such complex projects
invariably leads to unexpected costs, delayed implementation,
and missed opportunities.
3. The whole concept of what a document “is” has been evolving
for some time now. Our old metaphors often create more confusion than clarity. Avoiding an early effort to develop a shared
language to support a shared mission increases the number of
unexpressed and unidentified assumptions in a project. This
substantially raises the complexity of projects.
4. The increased technical complexity created by integrating enterprise resource planning system processes with content management systems combines with the increased regulatory burden of
recent legislation to create an extremely high-risk, high-profile
environment for ECM project leaders, system administrators,
and developers.
5. The scope and flexibility of most ECM platforms mean that
merely deciding what products to buy, after you have chosen a
vendor, can be extraordinarily difficult. This creates a risk of
turning ECM projects into “shopping trips” that neglect the

FileNet Imaging Overview

vital analysis necessary for successfully meeting the business
case objectives.
Leaders, managers, and technicians working with content management systems will find that this detailed, independent overview of
FileNet can save them millions in missed opportunities and failed
initiatives. The first step is to understand the meaning of enterprise content management. ECM systems are composed of a variety
of tools, technologies, and methods that help capture, manage, store,
preserve, and deliver content in support of business processes
throughout an organization. In 2002, the software license revenue
for the entire ECM market was $1.48 billion, which is expected to
grow to $3.34 billion, a robust 22.4% compounded annual growth
rate, between 2002 and 2006.
Typical ECM technology components include the following:
Document imaging (DI): Software for scanning, indexing,
retrieving, and archiving digital images of text, graphics, engineering drawings, and photographs. These systems usually
provide workflow and limited electronic document management functionality.
Web content management (WCM): Software that enables the
collection, assembly, staging, maintenance, and delivery of text
and graphic content primarily for disseminating information
via the Web. The standard definition of WCM includes both a
staging and delivery component.
Electronic document management (EDM): Software that
manages the complete life cycle of office documents from collaborative authoring to archiving; key features include indexing, check-in/checkout, versioning, annotations, workflow, and
life cycle management.
Digital asset management (DAM): Software for managing
the life cycle of large collections of digital assets, such as
photographic images, graphics, brand logos, and compound
documents.
Computer output to laser disk (COLD): Applications for
storage of high-volume computer-generated reports.
Records management: Applications that manage long-term document archives throughout the document life cycle.

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

Media asset management (MAM): A subset of DAM, MAM is
specific to rich media, such as video and audio, that require
complex management tools.
Collaboration tools: Any of several applications that promotes
groups working together effectively. Typical applications
include project workspaces, project management tools, automated reporting tools, and basic workflow.
Content integration: Middleware that integrates multiple
vendors’ repositories. Also known as content federation.
Although enterprise content management encompasses all the
technologies just listed, the core components required in any ECM
system are document management, document imaging, web content
management, records management, and workflow.
Many times, workflow is left out of lists describing ECM components; however, it is a very important feature of ECM systems. Most
ECM vendors offer some type of workflow for content review and
approval, but some vendors (such as FileNet and IBM) also offer production workflow for document imaging and workflow for business
process management (BPM). This is important for ensuring efficient
and effective data capture.
FileNet reached a very high market leadership position by focusing on active content. FileNet considers “active content” to be
business objectives whose properties or behavior can launch new
processes (distribute content, launch an exception routine, fire off
another process to integrate with another system, and so on). FileNet
has recognized the importance of having a tight relationship between
active content and BPM.
FileNet’s Image Services is a software product offering highvolume, digital storage, retrieval, and management of document
images, transactional content, and objects of all types. Thousands of
organizations worldwide have implemented FileNet systems to
provide content, document, and imaging management services that
are scalable, highly available, extensible, and secure. The company
has come to be considered a major industry leader in the fields of
imaging, document management, content management, business
process management, knowledge management (KM), and business
intelligence (BI). However, many have questioned whether FileNet
or any other mere information management system can ever be
considered KM.

FileNet Imaging Overview

Recent advances in office software technology have vastly
increased the number of information/knowledge publishers, resulting
in a massive increase in the amount of stored knowledge artifacts
within companies. However, with the doubling of Internet traffic
every 100 days and the need of most managers to deal with approximately 200 messages daily, information overload has become an
obvious and terrible fact of corporate life. This shift in the information supply from scarcity to shocking abundance has taught us that
the scarcest resource in the so-called information economy is attention, not ideas.
Companies have begun to ask themselves if their knowledge
management efforts actually help people make better use of their
limited attention or simply add more noise to the already deafening
cacophony?
The KM/BI sector of the enterprise software market represents the
only one to have shown any growth in 2002. Market analyst OvumTM
estimated that it will continue to be the fastest growing segment of
the software market over the next five years, totaling more than $21
billion by 2006. Companies are vastly improving their knowledge
management progress by building positive feedback loops into their
systems. Workflow systems, like FileNet, allow business leaders to
more efficiently manage the attention of their workers and increase
valuable internal dialog.
However, despite an open and modular design that runs on the
majority of enterprise computing platforms, FileNet’s products suffer
from a dearth of independently produced knowledge resources. This
text has been produced to fill that information void and provide
wider understanding of this complex and powerful set of products to
enterprise level decision makers, project managers, and technicians.
In addition, the book provides general knowledge on how to use
existing document imaging and document management systems to
support advanced knowledge management functions.

FileNet Company Background
The FileNet Corporation (NASDAQ: FILE) was founded by Ted
Smith and specializes in multiplatform enterprise software development. Since the company’s founding in 1982, FileNet’s products have
been implemented in 3800 organizations, including 80 of the Fortune

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

100. The firm’s key areas of focus are business process management
and enterprise content management. Recently, the company
expanded its software offerings through six key strategic purchases:
Watermark Software, Inc. (imaging), in 1995.
Saros Corporation (document management) and Greenbar
Software (report management/COLD), in 1996.
The Sequis application from Applications Partners, Inc., a
FileNet ValueNet partner, in 2000.
eGrail, Inc., (a Web content management provider), in 2002.
Shana (an e-forms vendor), in 2003.
Business process management software includes products for
managing the middleware IT infrastructure and corporate workflow
processes. Spending in the BPM sector reached $2.26 billion in 2002,
under the Aberdeen Group’s calculations, with $1.7 billion of that
spent on integration services. Of the three dozen or so vendors offering BPM products, IBM is the market leader, with a 16.4% share for
a product portfolio that includes its IBM WebSphere MQ line. Right
behind IBM is FileNet, with an 8.5% market share, and Staffware
with a 7.2% share.
FileNet posted a profit of $8.3 million for the fourth quarter of
2002 and revenues rose, by 4% over the previous year, to $347
million. Additionally, Lee Roberts, FileNet chairman and CEO, commented on “overwhelmingly positive” feedback from customers
regarding the FileNet P8 introduction at Insight 2003, the company’s
annual sales conference in Arizona.
With more and more companies realizing the importance of
enabling their processes for eBusiness, the future looks bright for
FileNet.

Technology Overview
FileNet Image Manager
At the heart of any FileNet document imaging solution is FileNet’s
Image Manager. The Image Manager (IM) product, formerly known
as Image Server (IS), provides power, scalability, and performance. It
is designed to deliver access to billions of unstructured objects, such

FileNet Imaging Overview

as documents, faxes, e-mail, and rich media. It securely and permanently stores critical business information in a high-availability environment to protect critical content from disaster and misuse.
Using FileNet IM’s integrated business process management
capability, companies can respond to changing business conditions
and make informed and accurate decisions.

Features and Strengths
Some benefits of Image Manager are as follows:
Global access to critical documents and content, a Virtual File
Room.
Increased operational effectiveness and business agility.
High level of availability and security for corporate assets.
Prevention of critical documents and content from being
unavailable due to misfiling, use by someone else, lost records,
disasters, and disruptions.
Easy integration with other systems to enhance the value of
existing investments.
Enables faster customer service, better decisions, and quicker
response to rapidly changing business demands.
Image Manager was designed to bring scalability, disaster recovery, and extensive flexibility to the imaging arena. IM is a highperformance imaging solution that leverages advanced caching and
a distributed architecture to manage large volumes of critical business documents and content. This increases business agility by allowing companies to provide access, within seconds, to thousands of
users across multiple locations. It features components to capture,
search, retrieve, and store large volumes of content including documents, faxes, e-mail, and rich media.
IM protects valuable information assets by supporting high availability, data integrity, and disaster recovery, while meeting stringent
security and regulatory requirements. Since images stored on optical
disks are practically unerasable, IM eases security and regulatory
issues in most cases. It reduces the operating costs of managing
important documents and data by eliminating lost documents. It also
aids in cutting costs by using workflow to reduce the amount of time

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

it takes to complete key business tasks and respond to new issues.
Additional reductions come from integrating with existing business
applications to provide simpler interfaces, better accountability, and
higher job performance through more efficient sharing of critical
information.
Many clients prefer FileNet solutions because the company is the
recognized leader in document storage solutions utilizing WORM
(write-once-read-many [times]) optical storage mediums. Although
no longer the most high-tech choice for long-term fixed content document storage, WORM is a highly secure, mature, widely accepted
technology. Generally, documents stored on WORM optical media
are accepted just as well as the original paper documents, which may
not be true of newer technologies.

Business Relationships as Document Exchanges
Most industries have a number of core processes all firms must use,
due to either regulation or competitive pressures. Historically, these
processes have been “document centered,” centered on a document
or group of documents. An example would be the way a corporate
purchasing process is centered on a purchase order.
These paper-document-based processes, however, are plagued with
problems such as lost and misfiled information, delays in routing,
and difficulties in reporting on the status of work in process. As computers proliferated throughout corporations, many saw a potential
to increase efficiency by implementing systems to support formally
defined and actively monitored workflows.
In time, intelligent organizations began viewing document management implementation as far more than a simple replacement of
the filing cabinet. Electronic document management strives to keep
all information safe, up-to-date, and easy to find, without regard to
the originating application, file type, or storage location. The goal is
to ensure data integrity, reliability, availability, and security, while
providing all authorized users immediate and reliable access to
current information whenever and wherever needed.
By reengineering their existing paper-based systems, many companies gained the ability to track workflow, analyze new business
processes, and consolidate operations. Managing documents and
images is an inherent function of almost all business transactions,

FileNet Imaging Overview

particularly for closed-loop processing, such as claims processing,
loan applications, insurance policy underwriting, real estate transactions, and many other contractual agreements. Document management is a critical technology for producing the high-value process
initiatives critical for delivering expense reduction while improving
customer service and sales.
Today, many organizations struggle with the lack of accountability measures, the untracked costs and the inherent inflexibility of
paper-based processes. Paper-based processes are based on highly
vulnerable, fixed content that cannot be easily shared across a
geographically dispersed enterprise. CEOs face the rising cost of
managing large amounts of paper information in an information age.
CIOs face the inability to integrate unstructured content into business processes to fully leverage the value of existing systems. Managers find they cannot accurately report to their customers, because
the critical information is trapped in another stakeholder’s inbox. All
employees face the realities of faster business cycles and increased
competition. These issues spurred corporations to attempt to eliminate paper-based processes from their businesses.
Without immediate access to the right information, knowledge
workers are unable to respond quickly to internal events, external litigation, or changing customer demands. FileNet’s Image Manager
addresses these critical business issues, allowing for improved organizational responsiveness to customer and market demands. This has
led some to regard FileNet as a potential candidate for supporting
some critical enterprisewide KM activities.

Toolsets versus Out-of-the-Box Solutions
When considering any imaging product, it is very important to
understand that imaging products are toolsets, not out-of-the-box
solutions. Organizations must have very clear objectives with
documented business processes prior to embarking on any FileNet
implementation. Due to the complexity of the paper-based processes
that evolved in most organizations, this will call for a considerable
effort to define your terms and make sure everyone understands one
another.
Document imaging and document management systems are often
confused, and this confusion can lead to disastrous miscalculations.

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

Even though document imaging is a type of document management,
document management is not the same as document imaging.
However, DM systems often contain images and imaging systems
often contain nonimaged documents. Basically, the difference
between document management and imaging is more about intent
than content.
Document imaging systems are designed to manage billions of
pages of imaged documents, while document managers are designed
to be smaller, less expensive, and more focused on creating, sharing,
and reusing dynamic electronic documents. A DI system captures
analog documents into digital format by scanning the previously
created paper documents. This does not create editable electronic files
comparable to Word documents and Web pages. Although scanned
images are digital, they represent photographs of the original documents—snapshots of a moment in time.
The impact of these differences in design intent becomes apparent
when you examine the way each system handles documents (see
Figure 1.1). The best DI systems manage the size of the document
images and break a multipage TIFF image down to a group of singlepage images that appear to be one document. This enables faster
retrieval of large documents across the wide area network. Most DM
systems treat a TIFF image the same as any other document type,
even though a 10-page TIFF image is significantly larger than a 10page document in Microsoft Word format.
One advantage document management has over document
imaging is in the cost to implement. Document management systems
typically have 30–50% of the implementation cost of a document
imaging system. However, if the organization is trying to manage a
significantly large number of images in the DM solution, the total
cost of ownership can be twice the cost of a DI system. Another issue
is that DM systems are more focused on the needs of authors and
DI systems are more focused on retrieval. The keys to making the
right choices, as usual, are having a thorough understanding of
the company’s objectives and the technology.
A DM solution can be an appropriate storage system for documents the organization wants to share in a knowledge base. Help
desk documents, developer notes, and bug fixes are good examples
of electronic files to be stored and shared in a DM solution, because
the documents captured into a DM system begin as electronic documents and keep their original form along with other versions of the

FileNet Imaging Overview

100 x

100-page TIFF
image

Single-page TIFF
linked to complete
document

Input

Document
Imaging
system

100-page TIFF
image

Single-page TIFF
linked to complete
document

100-page TIFF
Image

Input

Document
management
system

Output

Single-page TIFF
linked to complete
document

Output from a true
document imaging system
is controlled and
manageable because it
serves only the page
requested, not the entire
100-page document.

Output

100-page TIFF
image

Output from a document
management system is the
imaged document
regardless of size. This is
the most important reason
for not purchasing a DM
system to do the work of
DI. The hidden cost is the
explosion in organizational
networking costs.

Figure 1.1
Document imaging versus document management systems

same documents. However, a document captured into an imaging
system begins its life as a piece of paper, such as an invoice and must
be converted to a digital format.
DM solutions may fit a niche, but they must not be seen as endall solutions: They have limits and costs. Many departments within
an organization will push for purchasing DM solutions to be used as
DI solutions because of the lower advertised cost to implement DM.
These departments have a narrow focus and must gain a quick return
on investment (ROI). The often hidden cost to the overall organization is the undocumented rise in network infrastructure costs and
the reduction in productivity for the entire networked community.
Today’s wide range of electronic files stretches the definition of the
word document almost to the point of breaking.

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

Table 1.1
Imaging and Document Management Candidates
Good Candidates for Imaging

Good Candidates for Document Management

Records management:
Vital records management
Voter registration
Human resources records

Information technology:
Knowledge bases
Change control systems
Web authoring control

New accounts:
Policy management
Claims processing

Project management:
Bid management
Contract negotiation tools

Accounting:
Invoice management
Change order management
Accounts payable

Digital archiving:
Intellectual property management
Project document libraries
Decision support tools

Likewise, DI solutions are not the end-all solution either. Imaging
systems do little to reduce the huge amount of document creation
rework within corporations. Before an organization implements a
DI solution it needs to have clearly defined expectations on ROI
for imaging. Enterprise document imaging can be extremely costly,
but for organizations that have high retrieval rates for paper documents, strict regulatory requirements, or a need for greater accountability, it can save millions. Table 1.1 lists some candidates for each
system.

Imaging, Document Management,
or Knowledge Management?
Imaging systems are usually implemented to deliver one or more of
the following objectives:

Faster transactions, better workflow.
Improved customer service.
Meeting regulatory requirements.
Preparing for future litigation.
Disaster recovery.

FileNet Imaging Overview

Although both DM systems and KM systems rely on a foundation of
people, processes, and technology, most KM systems are implemented to achieve the following objectives:

Improved creativity.
Better analysis.
Reduced loss of experience due to attrition.
Sharing best practices.
Evolving procedures.
Recognizing new opportunities.

The differences in these objectives call for a different set of planning
strategies, security assumptions, and metadata requirements. While
DM/DI systems empower primarily transactional functions, KM
systems are much more collaborative in function and result in
processes that are more circular than linear. One thing all these
systems share is an emphasis on workflow automation to improve
speed, accountability, and responsiveness, as well as manage workforce attention.
Too often, projects are viewed as a single trip with a reachable destination, such as the linear business process described in Figure 1.2.
A fixed-scope approach is vital for preventing scope creep. However,
it can also limit the learning possible during the planning and execution of a project. Following this analogy, the planners of a trip
would typically get together to plan the scope of the trip. The scope
would probably include planning activities such as the following:
Define the objectives for the trip (fun, visit family, look for
job, etc.).
Choose a destination.
Designate the time allotted for reaching destination.

Plan new
environment

Setup
environment

Build
prototype

Duplicate
prototype

Implement
new system

Retire old
system

ID
Opportunities
ID constraints
scope project
develop plan

Install software
Update
documentation

Install
and
configure test
systems

Deploy tested
systems to
production
environment

Operate
dual systems
test
new systems

Remove
old PCs

Figure 1.2
Old-style linear business process example

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

Estimate the cost to reach the destination.
Choose what mode of transportation to use.
List any secondary destinations to visit while en route to the
main destination.
Smart travelers plan their trips well. They recognize and document
the components of the trip and the options and decisions agreed to
during planning. The next time they plan a similar trip, the planning
and execution will happen with much greater efficiency. The project
may have a destination, but the way we plan and execute the project
should always be evolving. Question the thoughts and conclusions
that brought you to this destination. Is this the main destination or
merely a resting point?

Informal and Formal Knowledge Management
All individuals perform knowledge management activities, whether
they recognize it or not. Humans pass KM techniques to those within
their area of influence everyday. These informal techniques are passed
from parents to children, from children to other children, from
children to adults, and so forth. Who taught the children in your
family to always ask mom when money is the request, but ask dad
when freedom is needed? The logical answer would be mom and dad.
Human contact guarantees that a mixture of formal and informal
KM habits and techniques evolve in any group.
An organization’s activities are affected by its formal and informal
KM philosophies. Often, the informal KM activities practiced within
an organization conflict with its stated formal strategy. Recognizing
the existence of informal and formal KM strategies is very important
because it helps focus the need for practicing and improving clearly
defined, formal KM practices. Formal KM activities should be an
effort to correct or augment informal KM activities and better align
them with the overall business objectives. Often, documents are used
to formalize processes in companies. Some of the differences between
formal and informal KM techniques follow.
Some informal KM activities are the following:
Teaching a coworker to use his or her desk telephone for conferencing.

FileNet Imaging Overview

While e-mailing a newly developed solution to a customer,
sending a copy to the Help Desk so support people can solve
the problem in the future.
Adding a planning document that you have created to the
departmental knowledge base so other projects can benefit from
your work.
Modeling appropriate e-mail etiquette for peers.
Exchanging ideas and thoughts over lunch (breaking bread and
breaking barriers).
Some formal KM activities are the following:
Providing a customer service class for your department.
Assembling a meeting to develop a new corporate value
statement.
Building a departmental knowledge base.
Having a document you have created automatically added to
the departmental knowledge base via middleware.
Providing incentives for activities that cannot be automated.
Blocking the users’ ability to send organization-wide e-mail
without a formal request.
Using document management to reduce wasting an individual’s
attention.
Using a document manager to store project information that
can be used as catalyst for knowledge creation and exchange.
Using document management as a tool for managing dialog and
trust by allowing the collaboration of diverse parties to create
documents while maintaining version control.
Using document management to reduce access or control the
document life cycle of confidential information.
Using intranet banner ads to get employees to pay attention to
high-quality internal authoring.
FileNet allows formalizing some KM activities, mostly through the
workflow. FileNet is not KM in itself but a component of and used
in many KM activities. For example, a car dealer’s repair invoice
could be managed through FileNet’s workflow to monitor repetitive
issues and report the issues and solutions to the car manufacture’s
design team, eventually be disseminated to the assembly line to
reduce defects, and the future need for dealer repairs.

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

KM Initiatives and Activities
FileNet creates products used in activities belonging to strategic
initiatives. The confusion surrounding whether or not information
management is a part of knowledge management is rooted in the
continual loud statements of what KM is not and the quiet whispers
of what it might be. Information management may not be knowledge
management, but it is definitely used in knowledge management
activities and initiatives.
Initiatives are high-level strategies started, typically at the top of a
department or organization, to set a direction and create a shared
vision. If not properly planned, initiatives may lack depth of description and real strategy. A real initiative has measurable activities
and deliverables (the tactical component of the overall strategy). An
initiative that lacks real activities and deliverables may require the
implementation team to flesh out the details.
For example, the following initiatives lack a depth of description:

Knowledge management.
Focus on core competencies.
Improved efficiency.
World-class customer service.

Real initiatives, however, have specific details:
Knowledge management—Improve our internal collaboration
by improving employees access to collaboration tools such as
document management, e-mail, teleconferencing, and video
conferencing.
Focus on core competencies—Use workflow tools to automate
processes and improve accountability within our core business
processes.
Improved efficiency—Remove paper from the accounts
payables process.
Better customer service—Implement change control, bulletproof e-mail, and provide 99.9% system uptime standards.
Many products offered by companies are not solely knowledge management products but are used in activities that support KM initiatives. In a nutshell, it is our belief that the need for using KM within

FileNet Imaging Overview

existing projects is greater than for creating independent knowledge
management projects. Critical KM concepts such as increasing feedback and dialog while maximizing the user’s attention and effectiveness should be goals of all projects not just KM projects.

What Defines a KM System?
A KM system utilizes people, processes, and technology to provide
content management, searching, collaboration, and learning to
employees. This is addressed in more detail as the book progresses.
For now, remember the three key enablers of KM (people, processes,
and technology) and the four key components of KM (content management, searching, collaboration, and learning). Content within
your FileNet system may serve traditional document imaging/document management roles or the same content may serve KM goals.
The difference is usually in the context, objectives, and the workflow.
Most experts agree that any KM system that does not address all
four key components represents a less-than-complete solution. Additionally, if it does not address the people, processes, and technologies, it is no solution at all. Unfortunately, showing hard dollars for
ROI from KM systems is extremely difficult. To some consultants,
this rules out KM implementations for any but the largest, wealthiest companies. The solution to this problem may be in seeking KM
objectives in the context of more accepted system implementations
that can provide clearer ROI numbers. We talk more about this in
later chapters.

Success Story
A nearly 100-year-old insurance company decided that it was losing
competitive advantage by being too slow in issuing new insurance
policies. A paper-based system requiring documents to flow from the
agencies to the central office created excessive delays in approving
policies. The company needed an automated Web-based system that
could issue a policy with very limited human intervention. The
project would require prospects and agents to access and complete
forms online. The system would then interface with motor vehicle
records, credit rating agencies, and the company’s internal systems.

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

The online system would also need to handle exceptions and be
deployed quickly.
The solution that FileNet delivered included their Claims Processing module, an ECM solution developed specifically for the property
and casualty insurance industry. Running on a Microsoft Windows
2000 Web server, the FileNet Insurance Claims Processing application automatically flags exceptions and routes them to the appropriate underwriter based on the prospect’s location and other criteria.
Distribution functions and built-in routing and matching of data to
files were customized for the specific business process needs. FileNet’s
ECM and workflow solution enabled the insurance company to successfully accomplish the following business objectives:
Automate the issuance of quotes and policies to reduce processing time from seven days to a matter of minutes.
Alleviate the bottlenecks from exceptions that require a more
intensive, tailored underwriting review.
Reduce data entry errors by having the customer enter his or
her own information.
Increase customer satisfaction by providing faster responses to
new policy requests.

Chapter 2

FileNet Products
and Services
Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Human beings
are incredibly slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. Together they are
powerful beyond imagination.
Albert Einstein (1879–1955)

Key Objectives
Awareness of the key divisions within FileNet and how they
interact with one another.
Knowledge of which divisions within FileNet support particular technologies and who to contact with questions and other
issues.
Understanding of FileNet’s inherent recovery capabilities as
well as options for supporting higher levels of disaster
recovery.
Awareness of the training and certification opportunities
FileNet offers and how to stay up-to-date on the platform.

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

The Company behind the Curtain
One could be awestruck by the size and complexity of the Mighty
Oz—until the curtain is pulled aside. In the same way, dealing with
the FileNet Corporation can be intimidating, if you do not understand its organizational structure. This chapter discusses FileNet’s
products and the use of those products as components of knowledge
and content management, but what use is this information if you are
unable to gain access to bids, estimates, and proposals for FileNet
products and services?
A difficulty in managing information technology (IT) resources is
knowing when to train for expertise and when to train for project
management. IT resources are not cheap to own and often spread
very thin over multiple initiatives. Because of the need to operate IT
departments at lower costs, many organizations look offshore to outsource much of their IT infrastructure. The issue with this practice is
recovering the cost to move the jobs overseas, while maintaining the
same level of competence.
These complexities can be simplified by using FileNet resources
through a multitude of FileNet avenues. Figure 2.1 shows many areas
of an IT department’s responsibilities and the following paragraphs
examine the relationship between these functions and the various
groups within FileNet.

IT Departmental Responsibilities
Projects affecting infrastructure and responsibilities. New projects increase the IT department’s responsibility by adding
information, equipment, and users. The project itself
requires resources to compete and resources are required on a
continual basis to administrate the project.
Upgrading the existing infrastructure. Often, the ability to keep
a system operating and current, on the application level,
depends on earlier project management efforts and similar projects that put new systems in place.
Maintaining technical training. Most IT departments have
established efforts to maintain a level of technical expertise
within a department. Often, performance metrics are tied to
industry certification.

FileNet Products and Services

Projects
affecting
infrastructure and
responsibilities

Support
infrastructure
and users

Upgrade
existing
infrastructure

Organizational IT
department

Research new
technologies

Maintain
technical
training

Figure 2.1
Organizational Information Technology responsibilities

Researching new technologies. IT departments are continually
challenged to bring technology to bear on organizational issues.
To accomplish this, a certain amount of time must be spent
researching new technologies.
Supporting infrastructure and users. This represents the normal
administration function performed by IT departments to
ensure that existing systems are maintained and end user issues
are handled. One area often overlooked by IT departments
is the use of outsourcing on a smaller, more-limited scale.
FileNet offers many services that can be purchased to offset the
need for IT departments to maintain significant redundancy
in their groups. Figure 2.2 shows how FileNet’s internal and

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

Projects
affecting
infrastructure and
responsibilities

Customer
service and
support
and
professional
services

Support
infrastructure
and users
Professional
services
staff
augmentation
services

Professional
services
and
valueNet
partners

Organizational IT
department

Upgrade
existing
infrastructure
Customer
service and
support
and
professional
services

FileNET
education
and
professional
services

Research new
technologies

Maintain
technical
training

Figure 2.2
Organizational Information Technology responsibilities with
FileNet’s help

external groups are structured to support the IT Department’s
responsibilities.

Divisions and the Functions They Support
Projects affecting infrastructure and responsibilities. New projects constitute an excellent area to use FileNet resources.
FileNet requires that systems be installed and upgraded by certified FileNet engineers. The cost to maintain these resources

FileNet Products and Services

internally can be prohibitive to many organizations. By farming
out this work to FileNet or a ValueNet® partner, an organization’s IT department can oversee the work without having to
train staff members to actually do the work.
Upgrading the existing infrastructure. Major system upgrades
also must be performed by a certified FileNet engineer, which
makes this another area in which to use a FileNet or ValueNet
resource. During upgrades, the installation of the FileNet software is handled by Customer Service and Support (CS&S);
however, data migration or Oracle/database work is typically
handled by FileNet’s Professional Services (PS).
Maintaining technical training. FileNet offers many educational
programs for certification, including administrator, developer,
technician, and other programs for ValueNet partners. One
option for education that is not often discussed is using a
department’s education dollars to bring CS&S and PS engineers
on-site to review configurations and advise the support team on
ways to improve stability, performance, and functionality. This
time can be purchased in blocks and used in place of certification training, which typically focuses on a broad range of skills.
The training can be tailored to focus on the specific environment being supported.
Researching new technologies. Similar to the preceding,
research can utilize CS&S or PS engineers to focus on what is
changing at FileNet and how it could be tailored to the specific
IT environment. Another resource that can be used in this area
of interest that will cost the organization only time is bringing
in a FileNet-certified salesperson.
Supporting the infrastructure and users. Often IT groups
supporting FileNet are lean. This can be an issue when
handling extended illnesses or just covering vacations. FileNet
Professional Services can help with “staff augmentation
services.”

FileNet ValueNet Partners and
Customer Service and Support
FileNet markets its products and services in more than 90 countries
through its own global sales, support organizations, professional services, and ValueNet partners. The ValueNet partners reach areas of

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

the world that, in some cases, are without a FileNet corporate presence. This program is made up of value-added resellers (VARs),
system integrators, consultants, independent software vendors, and
service providers. There are well over 500 of these partners worldwide, with only half that number in the United States. This network
of partners increases the product and service options for FileNet customers. The ValueNet partners also offer valuable resources for
knowledge exchange and feedback from independent companies that
possess some of the most knowledgeable individuals in the content
management world.

FileNet Sales
One of the most difficult areas of FileNet to understand is the sales
organization. The difficulty arises not from their organizational structure but from the seeming lack of pricing structure. The sales team
is knowledgeable about the company’s product lines but, like most
sales organizations, it tends to recommend as much software as possible. Make a point of knowing what type of engineer you are speaking to whenever dealing with FileNet engineers, this is because many
are “sales engineers.”
For FileNet VARs and other official partners, the company
offers promotional materials via the FileNet eXtra site. The website
provides easy access to a wealth of sales resources to help them
sell FileNet solutions, as well as answer customer questions
abut competing products. The FileNet eXtra website is at
www.FileNet.com/eXtra/.

FileNet Customer Service and Support
When an organization purchases a FileNet system with a support
agreement, the support is provided by the company’s Customer
Service and Support Department. Installations, upgrades, and issues
go through CS&S support by either phone or e-mail. Through
FileNet’s Customer Service and Support website, it is possible to open
and monitor cases, retrieve resources such as software patch updates,
product documentation, or query FileNet’s knowledge base 24 hours
a day. To use the online CS&S system an organization must contact

FileNet Products and Services

its salesperson for authorization to get a logon name and password.
The FileNet CS&S website is at www.css.FileNet.com/.

Professional Services
FileNet Professional Services is a key component when planning and
implementing any optimization or enhancement to your FileNet solution. Because of the scarcity of FileNet published information, few
know more about the capabilities of this product line than the FileNet
Professional Services Department. PS breaks down into the following areas: consulting services, implementation services, and system
enhancement services.

Consulting Services
The consulting services branch of Professional Services focuses on
content and process challenges and reaching strategic goals. Consulting services also focuses on improving efficiency through applied
technology. It also helps companies define their business needs. The
components of consulting services are application performance services, capture express services, mentoring services, solution services,
and staff augmentation services.
Consulting services’ application performance services provides key
functionality in using Compuware® application performance tools
to provide quantified analysis reports, especially by identifying specific performance problems that may arise during production rollout
to allow for proactive corrective action to enhance user acceptance
of the application.
FileNet’s capture express component has powerful functionality,
but implementation can be difficult because of its quirky nature. The
product is one of the company’s least refined and can be a challenge
to implement, especially over a wide area network (WAN). The document capture process provides the foundation for any imaging
system, and it is crucial that your firm’s needs be clearly defined from
the beginning of the imaging system project. Capture express services
provides a suite of software tools that enhances FileNet capture’s
functionality.

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

Finding well-trained staff for FileNet positions within a company
can be difficult and having extra project staff can be cost prohibitive.
FileNet recognizes this profit opportunity and offers professional
services staff for organizations to provide them FileNet-centered
expertise and assistance within following areas:

Project management.
Custom application design and development.
Quality assurance.
System administration.
Enterprise network and interface issues.
Application rollout assistance.

The difficulty in working with FileNet PS on projects is gaining
an estimate (Class C, ±30%) of cost before the detailed project planning begins. Similar to the chicken or egg analogy, FileNet typically
cannot give reasonable estimates based on only a high-level project
scope and plan. This, however, is not that unusual in the consulting
field.

Implementation Services
To meet certification requirements and ensure the quality of implementations, FileNet Implementation Services is available. Remember,
FileNet products are toolsets that require tailoring to individual
company goals, systems, and processes. The technology is adaptable,
but with the adaptability comes complexity of implementation.
The implementation services offered include installation packages
and launch services.
FileNet offers fixed-fee package services to cover a variety of installations and learning services. These services are vital to maintain the
organization’s FileNet system certification. Each FileNet enterprise
content management suite has an associated installation package.
Caution: Travel and expenses are often not included in the initial bids.
FileNet offers services under the umbrella of launch services,
typically a catchall area that basically means purchasing blocks of
hours. The statements of work that are joined to these blocks are

FileNet Products and Services

generic and designed to protect FileNet from being required to deliver
anything substantial. To ensure its project’s success, an organization
should insist on interviewing the FileNet engineer assigned to execute
the block of hours prior to signing off on the statement of work. The
interview process is used to verify that the person FileNet recommends has the skill set needed.

System Enhancement Services
Finding high-quality FileNet resources can be a serious issue: System
Enhancement Services fills the gap between owning administrative
resources and true enhancement/project resources. The FileNet
product line is complex and the constant renaming of products and
services adds to the confusion with that product line. Expect to need
FileNet’s help to make any major changes or upgrades to your
system. The services offered include enhanced availability services,
image conversion services, media migration services, platform
conversion services, and utility software solutions.
The enhanced availability services group of FileNet specialists
guide an organization in designing and building a customized solution
for high availability. These solutions typically include disaster recovery
services for protection from a natural disaster and multisystem
synchronization (MSS) for replicating multiple systems data to
other domains. It is usually a good idea to pursue high availability, if
you are already working on disaster recovery. The additional costs are
not that high, and they allow the users to see immediate benefit from
implementing a disaster recovery system that (ideally) may not ever be
needed.
Imaging systems typically are built to capture images but not to
easily give up those images. FileNet, along with most image companies, does not assist customers with leaving their platform. If you are
moving from a non-FileNet platform to FileNet, FileNet’s image conversion services typically provides resources to smooth the cutover.
Migrating data from FileNet’s proprietary systems and hardware
can be challenging. If an organization does not own FileNet resources
that already have migrated FileNet system data, it would be advisable to contract FileNet’s image conversion services. Although these
services are relatively expensive, the data typically are irreplaceable.

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

Simply moving from one media format (such as 12 GB optical platters) to another (like magnetic storage or 30 GB optical platters) can
be difficult in systems of high complexity and multiple integration
points. Media migration services offer many scripts to mitigate the
difficulties inherent in FileNet media migration.
Similar to the other conversion services offered, FileNet has
defined processes and service offerings for migrating between hardware platforms and different operating systems. Platform conversion
services support conversions between supported platforms including
Sun, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Microsoft NT platforms and
Oracle, Sybase, and SQL databases.
As with most imaging applications, FileNet systems require specialized utility tools to help organizations take advantage of the
inherent architecture and design of the FileNet environment. FileNet
provides utilities, such as DART and HPII/MRII, for automated
batch image imports and automated backup of optical images. If you
believe that the utility your organization needs is fairly common, it
may be already developed and available from FileNet’s utility software solutions group.

Disaster Recovery Hot-Site Services
FileNet can provide a comprehensive solution for system recoverability for an organization’s mission-critical document management
applications. Effective disaster recovery services offer the option of
not investing in redundant document management systems or risk
losing business as a result of an unplanned service interruption.
A “hot-site” disaster recovery facility contains duplicate computers and equipment that an organization can use to immediately
replace a system lost in a disaster. FileNet is partnered with Comdisco
Inc., a recognized leader in business continuity services, to provide a
complete hot-site disaster recovery solution. The partnership offers a
disaster recovery hot-site service designed to recover all FileNet
document management environment in 24 hours or less following a
disaster.
The hot-site hardware configurations include Image Manager
(Image Services) and content services servers, optical systems, and
facsimile server hardware, which support all the operating system
platforms currently available for FileNet software. Organizations

FileNet Products and Services

subscribing to the service can access the system directly through a
variety of network access configurations including T1 connections
and Sonnet-Ring capability.
Testing and availability features of this service include dedicated
access to these systems available 24/7 in the event of a disaster and
schedulable hours each year for testing the system’s recovery capacities validity and integrity.
In case the disaster reduces an organization’s technical team or the
organization is new to this type of implementation, full-time, dedicated, on-site FileNet technical resources are available to provide
restoration and network connectivity expertise when conducting
restoration testing or during an actual disaster recovery effort. This
means you can leverage the technical skills and experience of both
FileNet Professional Services and Comdisco Inc. to augment your
recovery skill set.
For disasters that disable complete sites including facilities, this
partnership includes work area recovery facilities in all major metropolitan locations. These facilities include office space, voice capability, and a variety of office equipment such as PCs, printers, fax
machines, and desktop scanners. In areas where these facilities are
unavailable, the partnership offers mobile recovery units.
This service binds FileNet Professional Services to assuming
responsibility for restoration of an organization’s system, the FileNet
integrated document management environment, and databases.
Comdisco Inc. technical support personnel assume responsibility for
the establishment and maintenance of the network backup capability as well as all logistical and facility issues.
The dedicated on-site FileNet Professional Services disaster recovery consulting specialist and the disaster recovery program manager
provide all necessary technical and operational support during disaster recovery testing exercises as well as during an actual recovery.
The disaster recovery program manager can also provide assistance
in the development of an organization’s disaster recovery objectives.
The same FileNet Customer Service and Support personnel,
responsible for normal system support assistance assume responsibility for the restoration and recovery of an organization’s environment at the client-side recovery facility. This support is
provided regardless of whether the client chose to use the nearest
Comdisco Inc. work area recovery facility or a facility internal to the
organization.

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

FileNet Education
FileNet’s 26 training locations around the world provide training for
its customers and partners. Distance learning options, including
online training and virtual classrooms, are also available. Training
classes are conducted at FileNet’s Costa Mesa, California, headquarters; its regional education centers; and FileNet-authorized
education partner locations around the world. FileNet certified
professional status is given to professionals that pass the required
series of online exams.
FileNet offers five levels of certification that constitute several
tracks to train consultants, support personnel, development personnel, and administration personnel for FileNet’s extensive product
line. Each certification track consists of around 15 classes, costing
around $2800. The certification year runs from April 16 to April 15.
The purpose of the certification year is to establish which individuals and organizations maintain the most up-to-date certification
status. To maintain current certification, an individual must complete
the new requirements for the current certification year by the given
deadline. One who is 2003 certified must achieve the 2004 certification requirements by April 15, 2004.
FileNet education locations include the following:

Costa Mesa, California.
Atlanta, Georgia.
Nr Basingstoke, Hampshire, United Kingdom.
Amstelveen, The Netherlands.
Hamburg, Germany.
Paris, France.
Madrid, Spain.
Rome, Italy.
Sydney, Australia.

FileNet Certification
The FileNet certification program also drives revenue into the
company. Typically, maintenance contracts insist on the use of
FileNet certified personnel for major system changes. This, combined
with a general lack of independent information relating to FileNet,

FileNet Products and Services

makes it a near certainty that a client will hire professionals from
FileNet’s Customer Support and Professional Services.
This might lead you to discount the need for training your own
personnel, since so much work has to be done by FileNet employees.
However, knowledgeable, well-trained internal FileNet support
technicians are often your best defense against being “taken to the
cleaners” by FileNet’s extremely aggressive sales force.
The best way to stay up-to-date on FileNet’s educational offerings
is to watch the FCP bulletins and the Global Learning Services
website
at
www.FileNet.com/English/Services_&_Support/
Global_Learning_Services/Certification_Programs/

Naming Conventions
One of the most difficult issues in working with FileNet is the endless
renaming of products and services. For example, the FileNet product
for sharing IS services across extended locations has been called Distributive Image Services (DIS), Remote Image Server (RIS), Batch
Entry Services (BES), and Remote Application Server (RAS). Establishing and maintaining clearly defined terminology throughout a
project is a vital component of a successful FileNet implementation.
Sending imaging and document management support personnel
for training from FileNet’s Global Learning Services is a great way
to get your team speaking the same language. Ramping up your
employees’ knowledge of this critical enterprise system provides
significant protection against an overeager FileNet sales force as
well as numerous money-saving opportunities. In the next chapter,
we explore more ways to limit risks and increase opportunities
using FileNet’s advanced content management capabilities.

Success Story
After growing through acquisitions, an organization’s private client
services (PCS) group had to deal with a wide range of beneficiary
trust content management systems. Decision making was being
adversely affected by the need for customer service representatives to
spend two-thirds of their time tracking down information. It was
determined that a single intranet solution was needed for managers,

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

and the organization was challenged with implementing an ECM
solution.
Using eProcess Services and Content Services, FileNet linked the
trust offices and Web-enabled key administrative transactions. By
automating the PCS group’s paper-based processes, trust administrators now can access the clients’ files online. When complete, the information is forwarded to the trust officer, who reviews the content and
renders a decision. If approved, the system automatically transfers
the funds.
This solution enabled the organization to accomplish the
following:
Greatly reduce the time required to make a decision on payment
requests from three or more days to one.
Improve customer service through increased performance by
the trust administrators.
Provide online access to each trust application to support
problem solving and create a clear audit trail.
Focus more resources on building new revenue streams and less
to administrative tasks.

Chapter 3

FileNet Risks and
Opportunities
Forty percent of enterprises that experience a disaster will go out
of business within five years. In some cases, the disruption to business operations causes customers to lose confidence in the organization’s viability. In other cases, the cost of recovery is simply too
great.
—Aftermath: Disaster Recovery, Gartner Research,
September 2001

Key Objectives
Explore some of the ways FileNet can ease the growing pains
of organizations in the midst of massive changes resulting from
mergers and acquisitions.
Become familiar with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and
learn what content management, data integrity, process management, and security improvements enterprises need to be in
compliance.
Understand the need for clearly defined data ownership roles and
document retention policies before any system implementation.
Realize the advantages and disadvantages of the various storage
mediums and strategies FileNet offers.

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

Learn how to set up a distributed data capture center as
well as the opportunities and risks of decentralized capture
operations.
Understand features and options for FileNet’s standard disaster recovery and business continuance strategies.
Learn the key factors in determining the return on investment of imaging paper documents for bidding a FileNet
implementation.
Understand content management’s impact on attention and
trust within organizations.
Learn how to use FileNet to properly integrate records retention and content management for maximum efficiency and
regulatory compliance.
Understand the competing objectives that must be balanced
when organizing unstructured data and establishing document
life cycles.
Know the relationship between document families and document classes within a FileNet system.

Organizational Change
Mergers, acquisitions, and divestments create some of the thorniest
issues of change management a company is likely to experience.
Looking on the bright side, these changes also provide unique opportunities to realize the value of your company’s FileNet investment. In
this section, we illustrate some of the ways FileNet eases the growing
pains of organizations in the midst of massive change.
Trust is an extremely valuable commodity in any relationship, and
trust is in especially short supply during mergers. Digitized records
reduce the purchasing company’s worry of acquisition targets
shredding valuable information. Companies maintaining electronic
repositories of corporate information that are indexed by powerful
databases and stored on WORM optical platters have demonstrated an effort to value their information and their employee’s
attention.
Although the vital tacit knowledge that lives in the minds of the
workers is very difficult to capture, bulk scanning of documents provides a way to quickly capture a large amount of the most critical

FileNet Risks and Opportunities

business information. Once the documents have been captured
digitally, teams rather than individuals can do the analysis without
document-sharing conflicts.
Successful mergers and acquisitions depend on a number of key
factors. Two key factors FileNet can help with are information
sharing and managing accountabilities. In any transition, a large
number of constituents need to receive not only initial information
but also a continuing flow of information as the transition evolves.
Obviously, key constituents include customers, suppliers, and
employees. However, the transition group often extends to include
members of the media, attorneys, accountants, and consultants.
Sadly, according to studies by Harvard University and the American Management Association, the majority of mergers and acquisitions do not create wealth for the acquiring companies’ shareholders.
To make these transitions smoother, considerable foresight, planning,
and execution skill are involved.
The first step in an acquisition is the due diligence phase. In this
phase, a huge amount of various documents must be assembled and
distributed effectively. These items include balance sheets and other
financial documents, management structure documentation, marketing reports, process mappings, project feasibility studies, HR policies, and a mountain of other documents. Careful scrutiny of legal
documents during the due diligence phase typically calls for this
initial analysis to be conducted by a team of legal experts.
The complexities of merger issues require a disciplined approach,
if the transition is to go well. To quickly establish a collaborative
relationship between the two organizations, insist on a well-planned
and sustained change management process. Document management technology allows building automatic escalation processes
into the workflow. This helps to ensure clear communications, easy
to follow paper trails, and strong accountability—for an orderly
transition.
Achieving significant reductions in prime storage space through
elimination of filing cabinets is also important during a merger. Just
about every transaction in which a business participates results in a
new document being created. Over time, these massive piles of paper
become a drag on the speed, efficiency, and customer service quality
of any business. However, there are more reasons to move away from
paper-based processes than cost savings alone.

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 provides penalties of up to 20
years imprisonment for corporate executives found guilty of destroying, altering, or fabricating records in federal investigations or
schemes to defraud investors or for filing false financial statements
with the SEC. Similarly, the Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996 and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley
Act (GLBA) of 1999 may hold public companies accountable for
controlling the security of and access to a wide range of personally
identifiable information.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002
Good records management depends on both business processes and
technology. Smart purchasing and planning decisions can lead to
transparent systems that add sufficient accountability to end the trend
of massive corporate scandals. The need for strengthening finance,
accounting, and document management processes, in the light of
Enron, WorldCom, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, is now
obvious. This provides an excellent opportunity to pursue much
needed data integrity, integration, and security improvements. Enterprises with previously implemented content management and workflow systems have a clear advantage in winning the credibility to be
gained from early adoption of these reforms.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 creates two new crimes that
penalize corruptly altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing documents and impose a responsibility to preserve certain litigationrelated documents. This means that CIOs can be held personally
responsible for bad financial data. Whether or not CIOs make the
types of accounting decisions whose ethics can be questioned, they
are certainly building the systems whose data are relied on to make
those decisions. If these systems are discovered to have provided inaccurate data, the senior management may be forced to pay a terrible
price.
Start thinking now about the process controls within your
company. Can you document and explain the financial processes that
make up your financial reports? Have these processes been mapped?
Are they being accurately monitored? Are they evolving to meet the
regulatory constraints that have been recently imposed? Automated
process metrics and workflow mapping will be critical to all publicly

FileNet Risks and Opportunities

funded companies hoping to meet the requirements of this new round
of financial management reform.

Key Sarbanes-Oxley Sections Relating to Records and
Process Management
According to Section 103, firms must prepare and maintain
audit work papers that support the auditor’s conclusions for
seven years.
Section 105 explores investigation and disciplinary proceedings
with regard to the use of documents.
Section 302 mandates generating up-to-date, accurate reports
on internal controls and financial statements that CEOs and
CFOs can sign.
Section 404 examines changes to annual reports to include an
internal control report that shows the procedures and structure of financial reporting as well as an assessment of their
effectiveness.
Section 802 amends parts of the U.S. Code relating to records
management, making it pertain to private companies in addition to those publicly traded.
Section 1102 describes penalties for tampering with a critical
record or otherwise impeding a compliance investigation.
Section 1520 defines rules for retention of audit documents and
audit review papers.
Titles 8 and 11 of the act make it a felony to “knowingly”
destroy or create documents to “impede, obstruct or influence”
any existing or contemplated federal investigation.
Corporate finance officers now are required to view and confirm the
effectiveness of all financially related business processes. Otherwise,
they cannot ensure that the numbers from the company’s financial
information systems are “true and accurate.” Other parts of the act
direct corporations to electronically file public disclosures and to post
statements “on a publicly accessible Internet site not later than the
end of the business day following that filing.” This may indicate a
need for considering Web content management solutions within some
organizations.

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

The Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act of 1996
The first-ever federal privacy standards to protect every patient’s
medical records and other health information provided to health
plans, doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers took effect
on April 14, 2003. Developed by the Department of Health and
Human Services (HHS), these new standards provide patients access
to their medical records and more control over how their personal
health information is used and disclosed. They represent a uniform,
federal floor of privacy protection for consumers across the country.
State laws providing additional protection to consumers are not
affected by this new rule.
Congress called on HHS to issue patient privacy protections as
part of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of
1996. HIPAA includes provisions designed to encourage electronic
transactions and also requires new safeguards to protect the security
and confidentiality of health information. The final regulation covers
health plans, health care clearinghouses, and those health care
providers that conduct certain financial and administrative transactions (e.g., enrollment, billing, and eligibility verification) electronically. Most health insurers, pharmacies, doctors, and other health
care providers are required to comply with these federal standards
beginning April 14, 2003. As provided by Congress, certain small
health plans had an additional year to comply. The HIPAA regulations protect medical records and other individually identifiable
health information, whether on paper, in computers, or communicated orally.

HIPAA Civil and Criminal Penalties
Congress provides civil and criminal penalties for covered entities
that misuse personal health information. For civil violations of the
standards, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for
Civil Rights may impose monetary penalties of up to $100 per violation, up to $25,000 per year, for each requirement or prohibition
violated. Criminal penalties apply for certain actions, such as knowingly obtaining protected health information in violation of the law.
Criminal penalties can range up to $50,000 and one year in prison

FileNet Risks and Opportunities

for certain offenses, up to $100,000 and up to five years in prison
if the offenses are committed under “false pretenses,” and up to
$250,000 and up to 10 years in prison if the offenses are committed
with the intent to sell, transfer, or use protected health information
for commercial advantage, personal gain, or malicious harm.
Many organizations are now leveraging a new solution from
FileNet and Steelpoint. The compliance and litigation risk management (CLRM) solution utilizes enterprise content management
products from FileNet and an eDiscovery and litigation support
applications from Steelpoint. It manages the paper-based and electronically stored data within an organization, including claims, policies, rules, and the like, to locate problem areas and uses workflow
technology to drive the correct mitigation action in a rapid, efficient,
and effective manner.
Increasing adoption of digital technologies, when combined with
such initiatives as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and HIPAA, change the
rules for content management within many types of organizations.
Obsolete information handling rules and procedures need to be
updated to be in compliance with the act. HIPAA’s security and
privacy regulations require both access control (so that only the right
individuals can obtain medical records) and distribution auditing (so
that institutions can account for every person looking at medical
records). Companies like IBM and FileNet, which market enterprisegrade document imaging systems, are well positioned to benefit from
the need to satisfy HIPAA requirements.

Informational Responsibilities
One of the best ways to reduce the amount of risk in FileNet projects is to clearly establish and maintain data ownership roles. When
companies establish FileNet libraries, they almost always make it
very clear who has the responsibility for keeping the system alive and
functional. Unfortunately, it is rare for companies to make it clear
who has authority over the data. Clearly defined data ownership roles
for the business users will become increasingly important (and difficult to identify) as the system ages.
An important aspect of data ownership is setting up a retention
policy. It is vital that the document retention period be determined
while the project is being planned. During project planning, the

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

information is fresh and the stakeholders already have a commitment
to the success of the project. If you wait until you run out of space
on your system to make decisions on what you can delete and what
you must keep, you are bound to have problems. Expect to find few
volunteers for deciding what must be kept and what is free to be
purged. The risk to reward ratio for this type of work is not very
appealing to most executives.
Retention is just as relevant when discussing electronic information as when discussing paper-stored information, because the stakes
are very high. It is vital to define the retention period for electronic
information and define the responsibility and process for removing
the information as it reaches its retention date.
One limitation to optical storage/WORM (Write Once Read
Many) media is the difficulty in destroying the information that has
reached its end of life. This is ironic since such “limitation” was the
key benefit WORM technology was implemented to provide.
WORM technology attempts to prevent items from ever being lost.
In this age of massive litigation, prevention of document loss is definitely a two-edged sword. I say that it attempts to prevent items from
being lost, because it is not always wholly successful.
The technology used for consumer music CDs is one application
of WORM technology. Anyone who has been around long enough
to see the transition from vinyl albums to CDs has observed some
data loss from WORM media. CDs are far from indestructible, and
although they may not lose audio quality as easily, an errant fingerprint can cause playback problems that are at least as significant as
scratches on records.
Data owners need training to develop the necessary business
knowledge to make good judgments about tricky issues like retention priorities, bulk exports, data purges, and evolving access rules.
Large organizations may look for this training to be provided by
internal teams assembled from such departments as IT, Legal, and
Records Management or consider outsourcing this training.
Any time a new document management project is begun, the data
owners should insist on the inclusion of a strategy for exporting all
the data out of the new system in a widely compatible format. This
is the type of work XML was created to do. A well-thought-out exit
strategy reduces future project costs and improves the final ROI of
those projects, by building in bulk import and export functionality.
This is also important from a data mobility standpoint. The ability

FileNet Risks and Opportunities

to export selective batches of documents to CD media can cut costs
substantially when large numbers of documents must be exported for
a third party. Sometimes this capability can even provide a new
revenue source.
With any large document management system, the need eventually
arises for mass import and export operations, often due to mergers,
litigation, audits, or regulatory compliance issues. A good rule of
thumb is to never put critical organizational information into any
system without having a tested exit strategy. It seems counterintuitive
to go into a new implementation focusing on obsolescence and disasters, but this is why skyscrapers are not built with only one fire
exit.

Optical versus Magnetic Storage
When architecting a content management system, what type of
storage should be purchased? This is a critical question that the
system’s disaster recovery capabilities, maintenance costs, and
retrieval performance all depend on. FileNet offers two main options:
OSAR (optical storage and retrieval) and MSAR (magnetic storage
and retrieval). FileNet’s optical technology is a very secure, solid
option for the long-term storage of organizational documents.
However, one of the leaders in the field of data storage, EMC, has
recently released its Centera® product, which offers a cutting-edge
storage area network (SAN) solution with some extremely advanced
features for data validity checking, high availability, and disaster
recovery.
The physical platters in a FileNet OSAR have a 70-year expected
life; however, an optical reader that supports drivers for available
server equipment would be needed, 70 years hence, to read the old
media. Since software manufacturers have embraced the policy of not
supporting obsolete products and hardware manufacturers quickly
stop producing obsolete hardware, the possibility is real that, in 70
years or so, old media may be unreadable on existing technology.
This brings up the important issue of company viability.
When discussing content management, document management,
and imaging repositories, the two biggest players are FileNet and
IBM. Both companies have shown a commitment to content, document, and imaging repositories. IBM’s strength is in being the larger

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

of the two companies, and FileNet’s strength is that it specializes in
content management systems. Although either company may eventually decide the get out of the document management market,
FileNet has few other choices, since managing documents has always
been the whole pie for them.

Centralized versus Decentralized Capture
Capture is the process of adding content to a repository, whether an
electronic document, a paper document and image, a piece of code,
or something else. Most electronic document management systems
use a decentralized capture method that allows a user to add content
from the same client software used to search and view existing
content.
Organizations with imaging management systems often struggle
with deciding whether to use centralized or decentralized document
capture. This is because scanning requires specialized equipment and
the images are typically not keyword searchable, so they require
detailed indexing.
The need for uniform indexing procedures and the cost of scanning equipment typically are the driving factors for companies to
adopt centralized capture (Figure 3.1). Also, global organizations or
outsourcing providers sometimes use imaging to bypass certain postal
regulations that often prevent financial documents from leaving their
country of origin. These regulations, along with the cost of domestic and foreign labor, often cause organizations to consider developing a decentralized capture system (Figure 3.2).
Decentralized document capture clients require access to the main
image system repository and can face challenges such as network
bandwidth, firewall rules, domain name services (DNS) issues, language, hardware export restrictions, overseas software licensing, time
zone conflicts, hardware power requirements, change control, and
secure data center facilities. Also, the goal of saving millions by eliminating centralized data capture operations often proves quite elusive.
Many organizations belatedly realize that they have moved performance of the data capture task away from relatively low-wage
clerical workers and toward much higher-wage employees.
FileNet and its partners have developed many products to support
both centralized and decentralized capture within organizations. The

FileNet Risks and Opportunities

Invoice ABC
Company

Central capture location
– Prep work
– Scanning
Invoice ABC
Company

– Indexing
– Link to
ERP system

FileNET repository
– MSAR
– OSAR
– ISCC

Invoice ABC
Company

Figure 3.1
Centralized data capture

Invoice ABC
Company

Paris, France
Central capture location
– Prep work

Invoice ABC
Company

– Scanning
– Indexing
– Link to
ERP system

Dallas, USA
FileNET Repository
– MSAR
– OSAR
– ISCC

London, England
Central capture location
– Prep work
– Scanning
– Indexing

Chicago, USA
– Link to
ERP system

Central capture location
– Prep work

Invoice ABC
Company
Invoice ABC
Company

– Scanning
– Indexing
– Link to
ERP system

Invoice ABC
Company

Figure 3.2
Decentralized data capture

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

products work well; however, developing a plan and getting accurate
cost estimates can be a challenge because FileNet renames its products so many times. The goal of many of these products is the extension of Image Server services to remote locations, while staying in
sync with the main Image Server through replication.

Disaster Recovery
When looking at imaging systems, many organizations quickly discount optical platters as a good media choice because of the increased
reliability of cheap magnetic disk systems and the poorer performance of optical retrieval. FileNet built its imaging strategy on
optical systems and continues to push these systems for the WORM
capabilities that they provide. FileNet did not approach optical platters as just another storage medium; it focused on developing an
imaging system that exploits optical media for its natural business
fit, including regulatory compliance, archiving, and disaster recovery.
In the event of a disaster, a FileNet system can be completely
restored from its duplicate optical media platters, known as tranlogs.
These secondary optical platters are defined when setting up a document family and intended to be stored off-site. The tranlog platters
contain not only the images but also a copy of the permanent database structure and the index (meta)data that belong to the individual document images. In fact, to assure there is no possibility of losing
a backup image, the tranlog (backup) is created before creating the
image for retrieval.
Despite FileNet’s traditional reliance on the optical technology, the
company has broadened its focus of storage to innovative magnetic
storage solutions as well. Just remember to watch out for what
appears to be a bias toward optical storage by the FileNet sales force.
When defining a list of potential disasters or series of disasters,
either natural or human-made, the list becomes quite long. In fact, it
is probably impossible to determine in advance what disasters will
occur in the future. Business continuance, since September 11, has
been the focus of many organizations. Disasters happen, the question is: Will an organization faced with a disaster survive?
Two basic strategies are involved in organizational planning for a
disaster, recovery and business continuation. The first strategy (disaster recovery) focuses on plans to restart the business after a disas-

FileNet Risks and Opportunities

ABC Corporation

New York City office

Laptop computer

Workstation

Ethernet

Seattle office

Laptop computer
Workstation

Laptop computer

Workstation

T1 link

Ethernet

Laptop computer

Figure 3.3
Single-link construction
ter; the other (business continuance) focuses on not allowing business to be stopped by a disaster. These philosophies are very different, even though often lumped together in the disaster planning
category.
Good disaster planning requires asking the right questions:
What if it all disappeared?
How long can the organization survive without this resource?
What is actually likely to occur?
In Figure 3.3, the two offices within the ABC Corporation are linked
by a single T1 link. If the link goes down, regardless of any tape
backup solutions, the two offices will not be able to communicate
with data capture employees working on location. This is a major
disaster. If the business process of the ABC Corporation requires
these two offices to be in continual communication, they would
experience a disaster with the loss of the T1 link.
To remedy this single point of failure, a second link could be set
up with a completely different route to protect against a natural disaster breaking both links, as in Figure 3.4. However, a citywide
power failure or a natural disaster in either city could still put the
corporation’s survival at risk.
Can the organization afford to be without the resource for only a
few hours, up to one day, or for a week or more? Regardless of how

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

ABC corporation

New York City office

T1 link
northern U.S.
route

Laptop computer

Workstation

Ethernet

Seattle office

Laptop computer
Workstation
Workstation

Laptop computer

Workstation

Ethernet

Laptop computer

T1 link,
southern U.S.
route

Figure 3.4
Dual-link construction
this question is answered, an organization builds a false security
because it has identified the wrong resources to focus on. Many disaster plans focus on saving the data at all cost, because you can
always bring in new equipment. The fact is, in more than 90% of all
disasters, the equipment is undamaged. Most actual outages are a
failure of the utility infrastructure (power and telecom). Even though
the organization’s data are secure and new equipment is available,
the disaster does not end, because the disaster’s victim is an external
resource.
Most outages are tied to a failure of the utility infrastructure.
However, an organization or individual should not draw the conclusion that, to avoid disaster, it should stick to paper processes and
documents. Although electricity is not needed to read a paper document, the cost of using paper processes and the even greater threat
of access losses can bring an organization to its knees without a
disaster.
Another issue is that many organizations allow their tape systems
to give them a false sense of security. A common misconception is
that all the backup routines do read-back validity checks. This means
that, if daily backups end without logging any errors, then you can
be sure your data are protected. Sadly, this is often not the case. Many
backups are created and maintained with the utmost optimism, but
when it comes to disaster planning, optimism can be a dangerous
thing.

FileNet Risks and Opportunities

Understand that there is no easy, fix-all solution. Disaster recovery and business continuance strategies can be extremely expensive,
so individuals and teams have to balance the competing objectives of
need and cost to determine a proper solution for their organization.
Usually, the most critical systems demand high availability. In this
case, it is almost always cheaper to plan for both high availability
and disaster recovery simultaneously.

Lost Cost of Paper Retrieval
Some things in business are not challenged as often as they should
be; one of these key areas is paper-based information systems.
Information is vital to the formation of new knowledge, and knowledge is critical for the understanding of patterns. (For more information on pattern recognition and abstraction please refer to Chapter
5 of Introduction to Knowledge Management—KM in Business
by Todd R. Groff and Thomas P. Jones [Butterworth–Heinemann,
2003]) Operating an organization using a paper-based system is
similar to operating a mechanical engine without a lubricant, it
creates friction that drains power and damages the overall system
structure.
Paper-based processes drain the attention of employees, since
they spend too much time and attention attempting to retrieve lost
or misplaced documents. Although every nickel spent on an imaging
system has to demonstrate ROI, the same rules do not apply to
paper-based systems. This is not recommending the blind imaging
of all available paper documents. However, it does speak well for
the practice of treating proposed paper-based systems with the
same level of rigor given to new content management system
proposals.
Key factors in determining the ROI of imaging paper documents
is the age of the document, the amount of times it is retrieved, and
its retention life. Younger documents have a much greater chance of
retrieval than older documents, and documents that have exceeded
their retention life should be shredded, not imaged, for legal reasons.
Another key point is the number of retrievals. The more times a document is retrieved from the system, the more valuable it is to image,
due to the speed and efficiency of image retrieval over pulling a
document from a file cabinet.

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

When weighing the usefulness of documents, involve the individuals that use the information everyday. Another important group is
the data owners that set the retention policy for the documents in
question. Sometimes these data owners come from a formal records
retention group, other times they are a more tactical part of the business process. Seeking input from the legal department is also critical.
In this day of rapidly increasing regulation of corporate financial
policies, professional legal input is invaluable in determining what
information simply must be maintained.
If the end of the retention time is a few years out, imaging the
documents or information can help prevent the unauthorized access
and proliferation of the documents. Paper tends to duplicate itself
through the individuals’ desire to maintain their own repository
of files. This poses a risk to organizations by circumventing the
official retention policy. Imaging systems can suffer the same issues
with repository duplication, if printing is enabled through the
client software and not discouraged actively. Typically, some users
decide that they need to print and file every document with which
they deal.
The risks and costs of this “prophylactic printing” seem minor to
the user, who does not see the negative aggregate effects. Organizations tend to focus their security energy on limiting access to information instead of controlling the duplication of information outside
of the defined system. This often means that ROI estimates based on
floor space savings and reduced printing costs, mysteriously fail to
occur.

Content Management’s Impact on Attention
A discussion about the untracked costs in paper-based systems would
not be complete without contrasting these losses to the gains of an
imaging and document management system. Looking again to attention as the currency of the information age, it makes sense that the
relationships that you build are affected by the drive to protect or
the desire to earn attention.
Vendor relations are affected by how the vendor’s attention is
managed. From the beginning of a relationship with a vendor,
processes for conflict resolution need to be well documented and

FileNet Risks and Opportunities

communicated by both parties. When a conflict arises, sticking
to the policies is critical to prevent the wasting of time, trust, and
attention.
Before beginning an argument with a vendor, try to make sure that
an airtight case is put together. Trust and attention are bound
together: If you waste a vendor’s time with an unspecific gripe, you
waste the company’s attention and reduce the amount of trust in the
relationship. As trust is in a relationship is wasted, it has a negative
impact on the passion for effective performance. If you have ever
been unfortunate enough to work for a micromanager, you have witnessed this effect personally. As the micromanager constantly disregards employees’ input, they begin to think, “Why should I care, I
had no role in the process that led to this decision.”
Content management systems can improve vendor relationships by
providing an easily accessible repository for maintaining things like
statement of work documents, vendor contact lists, contracts, and
service-level agreements (SLA) (see Figure 3.5). Without a content
management system, the information may be stranded in the desk
drawers of project managers, technical workers, and contract negotiators. If improving a system costs the vendor loads of time just
trying to find basic system details, it may simply not bother to invest
its attention.
Another important aspect of attention management with vendors
is seizing the opportunity to raise the level of understanding and generate a dialog within your own organization about attention management. The better a team understands and manages attention, the
sooner that team will spot vendors that have no respect for the team’s
attention or that of its customers. Despite a vendor’s claims or testimonials, if it does not value your attention, doing business with it
represents a significant risk to your project’s ROI.
Five ways to spot vendors that do not value attention:
1. Companies that constantly send spam or junk mail to potential
customers.
2. Companies that miss appointments or insist in always meeting
in person.
3. Organizations that use the Internet only to provide a completely
uninteractive billboard. They typically make available only
marketing information anyway.

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

Lawsuits

Tax audits

Shipment issues

Vendor issues

XYZ Corporation
groups

Customer billing
questions

— Vendor management
— Acquisitions management
— Legal
— Customer service
— Accounting
— Sales

Warranty requests

XYZ Corporation
FileNET Repository
— Statements of work
— Vendor contact lists
— Contracts
— Service level agreements
— Purchase orders
— Accounts payables
— Accounts receivables

Figure 3.5
Content management and attention

4. Organizations that insist on generating week’s worth of contract negotiations for selling their base products.
5. Organizations or companies that want to deal with you strictly
via voice, with no long-term record.
There are some exceptions to this hard-line approach to potential
“attention depleters.” For example, is the organization new or is the
attention-wasting happening only with the sales force? Also, unfor-

FileNet Risks and Opportunities

tunately, in the business world, you often have little choice but to
do your best to work with attention wasters, despite their obsolete
procedures.

Intellectual Assets
Another reason for companies to use content management is the
opportunity to manage their intellectual assets. Intellectual assets
include information like trademarks, copyright, patents, industrial
designs, trade secrets, confidential information, detailed analysis documents, and other knowledge resources that add value not only to
processes but also to the overall organization. The vital corporate
information on which a corporation’s survival depends must be protected against unauthorized destruction, copying, and alteration, and
in some cases, disclosure.
Companies pursue patents for reasons that often extend beyond
directly profiting from a patented innovation through either its commercialization or licensing. Popular motives for patenting intellectual
assets include preventing rivals from patenting related inventions,
using patents to influence merger negotiations, and the prevention of
lawsuits. Managing an enterprise’s intellectual assets is more than just
acquiring the formal intellectual property (IP) rights from the local
governing authority. Patent or trademark rights are worthless to the
company if they are not exploited to meet business objectives.
Intellectual capital may be exploited in a variety of ways, including commercializing patent protected products and services, developing new and creative licensing or franchising partnerships, selling
IP assets to other companies, gaining access to other companies’ technology through cross-licensing, and leveraging IP assets to borrow
money. Determining how organizations might best exploit their IP
assets will have to be done case by case.
Throughout history, organizations have been taken over for their
assets. Businesses often buy out their competitors to gain process
knowledge, experienced craft workers, or physical assets such as
land, buildings, or equipment. A clear policy on enforcing intellectual property rules is crucial, due to the losses incurred by counterfeited goods and the potential high costs of IP litigation. A strong
content management system is essential for locating, storing, and
automating the sharing of intellectual assets. Do not doubt that

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

poor intellectual asset management could pose a huge risk to a
company.

Records Retention
Records retention is often overlooked when building a content management plan. Most companies have records retention strategies, but
sometimes they can be disconnected from the imaging strategy. An
imaging plan can have a serious impact on records retention if not
handled properly.

Defining Document Life Cycles
A records retention policy should exist whether an organization
maintains imaging or paper systems. Documents have a life cycle and,
in most cases, should be destroyed at the end of that life cycle. Maintaining outdated archives can negatively affect an organization in
many ways; formalizing a records retention policy is always a better
solution.
Most records retentions systems assign a unique ID to every box
of paper documents that enters its realm of responsibility. This ID is
a good reference point for tying together the paper and the electronic
image. Tying together the image and the paper, in an organization
that maintains both, is critical to ensure that one or the other does
not exist beyond the document’s life cycle. Figure 3.6 is a flowchart
on how a records retention system and a content management system
could work together. You can see that, regardless of where the box
of documents enters the process, it has the option of being imaged.
The paper then resides in the Record Retention department’s storage
area until it is destroyed.
Often, for legal reasons, the paper must be maintained, but paper
does not flow well through business processes. The best answer is to
image the paper, keep the paper in a low-cost retention center, and
use the images in the workflow. If the images are no longer needed
at the end of their life cycle, query on the box number and delete all
those files in one batch.
This brings up an important issue. How do you destroy images
stored in WORM optical format? The objective of WORM technol-

Start document
entry phase

Where did the
documents enter
from?

Imaging center

Records retention

Imaging center
receives a box of
documents for
capture

Records retention
receives a box of
documents for
archive

Image
documents?

Yes

Enter the box of
documents into
imaging center
system

Index box with ID
received from
record retention's
system

Enter the box of
documents into
record retention
system
Complete imaging
process

Move documents
into records
retention storage

End of document
entry phase

Figure 3.6
Records retention flowchart

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

ogy is to assure that permanent storage will not allow changes to
fixed content. However, companies face significant litigation risks for
not purging old, obsolete information and documents.
One option is the destruction of the WORM platter itself; however,
this requires careful monitoring of every document written on the
platter to ensure that all the documents have reached the end of the
life cycle. This option also requires more upfront planning and
administration. A lack of planning in the implementation phase could
lead to documents not being destroyed on time or drastically increasing media costs.
When considering the option of destroying WORM media, keep
in mind that “document families” within FileNet define where and
how the data are written. This becomes vital when destroying
records. At some point, most WORM optical platters have to be
destroyed to assure that the information on them cannot be recovered. If only a portion of the documents on the platter have reached
the end of their life cycles, then destroying the platter probably is no
option. Figure 3.7 shows the relationship.
In the figure, one document family contains three document
classes. If the three document classes represent invoices, e-mail, and
project documents, you would assume that they need to be retained
for different lengths of time. Perhaps, e-mail would have a very short
retention period and project documents a very long retention period.
Unfortunately, when the retention period ends for the e-mail, they
might have to be maintained long after their set deletion date, because
all the classes in a document family reside on the same optical platter.
You cannot destroy the optical media on which the e-mails is stored
on without also destroying project documents and invoices, if all are
in the same document family.
A better plan is to use a magnetic disk rather than an optical platter
for the tranlogs. FileNet produces a magnetic storage and retrieval

Document Classes

Document Families
Defines storage (If optical platters, it will combine document classes within the same family on the same platters)

Figure 3.7
Document families and classes

FileNet Risks and Opportunities

option as well as other partner options. EMC’s Centera product
works with FileNet Image Manager (formerly Image Services) 4.01
to provide what EMC calls content-addressed storage. This allows
Centera to manage the retention of FileNet documents at the record
level rather than at the level of each individual unit of media, which
makes it an ideal option for avoiding the limitations of optical storage.
FileNet’s MSAR solution was engineered to work as closely to their
OSAR solution as possible and to meet WORM standards. The
strengths of the MSAR solution over the OSAR include reduced
maintenance and improved access speed. The downside is that
FileNet usually sells you a small optical system for backups.
Experience has shown that removal of the robotics (optical units)
from an imaging system can reduce downtime by as much as 15%.
Maintenance to disk systems is often as easy as adding or replacing
drives that are “hot swappable.” This means that many repairs can
be made with no inconvenience or downtime for the end users. The
single-arm architecture of most optical units makes repairs without
downtime nearly impossible.
The EMC Centera product uses multiple servers in a grid computing configuration to assure that the data are not only readily available but can be configured for disaster recovery. Data integrity is
checked after each retrieval, and the system also checks integrity constantly during off-peak hours. This makes the system ideal for highavailability needs in organizations that cannot tolerate significant
downtime.
In addition to the benefits that are associated with magnetic disk
systems, the issue of document life cycles is an important topic for
discussion. Remember, optical platters, depending on their configuration, may contain more than one document class’ data. This, again,
is not a technical issue as much as it is a planning issue.
FileNet document classes are typically used to define security
boundaries surrounding a department, subdivision, or sector. Project
managers request the setup of a new document class surrounding a
new area of responsibility. Often, the document family is overlooked.
A good FileNet administrator, when administrating a FileNet system
containing optical storage units, will raise the archival issues surrounding having multiple document classes tied to a single document
family.
Figure 3.8 shows different ways to segregate document classes with
document families within FileNet. As the diagram shows, the break

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

Document class
journal entries, XYZ

Document class,
invoices, XYZ

Document class,
T&E reports, XYZ

Document family,
Company XYZ

Document class
invoices, XYZ

Document class,
T&E reports, XYZ

Document class
journal entries, XYZ

Document family

Company XYZ

Figure 3.8
Document families and classes, segregation by family

in document families is more often a business call than a technical
issue. An outsourcing provider may choose to set up document families based on the customer’s company. That would allow the outsourcing provider to easily export all of a customer’s data by simply
giving the customer their optical disks.
When reviewing the life cycle of documents to be captured through
a process being defined or automated, it is important to include
records retention. The reason for this is existing knowledge. Most
Records Retention departments have already spent the necessary time
and energy to classify existing organizational document life cycles.
Records Retention departments often have existing relationships with
the corporate legal department to assure strong regulatory compliance and avoid policies that may lead to litigation. As an imaging or
document management project comes online, it should always have
defined the key archival and destruction processes. Do not reinvent
the wheel—collaborate.
Records Retention departments need to track containers entrusted
with key information, including information on the unique identification number, owner of container’s contents, when the container
was archived, length of archive, who to notify with issues, who to
notify when container has reached the end of its archival time,
who has authorization to access the container, and whether or not
there are image copies of the contents of the container. If a Records

FileNet Risks and Opportunities

Retention department lacks a database system to track this information, FileNet’s imaging or content management products can fill this
need.

The Process of Destruction
At the end of its life cycle, the document and all its copies should be
destroyed. This may sound like a relatively straightforward process;
however, whenever an organization attempts to do anything with
unstructured data, it is quickly apparent that the procedures for
manipulating structured data fall apart. Adding to this complexity
are the optical issues touched upon previously.
Most organizations, when approaching the issues surrounding
records retention and unstructured data, quickly realize the need to
lay out their objectives in writing. Organizing the objectives helps
speed along dialog and reduces the chance of wasting the attention
of the individuals involved. Normally, what comes from these dialogs
is a realization of the competing objectives within the organization
surrounding unstructured data. The following is an example of some
competing issues:
Need to improve efficiency by imaging departmental paper.
Documents must be destroyed within one year of their
creation.
Need to keep the original paper document for audit purposes.
Need to store all images using WORM technology.
Need to limit access to these documents.
Need to access these documents globally.
This short list is common among imaging and document management projects and similar regardless of the organizational function.
Figure 3.9 presents a sample workflow for destroying paper and
electronic documents.
The figure begins with the decision to verify with the customer that
all documents reaching the end of their archive life actually should
be destroyed. The sample workflow assumes that a system is used to
track archived documents. Typically, when the end of the archive is
flagged, documents are not automatically destroyed without final

Start document
retention
destruction phase

Has customer
approved
destruction?

Yes
Imaging center

Have the
documents been
imaged?

Yes

Are the
documents
stored on
optical?

Yes

Are all docs on
platter scheduled
for destruction?

Delete images and
index data

Determine when all
documents on
platter will reach end
of life

Records retention

Meet with customer
to determine priority
for destroying
platter

Delete index data

Destroy documents

End of document
entry phase

Figure 3.9
Records destruction flowchart

Yes

Destroy platter

FileNet Risks and Opportunities

customer approval. This is important because document life cycles
sometimes change. New regulations or ongoing court proceedings
may require keeping large amounts of documents beyond their initially defined retention period.
Next, a decision must be made and documented to determine if
imaging was used on these documents. The imaging decision should
be documented in the records retention system, as a field tied to the
document container record to make sure that the information is
readily available. If the documents have not been imaged, then only
the paper records need to be destroyed.
If the documents were imaged, the process gets more complicated.
Information must be included that describes how the images were
stored (on optical or magnetic media). If the images are stored on
optical platters, it is important to remember that records cannot be
individually erased from an optical WORM platter. So, before
destroying the optical platter, all the documents must be ready for
deletion, including any corresponding tranlog platters. While waiting
for other documents to reach the end of their life cycles, the index
record within FileNet can be altered to prevent simple access to the
document.
If the images are not stored on optical media, then the images,
along with the index record, can be destroyed with much less difficulty. The biggest concern is backup tapes. An organization’s retention plan benefits from the input of all available stakeholders and the
considerations of imaging and paper documents in the retention plan.
Retention audits should also be conducted to test the procedures in
action.

Success Story
An international building and construction materials supplier heavily
involved supporting Australia’s growth must streamline its accounts
payable (A/P) and accounts receivable (A/R) processes. The company
generates 1000 A/P documents, 4000 A/R invoices, and 500 customer
remittances each day.
To maintain its growth, the company needs to streamline its paperbased processes. The materials supplier hires FileNet to develop a
solution, and together they implement an ECM solution utilizing
image services and capture professional. The solution utilizes optical

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

disks and server cache for storage and a thin client for search,
retrieval, faxing, and e-mail.
This solution enables the organization to accomplish the
following:
Recognize a reoccurring savings of $1 million per year by
reducing the A/R processing time.
Improve search and retrieval from invoice archives.
Improve customer satisfaction and reduce customer frustration.
Improve monthly cash flow.

Chapter 4

FileNet
Implementation
The trouble with learning from experience is that the test comes
first and the lesson comes afterwards!
—Anonymous

Key Objectives
Learn to develop well-documented return-on-investment goals
and strategies long before a technology is settled on.
Learn what levels of resources are required to support administration, processing, storage, and collaboration within a
FileNet system.
Understand why teams become increasingly ineffective in a
corporate “star culture,” which overemphasizes the input of
articulate specialists.
Consider the options for data replication within a FileNet
implementation and choose the one that best meets the project
requirements.
Learn the differences between precommittal, postcommittal,
and simultaneous indexing.
Know the pros and cons of the various storage media offered
for FileNet systems.

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

Understand what project planning questions you must answer
before choosing a media storage format.
Learn what “gotchas” to watch for when setting up FileNet
hardware.
Increase your knowledge of the basic architecture of any
FileNet system.
Know the critical first steps involved in any FileNet
implementation.

Content Management versus Process Voodoo
Too often, companies look to content management or knowledge
management as a solution for all for their organizational problems.
Voodoo usually refers to the delusive assumption that using a charm,
fetish, or spell can achieve the normally unachievable. Within large
organizations it is not unusual to see similar phony solutions offered
to solve fundamental process problems. They are often recognizable
by the speed at which they arrive. It is charmingly tempting to apply
the “solution of the week” quickly, while shutting down any valuable stakeholder discussions of the issues involved. Although this
helps avoid some painfully tense meetings, it typically leads to only
symptomatic solutions, best. This “process voodoo” may have
worked in the late 1990s to increase an organization’s stock price,
but today it is just a lot of smoke and mirrors.
Today’s organizations need to focus on what has always made
companies great, not merely what increased their stock during the
boom. People are the key asset of any organization, not just the top
12 employees but all of the organization’s employees down to the
lowest level. Valuing people as assets has been the proven ingredient
for success in most organizational success stories.
Content management and knowledge management improve an
organization’s ability to capture and distribute individual ideas and
feedback. This leads to more dialog, better strategies, and a more satisfied workforce. Building a repository can also demonstrate an individual’s knowledge of subjects and jobs not currently in his or her
job description. A worker’s title rarely expresses the diversity of skills
and experience available.
Implementing systems to store this information and executing
events to spur and capture dialog and documents is not enough.

FileNet Implementation

Attention must be valued and rewarded. Individuals must be valued
by their organization and see the organization valuing their input for
the dialog to be both valuable and sustainable. Knowledge management should not be merely a buzzword to move the stock price
forward; that is not a sustainable business plan.
A very good place to start building small content or knowledge
repositories is when executing a project. A knowledge base is not the
actual storage of knowledge but the storage of information that
demonstrates an individual or group’s knowledge about the project
or process around which the knowledge base was designed. FileNet
or any other configurable content manager can be used for these
knowledge bases, but the key is to plan carefully and use what is
readily available. Do not focus your initial energies on shopping for
technologies but on capturing the information that offers the greatest potential to improve performance.
The knowledge base is also an excellent tool to be passed from a
project team to an administrative team. Even the simple act of showing
team members that there is a common, shared document repository
can build trust. In many companies, project plans are created in secrecy
to serve goals that the project manager does not even want to admit
to the team members. It should come with little surprise that the teams
usually end up paralyzed by constant political battles.
Most processes continue to evolve with time, but if the process
knowledge that leads to evolution is tied to one team, like the administrative team, then the group responsible for project delivery is
excluded and continues using outdated facts, knowledge, and
processes. Figure 4.1 shows how knowledge must be passed along to
different groups as a business process moves through its lifecycle. The
way an organization handles projects, knowledge, and learning is a
key indicator of that organization’s sustainability. Dialog around
process change and the documenting of processes in a commonly
used knowledge base helps create the learning basis for innovation
within an organization.

Information Repositories
Building information repositories is a long-term commitment of significant budget dollars that should be well thought out before being
undertaken. Well-documented ROI goals and strategies should be

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

Implementation team
Customer
Knowledge base

Contracts team

Administration team
Customer
Knowledge base

Auditors

Upgrade team
Customer
Knowledge base

Contracts team

Figure 4.1
Reusable knowledge

developed and discussed long before a technology is settled on. If the
repository is being developed for knowledge management, even more
thought and dialog should be expended, due to the evolutionary level
that knowledge management is at currently. The world has entered
an information age; however, the tools currently available to manage
information and create knowledge exchange are very primitive. Sadly,
the most commonly used document management system is still the
paper clip.
FileNet’s product lines can assist an organization in the following
areas of enterprise content management: process management,
imaging management, workflow tools, Web content and document
management, and knowledge management. Keep in mind that the
necessary resources vary by implementation, need, and resource type.
Table 4.1 outlines the resource requirements by component.

FileNet Implementation

Table 4.1
Enterprise Content Management Resource Requirements

Imaging management
Web content and
document management
Workflow tools
Process management
Knowledge management

Administration

Processors

Storage

Collaboration

Low
Medium

Low
Low

High
Low

Low
High

Low

High
Low
High

Low
Low
Low

High
High
High

Medium

Some of the most successful knowledge management initiatives
have been focused on people development instead of system development. Knowledge resides in people not systems, but people, like
systems, must be developed to achieve their full potential. Through
the content management, search, collaboration, and learning tools
FileNet provides, new internal channels are created to spur knowledge exchange and dialog. This leads workers to the understanding
that their documents are valued and the time they invest in creating
them is not wasted.
Many companies use simple directory tools to manage contact
information on their employees, while offering the ability to search
the directory for specific expertise. Locating their own experts when
they need them is a common challenge in large organizations. This
is why millions are spent every year on people development initiatives like communities of practice, training classes, and mentoring
programs.
People development initiatives can also have drawbacks, such as
creating a “star culture.” Many large organizations have historically
relied on star talent to succeed. The star culture is typically made
up of educated, articulate specialists, who are encouraged to pursue
business initiatives unconstrained by the traditional checks and
balances of organizational business units. The “stars” often can get
quick results through the circumventing of existing bureaucracies;
however, bureaucracies exist for a reason: They represent checks
and balances for maintaining order and audits within an organization. Circumventing bureaucracies create many issues that require
time-consuming cleanup and are not a sustainable practice, but
the key issue with the star culture is the possible erosion of key

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

organizational processes that could put that organization in violation
of regulatory statutes such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

FileNet Replication Options
Organizations today face the issues of an increasingly global
economy and workforce. The issues surrounding a global economy
and workforce can paralyze an organization’s planning committees.
This section addresses using FileNet’s imaging products in a globally
distributed environment. Two important terms to understand are
precommittal indexing and postcommittal indexing. Both deal with
the point at which the indexing is completed on an image (object).
If the indexing is completed prior to the image (object) being committed to media (while still being stored in Batch Entry Services
cache), then it is considered precommittal indexing. If the indexing
is completed after the image (object) has been committed (moved
from Batch Entry Services cache to the Page cache and burned to the
OSAR or written to the MSAR) then it is considered postcommittal
indexing.
Precommittal indexing:
Is indexed using FileNet’s Capture product.
Works in the Batch Entry Services (BES) cache.
Requires the Batch Entry Services cache to be accessible by both
scanner and indexer.
Postcommittal indexing:
Is indexed as a reindex, using FileNet’s Panagon client
application.
Works in the Page cache.
Requires the Batch Entry Services cache to be accessible by
scanner and Page cache to be accessible by indexer.

Definitions
BES cache. This cache is used during the capture phase of imaging
by the scanners and indexers (precommittal indexing). Once a
batch is completed, it is “committed” to the OSAR. This means
it is written to optical storage media and copied to Page cache.

FileNet Implementation

Page cache. This cache facilitates quick retrieval by maintaining
recently created or accessed items to prevent the need to repeatedly retrieve the same image from optical storage. Items are kept
according to FIFO (first in/first out) rules. Reindexing happens
in Page cache, but the new index information is maintained only
in the Oracle database. Only the original index properties are
burned to the OSAR’s optical platters.
Figure 4.2 shows the replication points in a FileNet system using
postcommittal indexing.
This figure demonstrates a postcommittal indexing scenario in
an offshore environment. The process is numbered and described
by step:
1. Documents are normally prepared for scanning and the preparation stage typically includes staple removal, paper preparation, and some sorting into batches. Scanning is completed
using FileNet’s Capture application, and the batches are committed to the FileNet Root Server (Image Manager, formerly

ABC Corporation
main corporate site
North America

EDI

ABC Corporation
offshore corporate site

Custom workflow
Commits documents to
FileNet
Route documents to
Proper
disk queues

FileNet
queues

UNIX server
FileNet
root server
imaging manager

Custom prefetch
using Application
server in
India as Page
cache

Queue
processing

6. Queue Interaction

5. Index file
NT server
FileNet applications server
Page cache

3. Prefetch - TIFFs

Scan and Commit
Document preparation
Invoice scanning
assembly. Committed
to FileNet Root Server.

Invoice Indexing
FileNet
Index application

Figure 4.2
Postcommittal indexing

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

Image Services). Once committed, a copy of the document is
written to the Page cache and a copy is written to primary
storage. This may be either an OSAR or MSAR unit.
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) documents are received
through FileNet’s fax services and loaded into a predefined template. They can have predefined indexing or be indexed later
with the other postcommittal indexing jobs.
Documents are prefetched (copied) to the application server at
the offshore location and stored in a secondary Page cache. The
application server has several FileNet names, including Application Server, Remote Entry Server, Batch Entry Services, and
Distributed Image Services. Regardless of the name, it is a
scaled-down version of the Image Manager (formerly Image
Services). The application server does not contain a copy of the
FileNet Root Server’s security database and cannot authenticate
users.
In this step, the documents are indexed at an offshore location.
The actual process, called reindexing, uses the standard FileNet
client to perform this function. Note that only the Oracle database is changed or added to during this process. The original
index, stored within the primary storage media (OSAR or
MSAR), remains the same. For this reason, tape backups of the
Oracle databases should be taken a minimum of every day.
Once the reindex has been completed, the remote Page cache
automatically updates the Oracle database stored on the
FileNet Root Server (Image Manager server formerly Image Services server).
After indexing is completed, workflow can be initiated to populate FileNet’s distributor queues and interconnect with any
exiting ERP (enterprise resource planning) system.

Figure 4.3 looks into precommittal indexing.
This figure demonstrates a precommittal indexing scenario in
an offshore environment. The process is numbered and described
by step:
1. Documents are normally prepared for scanning, and the preparation stage typically includes staple removal, paper preparation, and the like. Scanning is completed using FileNet’s

FileNet Implementation

ABC Corporation
offshore corporate site

ABC Corporation
main Corporate site
North America

Custom workflow
Commits documents to
FileNet
Route documents
to proper
disk queues

5. Queue interaction

FileNet
Queues

UNIX server
FileNet
Root Server
Imaging Manager
BES Cache
and
Page cache

Queue
processing
Retrieve from Page
cache

NT Server

3. Replication

FileNet Applications server
BES Cache
and
Page cache

EDI

2.
4.
1.
Invoice indexing
FileNet
Index application
BES cache

Scan
Document preparation
Invoice scanning
into BES cache
FileNet Root Server

Figure 4.3
Precommittal indexing

Capture application, and the batch remains in the FileNet Root
Server’s BES cache awaiting indexing.
2. EDI documents are received through FileNet’s fax services and
loaded into a predefined template. They can have predefined
indexing and be automatically committed or manually indexed
in a precommittal indexing scenario.
3. Documents are replicated using FileNet’s replication to the
application server at the offshore location and stored in an
external BES cache. The application server has several FileNet
names, including Application Server, Remote Entry Server,
Batch Entry Services, and Distributed Image Services. Regardless of the name, it is a scaled-down version of the Image
Manager (formerly Image Services). The application server contains no copy of the FileNet Root Server’s security database and
cannot authenticate users.
4. This section represents the indexing of the documents at a
remote offshore location. The indexing process uses FileNet’s

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

Capture client to perform this function. During the indexing
stage, the BES cache is updated on the remote application server
and later replicated back to the FileNet Root Server’s BES
cache. When the indexing process is complete, the indexer
“commits the document.” The committal process moves the
image and index out of the BES cache to the Page cache and
writes (commits) the document and index to primary and secondary storage (OSAR for optical, MSAR or Centera solution
for magnetic).
5. After indexing and commitment is completed, the workflow can
be initiated to populate FileNet’s distributor queues and interconnect with any existing ERP system.

Media Options
In the previous sections, discussion touched on media options
without supplying a complete picture. There are currently several
options for storage media and more to be released before this book
sees print. For this reason, the options are not discussed in depth.
However, Figure 4.4 should be helpful in understanding the categories of options an organization has to choose from.
FileNet’s Image Manager product requires the separate purchase
of media drivers based on the organizations retention strategy. If an
organization’s direction is optical storage, then an OSAR media
driver would be purchased, based on the optical media options
chosen. The media options are based on third-party offerings and not
controlled by FileNet. FileNet participates in the high-end optical
market, but its imaging media options are not required for a successful implementation. These options work equally well with
Hewlett Packard products.
The current media driver options are OSAR, MSAR, and a Professional Services ISCC (Image Services Connector for Centera)
media driver for EMC’s Centera. This last driver is currently being
packaged for release in FileNet’s Image Manager 4.1 version.
Moving from left to right, the Imaging Management application
in the figure is provided by FileNet. FileNet provides the media
drivers today, but this could change in the not-so-distant future.
Lastly, the media options are mainly provided by third-party vendors,
however, FileNet does offer OSARs.

FileNet Implementation

Imaging Management
application

Media drivers

Media options

FileNet/Plasmon optical units

OSAR drivers

FileNet
Image Manager
(Image Services)

HP optical units

MSAR drivers

IBM storage solutions

ISCC drivers
EMC Centera

EMC storage solutions

EMC Centera storage solution

Figure 4.4
Media options

Table 4.2 is a high-level look at the media choice options offered
for FileNet’s Image Manager product line. Keep in mind that this is
only a glimpse of the solutions and configurations possible, given the
large number of FileNet partners that have individually customized
FileNet systems.

Inquiry and Investigation
Before choosing an imaging media, it is advisable to ask FileNet to
provide contacts for customers in related fields using FileNet with
various media types. Site visits are recommended but a teleconference
could at least cover the big questions. Relevant questions include:
What is the configuration of your organization’s FileNet system?
What product and version of FileNet’s product lines are being
used?

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

Table 4.2
MSAR, EMC Centera, and OSAR Comparison
MSAR

ISCC (EMC Centera)

OSAR

PROs
Storage media can be
shared with other
applications
Much quicker retrieval
than optical
platform

PROs
Storage media can be
shared with other
applications
Self-managing and
easier to maintain,
for a lower cost of
ownership
WORM-like retention
for regulatory
compliance (can be
deleted only after
specified retention
period)
Much quicker retrieval
than optical platform
Scalable, with a wider
selection of equipment
than optical platform
Requires no media
migration when
expanding storage
Has built-in data
redundancy
CONs
Not addressed as a file
system, requires
interface via EMC
application program
interfaces
May still require extra
Centera equipment,
tape, or optical disk
for disaster recovery

PROs
Proven history of
regulatory compliance

Scalable, with a wider
selection of equipment
than optical platform

Seamless integration into
Image Manager
Can generate tranlogs
remotely for disaster
planning and recovery
WORM compliant if
combined with an
OSAR solution

CONs
Not WORM
compliant by itself

May still require extra
disk equipment for
cross-committal, tape,
or optical disk for
disaster recovery

Tranlog capabilities for
burning and storing offsite copies is built-in
Metadata capture at
committal stored on
the platter

Removable media
Seamless integration into
Image Manager

CONs
High cost of initial
purchase, media, and
maintenance

Slower retrieval than
magnetic platform

Robotic arm (only one,
no backup) will fail
Media migrations required
every time an upgrade
changes the hardware

FileNet Implementation

Can a data capture process overview be provided?
What media and media drivers are being used with the FileNet
system?
Is there a disaster backup plan or a business continuation plan?
How does the media fit the disaster backup or business continuation plan?
Did the organization research the legal ramifications of using
this specific media from the local, state, and federal levels?
Is this system accessed from multiple states or countries? If so,
did this affect or cause any legal issues?
Has the organization been through any hardware upgrades
since the initiation of the FileNet system?
Did the media type chosen for the FileNet system require Professional Services migration?
What is the expected retrieval time for a three-to-five page
image within the organization? Is this a problem within the
organization?
What would you change about the FileNet implementation?
These sample questions could be e-mailed ahead of time to the existing FileNet customer. Although this may seem like a lot of work for
the existing user, it provides the opportunity to learn from an organization planning a FileNet installation. The responding company can
learn what new products FileNet is promoting, along with the differences in processes.

Specialty Equipment Considerations
When planning an imaging implementation or any implementation
that requires an optical storage unit, some items should be given extra
attention. Implementations of optical units are not as simple and
straightforward as the setup of a server or network device. A project
manager should order the OSAR two or three months ahead of the
rest of the project equipment because of the complexity of the unit
and its installation.
The large optical storage and retrieval unit market is controlled
mainly by Plasmon, which builds units sold by FileNet. The current
models range in capacity from around 3 terabytes to 3.6 terabytes.
The high-end cost for an OSAR unit is around $300,000 (which does

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

not include the media cost). Purchasing 12≤ storage media for an
optical unit has an approximate cost of $65,000, which works out
to about $0.10 per megabyte. Optical media costs twice that of magnetic media, so any implementation based on optical storage needs
to be handled properly to keep the implementation costs under
control.
Service contracts on a typical FileNet/Plasmon OSAR are approximately $50,000 per year on a high-end six-drive unit.
The typical steps for implementing an OSAR unit include:
Ordering the OSAR several months in advance of the other
equipment.
Completing a service agreement with the maintenance service
provider (typically the same group contracted to set up and configure the OSAR on delivery).
Making any special arrangements for shipping and receiving
this very large and heavy unit.
Assembling the OSAR unit (which comes in pieces, to allow it
to fit into most data centers, and must be assembled).
Leveling the OSAR (normally, after assembly, the OSAR is
leveled three or four times).
Final testing and adjustments of sensors, cables, and drives.
Loading production optical storage platters.
The main components of an optical storage and retrieval unit are:
106–122 30-GB optical platters storing data.
1 robotic arm to move platters from slots to drives.
1–6 optical drives for reading and writing data.
At a very high level the OSAR unit appears to be fairly simple.
What the list does not include is the bushings, cables, rods, sensors,
and other parts that can break or vibrate loose on an OSAR unit. A
highly trained engineer must repair these. Optical units require shutdowns every six months for lubrication and preventive maintenance.
Depending on the number of arm movements required in a day, preventive maintenance might be required more often. Luckily, a system
with a sufficiently large Page cache can allow shutdown of the OSAR,
with no interruption in service to the end users.
One way to extend the life of an OSAR unit is to build the FileNet
Image Manager server with a lot of available Page cache. Page cache

FileNet Implementation

is where recently accessed or captured data are stored until the Page
cache becomes full and forces it out. The Page cache uses the FIFO
(first in/first out) method for managing its contents.
When a document is scanned, it is stored in the Batch Entry Services cache until it is indexed and committed. When a document is
committed, it is copied to Page cache and written to the primary
storage, which could be magnetic or optical. When sufficient read or
write requests come through Page cache, the scanned document are
pushed out of the Page cache by more recent read and write requests.
When a request comes to the FileNet Image Manager server for the
document, it is read into Page cache and sent to the requesting party
or application. Documents always pass through Page cache as they
are written to or read from the primary storage.
When using an OSAR unit for primary storage on an accounts
payable imaging system, we recommend that the Page cache be large
enough to hold at least six to nine months worth of images. This
allows the invoice approvers to pull their images directly from the
page cache—for speed. This also greatly reduces the wear and tear
on the optical unit. In calculating six to nine months worth of Page
cache, multiply the total number of invoices received in a month
times the average number of pages per invoice times 50 KB.
This gives you an estimate of the total storage requirements in
KB per month. Then, simple multiply the total KB per month by the
total number of months that you want to be held in Page cache. This
will give you the total amount of Page cache space that must be
allocated.
If the project implementation plan includes multiple application
servers, each with its own Page cache, it would make sense to use a
custom prefetch utility to prefetch only the documents that each
remote application server needs (see Figure 4.5). This avoids wasting
Page cache on the individual application servers while providing the
best retrieval times at the remote sites.

Project Planning
Estimating Project Timelines
When estimating a project’s costs and building a timeline for a
FileNet product implementation, it is very important to allow time
for FileNet contract negotiations and scheduling a FileNet resource

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

ABC Corporation
main corporate site
North America
Custom prefetch application
Prefetches committed
documents from the FileNet
Root Server to the appropriate
Application servers in distributed
locations. This increases
access speed for remote users.

NT server
FileNet application server
Page cache

France
Replication

UNIX Server
FileNet
Root Server
Imaging Manager

European users
Invoice approval

Replication

NT server
FileNet application server
Page cache

North American
users

Canada
Invoice approval

Figure 4.5
Prefetching to remote application servers

to complete the system installation (typically a four-week lead
time).
Keep in mind that most FileNet products are just toolsets, not complete off-the-shelf solutions. Before building a document or imaging
solution, first have a documented, proven, manual process that can
be improved on and replaced by automated workflow tools. This
gives you the metrics to track project ROI and provide a greater
opportunity for success.

Project Plans
A project plan defines the scope of a work, with specific beginning
and ending points. However, the process the project puts in place
most likely continues long after the project has ended. Because of the
differences between projects and processes, projects often creep in
scope and processes often fail to continue to evolve.

FileNet Implementation

In preparing for any implementation, some important issues must
be addressed at the beginning of the project. Feel free to use the
project-planning example that follows, as a starting point for your
next project plan.

Phase 1. Project Preparation
During this step, the reason for the project as well as the initial
funding and sponsorship are defined. Next, a project charter is
created that includes the definition of the project team, project roles,
organization, and a high level project plan.
The major steps of Phase 1 are:

Defining the project goals and objectives.
Establishing project sponsorship and initial assessment funding.
Clarifying the scope of the project.
Defining the overall project schedule and implementation
sequence.
Establishing the project organization, member roles, and
subcommittees.
Proposal of an implementation strategy.
Initial cost assessments are created for approval.
Addressing these issues early in the project planning helps ensure the
project proceeds efficiently and a solid foundation for a successful
implementation is established.

Phase 2. Project Design
During this phase, a team is organized to develop a detailed plan
from the initial assessment. A key task at this stage is to capture the
assumptions of the team members as they are discovered and created.
Assumptions should be explicitly listed in the documentation, and
this documentation should be distributed widely. As each assumption
is found to be either true or false, the project documentation should
be updated accordingly. We call this assumption management.
The major steps of Phase 2 are:
Assigning resources.
Kicking off the project helps create awareness of the project
within the organization. High-level project goals and visions for

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

the future are shared with key people from various parts of the
organization.
Defining project procedures.
Documenting the project management and implementation
standards, and defining the system landscape.
Laying out the project-training plan, including a strategy
for end-user training, and beginning the development of
documentation.
Defining the implementation steps.
Developing plans for hardware procurement to meet the technical requirements of the system.
Developing a business impact map, describing how the current
business processes will be affected; this is done by the organizational change management group. Preparing organizational
risk assessment documents to identify the risks that must be
addressed to assure successful implementation.
Building a training and development environment, often
referred to as the sandbox, which the functional team can use
for testing. This is done by infrastructure team members.
Documenting and developing the master template for installation packaging using client settings and packaging.
Setting up indexing workshops to determine which items of
data must be tracked in the new system. Specify what is important today and determine if there is any need for additional
fields or key fields.

Phase 3. Project Building
During this phase, the project plans are put into action. Systems are
built, code is written, training materials are deployed, and communications are made in the project building phase.
A key requirement of this phase is the continuation of assumption
management. During this phase, assumptions should be tested and
proven while continuing to capture new assumptions as they are
made and adding them to the assumption management process.
The major steps of Phase 3 are:
Initial planning for production support (competency center/
help desk).

FileNet Implementation

Conducting team training and continuing development of enduser training documentation and training material.
Performing baseline configuration, testing, and confirmation
tasks.
Creating a system management plan, including testing procedures, service-level commitments, setup of quality assurance
and production systems, and assignment of system administration functions.
Developing conversion programs to bring forward data from
the legacy systems.
Developing interface programs to connect to any external
systems defined in the scope document.
Creating metrics tracking reports.
Establishing archiving schedules and procedures.

Phase 4. Testing, Training, and Implementation
The purpose of this phase is to complete the final implementation
steps, including testing, end-user training, system management, and
cutover activities prior to execution. The activity in this phase is the
actual implementation. This phase also resolves all crucial open
issues. On successful completion of this phase, the system is considered to be in production.
The major steps of Phase 4 are:
Training and communication to help desk personnel assigned
to support the new system.
Performing system tests, including tests of system failure,
system backup, system restoration, disaster recovery, production system printing, system volume, and system stress.
Final checking, like a dress rehearsal for your processes.
Conducting project planning activities, including refinement of
the cutover plan, conversion checklist, refinement of the production support plan, final preparations on the help desk for
full activation, and finally the cutover to production.
After the final check is passed, the system is considered to be in production mode.

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

Overall Project Estimates and Total Cost of
Ownership (TCO)
When considering a FileNet implementation, it is important to
remember that the workflow piece of FileNet’s product line is just a
tool. It will not fix broken processes, and it will not create new
processes on its own. People must design the new processes and diagnose the broken ones.
FileNet is a good tool to use for the automation of working
processes, but like many tools, it has limitations. One limitation is the
lack of published material on the FileNet toolset. More than likely, if
an organization is using FileNet’s workflow for the first time, it would
be wise to consider bringing in expert help for the initial design
and setup. This appears costly the first time, but building knowledge
and understanding of the workflow product in the organization will
take time. Time, typically, is something projects lack most.

Projecting Support Cost Needs
One feature of FileNet that often seems overlooked is the relative low
cost of administrative support. For instance, a large oil company with
a worldwide presence manages a complex FileNet solution that is
composed of three production UNIX servers. The system maintains
more than 21/2 terabytes of data, using 12 NT servers to manage distributed capture, printing, faxing, and Web access for nearly 10,000
users. They do all of this with only five FTEs providing support for
the system.

Measurement and ROI
Measurement and ROI need to be based largely on the attention individuals within an organization give to the document or object being
looked at for managing. Attention is the currency, so it should also
be the unit of measure on which an organization’s ROI is based.
FileNet systems sometimes track every retrieval from a system, but
most focus on knowing only what document types are retrieved regularly versus those archived only for regulatory compliance. Look for
more-detailed ROI advice later in this book.

FileNet Implementation

Success Story
A worldwide provider of transportation services for B2B shippers of
heavyweight cargo began to face tougher U.S. Customs laws. The
company needed a replacement for its unwieldy image processing
system. It required a more sophisticated Web-based system that could
help customers process, manage, and track the enormous amount of
customs paperwork required for every international shipment.
Using FileNet’s ECM solution, the organization was able to couple
a user-friendly interface with its existing system in less than six
months. With the ability to automate the company’s customs compliance workflow, the new combined system allowed documents that
were created as part of the import process to be scanned or entered
into the system at the point of origin and associated with existing
customer data. The new system also enabled customers to use the
Internet to view actual images of their customs documents, forecast
import-related expenses, and create customs status reports.
The new system simplified compliance with U.S. Customs laws
while giving customers Internet access to all relevant customs information, forms, and documentation. It also increased the speed with
which customs clearances were processed for incoming goods.

Chapter 5

FileNet
Integration
All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember
that the parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you.
Therefore, if you can’t get them together again, there must be a
reason. By all means, do not use a hammer.
—IBM maintenance manual, 1925

Key Objectives
Learn the advantages and disadvantages of implementing
FileNet as a bolt-on application for larger systems.
Understand the basics of FileNet systems integration and what
types of integration are available.
Know how to use a Web-browser interface to integrate a
FileNet system with almost any other application.
Learn how to configure a Web farm to improve the availability of FileNet.
See how an imaging system like FileNet allows a company to
improve the internal standardization of processes.
Gain a general knowledge of workflow tools, analysis, and
documentation.

FileNet Integration

Understand how metadata works as a context-based container
and what opportunities and limitations this creates.
Learn to recognize and avoid the common issues involved with
capturing metadata effectively.
Be aware of the litigation worries many have with capturing
metadata.

Integrating Systems, Applications,
and Processes
When looking at an integration project, a first determination to
make is: What are the motives and objectives of this integration? At
times, the stated motives and objectives are completely different; this
causes many integration projects to be dysfunctional and often
unsuccessful.
Effective systems integration is absolutely essential for maximum
business efficiency and profitability. The information about your
clients, products, inventory levels, sales, contacts, cash flow, accounts
receivable, payables, employees, and your clients should be fully integrated. Once an organization has fully integrated its data, it can
manage the data efficiently and leverage the data for increased
profitability.
When trying to integrate an electronic document management
system into an existing organization with decades of dependence
on paper, the issue quickly becomes a trust issue. Can the computerized, paperless system be trusted to deliver the needed information accurately? Will all the paper documents be properly scanned
and indexed? Should all relevant documents be printed, just to be
safe?
If the leaders of an organization value their employees and are
not just trying to downsize, they will quickly realize that these
motives are important to their employees. A FileNet implementation has a greater chance for success if the employees currently
responsible for the paper files are involved in the reengineering of the
process. If the motive of the project is of job function growth and
job routine diminishment, then employees should quickly be made
to see their place in the organization is secure and growing in
importance.

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

Integrating FileNet with Existing Systems
Often, an imaging system is seen as simply a bolt-on technology to
increase the value of an existing system. Although this may work, it
comes with its own set of issues. A FileNet system can “bolt on”
extra functionality, but you could be limiting a very robust system
built around disaster recovery and stability to handle a function
already built into a lot of applications.
A second issue is the classic two-database problem. Adding a complete stand-alone system, which includes an index database, to an
existing application that already has index records risks disagreement
between the systems. An example is shown in Figure 5.1.
This scenario may offer advantages, such as load balancing for
queries and fault tolerance. The price of these advantages is additional complexity. Handling a crashed database probably will require

Materials inventory database

Records in an
Oracle database

Qu
e

tri

FileNet index database

Index records that
contain key Index
fields for query

FileNet image storage

TIFF image file
containing imaged
material inventory
documentation

Figure 5.1
Dual database systems

TIFF image file
containing imaged
material inventory
documentation

FileNet Integration

a detection mechanism. Consistency is also an important aspect. All
database instances must contain the same information, and regardless of which instance is queried, the result should be the same. This
may require another component to ensure replication consistency.
Today, individuals and organizations build systems from a variety
of diverse components. As the complexity of the technologies increases, more customers demand integrated solutions to their
information issues. The increasingly large amount of hardware,
software, and networking expertise companies are being forced to
purchase has become unsustainable for many businesses.
This has led more and more IT organizations into becoming proponents of service-oriented architectures. They believe that the
emerging technology of Web services will enable computer systems
to discover a service on a network and connect to that service automatically without special programming. Some are even predicting
that the high-paying systems integrators jobs of today may be completely automated in less than a decade.

Application Integration
Application integration is typically done in one of the following ways:
1. Disintermediation. A custom database application can be designed to accomplish all the tasks of the various software applications involved in the business process.
2. Portal. A centralized interface can be created to communicate,
either directly or via open database connectivity (ODBC) interface, with each of the applications to manage the transfer of
information.
3. Data warehouse. A centralized database can gather information from each of the programs to aggregate information and
act as a reporting tool for the system as a whole.
FileNet’s desktop client application currently offers integration with
the following applications:
Microsoft Office, including
Word 97 and Word 2000
Excel 97 and Excel 2000

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

Power Point 97 and PowerPoint 2000
Outlook 97, Outlook 98, and Outlook 2000
Lotus Notes 4.6.2a and above
Support for application integration allows access to special FileNet
menu options that streamline document management functions
within an interface on which users are already trained in. Some of
the features supported by the integration are creating compound documents from within Office applications, viewing and modifying document and version properties, inserting document properties directly
into Microsoft Word or Excel documents, and inserting documents
and shortcuts in Outlook.

Web Integration
As an alternative to the standard Panagon IDM Desktop client,
FileNet offers a feature-rich Web client. The FileNet Web interface
consists of a number of Component Object Model (COM) components stitched together with Active Server Pages code. It is not a
thin client application, in the strictest sense of the term, as the viewing
of TIFFs requires a plug-in software component for the browser.
The FileNet Web viewer application integrates with the browser to
allow it to display documents in over 200 different document
formats.
The Web interface supports document retrieval, as well as other
document management (DM) features, like check-in, check-out,
version control, annotation creation, and even the ability to create
new documents and save them into the repository. Unfortunately, the
Web client lacks some of the search features available in the thick
client version, is not as easily integrated with desktop applications,
and requires the user to perform more steps to add documents to the
repository. It is important to note that, since it allows specific documents to be referenced via hyperlinks, the Web interface can facilitate integration with almost any software.
As an alternative to FileNet’s Web interface, companies can build
their own custom Web interface on IBM’s WebSphere platform using
a “resource adapter” that FileNet has created, called ISRA. It is a
system-level software driver, compliant with the J2EE Connector
Architecture v1.0. The ISRA can be used by a JAVA application

FileNet Integration

component or client to connect to FileNet Image Services via a
browser interface.
The server side of the FileNet Web integration is FileNet Web
Services, which can be operated on a Microsoft 2000 platform. The
Web server has all of the typical functionality of a Web server and
can be coupled with an organization’s ERP implementation to
provide Web-based access to ERP and image information. Figure 5.2
is an overview of an ERP environment’s integration with a single
FileNet Web server.
In the figure, starting in the upper left corner, are two FileNet
Capture clients, a scanner and an indexer, both directly linking to the
UNIX server via a client server connection. The FileNet UNIX server
stores the images of captured invoice documents for the approval
process. Accounts payables invoice approvers access the SAP UNIX
server via a client server connection and work the invoices in
their SAP inbox. If they need to view an invoice, SAP provides a
URL with the appropriate FileNet document ID to the invoice
approver’s browser. The URL and ID launch FileNet and provide a
security authentication screen for login. After login, the image is
displayed.

FileNet
capture
Workstation
with
scanner

Client server
via
intranet

A/P User
Invoice
approval

FileNet
capture
Workstation
index only

Client server
via
intranet

SAP
Application and database Server
IBM P660 750 MHz four-way
8 GB Memory
(4) 36GB RAID-5
Remote
procedure
calls

FileNETClient accesses
the Web farm directly
via
the URL

FileNet Imaging Server
UNIX
IBM P660 750MHz 4-Way
8 GB memory
(4) 36GB RAID-5
FileNet WEB Server
80 concurrent users
Minimum requirement:
2p 1.4 GHtz 2 GB

Figure 5.2
SAP integration on a single FileNet Web server

SAP
Client server
via
intranet

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

Viewing TIFFs requires the downloading of a TIFF viewer because
a multipage TIFF viewer is not built into the Web browser. FileNet
provides a TIFF viewer that can be set up to download the first
time an end user hits the site to retrieve an image. If your organization is rolling out this technology to a large population for the
first time, it is usually advisable to push the viewer installation out
to the entire population instead of waiting for the first time each
logs in.
Figure 5.3 is the same basic FileNet ERP solution with additional
emphasis on FileNet’s Web retrieval. A properly configured NT Web
server supports around 80 concurrent users. As the usage level of 80
concurrent users begins to be reached, it is normally a good idea to
remove the single point of failure of the one FileNet Web server.
Multiple FileNet Web servers can be set up to work as a multiserver “Web farm” when combined with Cisco’s Redirector (load

FileNet
capture
Workstation
with
scanner

Client server
via
intranet

A/P user
Invoice
approval

FileNet
capture
Workstation
Index only

Client server
via
Intranet

SAP
Application and database server
IBM P660 750 MHz four-way
8 GB Memory
(4) 36 GB RAID-5
Remote
procedure
calls

SAP
Client Server
via
intranet

FileNET
Client accesses
the Web farm directly
via
the URL

FileNet Imaging Server
UNIX
IBM P660 750 MHz four-way
8 GB memory
(4) 36 GB RAID-5
Cisco
Redirector
(load
balancer)

FileNet WEB server
80 Concurrent Users
MinimumFileNet
Requirement:
WEB server
2p 1.4GHtz
2 GB Users
80 concurrent
Minimum FileNet
Requirement:
WEB server
2p 1.4GHtz
2 GB
80 concurrent
Users
MinimumFileNet
Requirement:
WEB server
2p 1.4GHtz
2 GB users
80 concurrent
Minimum requirement
2p 1.4 GHtz 2 GB

FileNet Web farm
Cisco Redirector
A/P user
Invoice
approval

URL
via
Internet

Internet portal
server
WWW.PAY.Com

Intranet
firewall

URL
via
intranet

Public Internet

Figure 5.3
SAP Integration/Cisco FileNet Web farm

FileNet Integration

balancer). The Redirector is like a router that continuously polls the
FileNet Web servers to determine if they are operational and balances
the load of incoming image requests. The Cisco Redirector uses a
virtual IP address and name to combine access to all four servers into
a single IP address and name.
In addition to the ability to handle the increased concurrent users
that the Web farm adds, the Redirector can also be used in an Internet-facing architecture. The figure shows how the director can be
used with a firewall and a portal server to allow Internet users to log
in and access images via the Net.

Enterprise Resource Planning Integration
FileNet has used standardization of processes, procedures, and technology to integrate with enterprise resource planning systems such as
SAP and PeopleSoft. This standardization has allowed FileNet to
become a satellite product that can be implemented along with most
ERP systems.
Eli Whitney is best known for his invention of the cotton gin, but
another great feat of his was to completely reinvent the America manufacturing process by introducing interchangeable parts and mass
production. Until this point, items were made one at a time, but
Whitney wanted to make high-quality items easier and faster.
His first project was the manufacture of muskets. After gaining a
contract from the government, he set out to make 2000 guns in two
years. Although he did not meet his goal until 10 years later, the
changes he made to the production process allowed him to make
10,000 guns in two years. The two major innovations in this process
were the standardized parts and the milling machine.
The standardization of parts allowed them to be cut from a pattern
that even a relatively unskilled worker could retrace. It made the
parts virtually interchangeable, allowing huge process simplifications. These process simplifications reduced waste, time, and materials as well as reducing the training time required to bring in new
workers.
Most ERP systems implementations require the standardization
of business processes to match the system modules. Although this
standardization is difficult during the first implementation, following upgrades are quick and relatively inexpensive because of the

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

standardized processes and modules. The process improvements this
type of standardization enables are substantial. An imaging system
like FileNet allows you to bring this standardization of processes to
your document handling.
FileNet’s imaging products are designed to compliment a wide
variety of enterprise systems. One of the biggest uses of FileNet is to
provide imaging or document management functionality as a “bolton” to existing ERP platforms. Typically, integration with FileNet is
provided via one or more of three routes:
1. FileNet middleware products such as ClientLink for SAP integration or PeopleLink for Peoplesoft integration.
2. Custom applications utilizing the various FileNet toolkits and
resource adapters.
3. Third-party portals and workflow engines such as Fuegoware.
When the system integration is done right, most users do not even
know they are using FileNet. It simply appears as if every needed
document is stored right in the ERP system. In addition to the ROI
provided by imaging itself, this allows the most basic business
processes to be enhanced through workflow applications.
Workflow applications manage the flow and routing of work
within a process or group of processes. Utilizing the highest degree
of automation possible, workflow applications can assemble information, dispatch it to the correct persons, monitor and report on
progress, set and reset priorities in the order of work, and even assist
in estimating future needs.
Some of the main benefits of using workflow technology include:
Accountability: Increased integrity and reliability of processes
through clearly defined rules and actively monitored audit
trails.
Shorter processing cycles: Reduction of task time through
automation and routing.
Increased communication: Automatic sharing of critical information, avoiding the bottlenecks that often appear as processes
that cross the lines separating departments.
Improved metrics: Automatic monitoring of performance and
workflow statistics so metrics are more available and less subjective, which leads to better decision making.

FileNet Integration

Better customer service: Shorter process time, faster access, and
improved accuracy so response to customers is much more efficient; removing feedback delays improves almost any system.

Workflow Analysis
Workflow analysis is a process information managers can use to
examine how the work gets done in that operation and to identify
opportunities for improvement. It is also an effective first step in
automating library and information center processes and making new
technology choices. All business processes have a workflow, but not
all workflows need enterprise-level workflow technology. When best
practices are understood and systemized, they drive the financial
success of the business, no matter what tools you use.
Achieving the optimum workflow requires a thorough understanding of the business’s goals, in-depth analysis of the current
workflow, and a strategic plan for changing old systems or implementing new systems. This all begins with conducting a thorough
workflow analysis. Be very cautious about outsourcing this task, as
it will play a major role in determining the scope of future technology purchases.

Workflow Analysis Steps
1.
2.
3.
4.

Define the scope of the project.
Gather and list business processes.
Create process definitions and workflow diagrams.
Define as-is workflow specification and identify the following:
Points in the workflow where critical decisions are made.
Stages in the workflow that require the collaborative effort
of multiple workers.
Specific employee and computing resources applied during
each stage.
Specific applications, external resources, databases, and
people required at each stage.
5. Identify objectives for improvement: Typical objectives include
improving accountability, speed, cost, scalability, disaster
recovery, headcount reduction, and risk management.

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

6. Define to-be workflow specification:
Choose whether to use a message-oriented or repositoryoriented workflow architecture (although message-oriented
systems are usually cheaper and quicker to put in place,
repository-based systems usually offer better reporting
options).
Identify opportunities to improve quality, reduce rework,
ramp up performance, and reduce duplication of effort.
7. Document Functional Requirements:
Performance requirements.
Security requirements.
Quality requirements.
8. Define monitoring and reporting specifications:
Consider metrics for monitoring data capture worker
performance.
Establish system performance benchmarks and monitoring
metrics (OSAR versus cache retrieval ratios, concurrent user
counts, system uptime, and so on).
Identify strategic business process planning and reporting
metrics (average invoice amount, average time-to-pay,
expense overruns by department, and so on).

Workflow Diagrams
Workflow diagrams help a company standardize processes and identify critical paths that provide progress and performance measurement. The clearer and more standardized the process is, the more
likely quality will be consistently high. However, if the workflow
process stifles dialog and innovation you may end up sacrificing longterm sustainability for near-term gains.
Focusing on the process of implementing projects can increase the
efficiency with which projects are planned and executed, but the
information and knowledge must be shared.
Figure 5.4 demonstrates that, on future executions, the “distance
delay” is reduced through the integration of KM principles and the
overall project efficiency is increased. The more often humans do
something according to a formal process, the more efficient they typically become. This is well known in sports, so coaches push training. It is well known in manufacturing, so companies push assembly

FileNet Integration

Plan new
environment

Examine
lessons
learned

KM pr
actices

Plan new
environment
ID opportunities
ID constraints
Scope plan
Develop plan

Capture lessons
learned into
explicit format

ID opportunities
ID constraints
Scope plan
Develop plan

pra
cti

ce
s

Set up
environment
nc

ed
ela
y

ID opportunities
ID constraints
Scope plan
Develop plan

tan
ce

de
la

ID opportunities
ID constraints
Scope plan
Develop plan

Plan new
environment
ID opportunities
ID constraints
Scope plan
Develop plan

Install hardware
update
documentation

Plan New
environment

Dis

Systems with a KM emphasis
improve themselves incrementally
over time by capturing feedback
and using it to improve the overall
process at each iteration of the
process.

Plan new
environment

Retire old
system

Dis
ta

Plan new
environment

ID successes
ID failures
ID assumptions
ID constraints

Survey team

Dis
tan
ce
de
lay

ID opportunities
ID constraints
Scope plan
Develop plan

Plan new
environment

Build
prototype

ID opportunities
ID constraints
Scope plan
Develop plan

Install and
configure
test systems

Plan new
environment

Plan new
environment
ID opportunities
ID constraints
Scope plan
Develop plan

Remove old
hardware
Implement
new system

ID opportunities
ID constraints
Scope plan
Develop plan

Duplicate
prototype
Deploy tested
systems to
production
hardware

Operate dual
systems and test
new system

Figure 5.4
KM-focused circular business process example

lines and prefabrication. Why is this type of repetitiveness not driven
into project management? It is in well-managed organizations.
Workflow diagrams provide an excellent tool for documenting
many types of projects. Examples include analyzing as-is and to-be
scenarios, designing new process flows, documenting procedures, and
supporting business process reengineering. They represent the
dynamics of a system by expressing the flow of events and are an
ideal way to help visualize the workflow of a system. Describing
complex procedures using text alone can yield lengthy documents

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

that allow conflicting interpretations by reviewers. The results or
solutions depicted by workflow diagrams help determine if automation can enhance or support an activity.
Diagrams of enterprise workflows often employ cross-functional
flowcharts, also known as swim-lane diagrams (see Figure 5.5).
Swim-lane diagrams are helpful tools when modeling business workflows because they can show how some procedures integrate organizational units within a business model. Such a workflow analysis
separates the process diagram into parallel segments, called swim
lanes. Each swim lane shows a department or role and contains the

Customer

Sales

Stock room

Begin
process

Request service

Take order

Pay
Fill order

Deliver order

Collect order

End process

Figure 5.5
Swim lane diagram of simple sales process

FileNet Integration

activities of that role. Transitions can take place from one swim lane
to another. Unlike system diagrams that emphasize the flow of
control between objects, swim-lane diagrams emphasize the flow of
control between activities, events, groups, and individuals.
The old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words is especially true with workflow diagrams. Achieving the optimum workflow depends on developing a thorough understanding of the
business’s goals, an in-depth analysis of the current workflow, and a
strategic plan for implementing new systems or bolstering existing
systems.
To be successful, the needs of all the stakeholder groups must be
taken into account. This begins with conducting a thorough workflow analysis. Carefully examine the points where process tasks
switch swim lanes, as these are often the problem points in a workflow. Be very cautious about outsourcing this task, as it often determines the scope of technology purchases.

Integrations and Metadata
All the integration scenarios in this chapter have at least one thing
in common—metadata. In the information technology world, meta
is a prefix that means “an underlying definition or description.” In
relation to data and information, it means “more comprehensive or
fundamental.” Metadata is a description of content; it is data that
describes other data. Naturally, different users may see different
descriptions and the fundamental way of defining the content.
Various types of metadata have been developed to support information management needs. Metadata for record keeping orders, validates and archives an organization’s records. Preservation metadata
contributes to the long-term retention of resources. Descriptive metadata are used for identification, discovery and access, and evaluation
of resources. All types of metadata support the management of
resources to ensure access to them both now and for the entire life
cycle of the content.
Within enterprise content management systems, metadata
describes every object of content, and the metadata that facilitates
easy content retrieval. The integration of any two databases depends
on identifying key fields that bind them together. This relationship
between systems can be created using the metadata.

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

To bind an SAP record with a FileNet invoice image, merely
capture the FileNet document ID number into a field of the SAP
record. Another option would be to include the SAP record number
into the metadata for the FileNet invoice image. Most users choose
to include the FileNet document ID number into the SAP record. This
is because FileNet provides workflow tools to capture the number
into the SAP record when it is scanned. FileNet also provides a utility
to allow retrieving the image from the FileNet repository by selecting a button in the SAP interface.
Metadata is like a container for a document, and all containers
are both facilitators and limiters. A farmer that grows corn may find
that canning the corn facilitates some markets for this product.
However, the container also limits the market for his corn at the
same time. The livestock feed and corn-on-the-cob customers are
bound to be disappointed. Containers like metadata both facilitate
and limit the use of information, because when the metadata is
defined loosely it limits retrievals and when it is defined too strictly
it limits reuse.

Imaging System Metadata Issues
Imaging systems are focused on rapid retrievals of static documents:
Their key features are simple interfaces, quick retrievals, and high
availability from any location. Metadata is typically added to a document image when the document is scanned. Future changes in metadata are usually contained in annotations. These systems usually
drive very mature business processes, so the documents captured
benefit from long-established categorization practices.
The maturity of the business processes that traditional imaging
systems support make the retrieval needs much more predictable than
in more-dynamic electronic document management systems. The
wise project manager spends a good deal of planning time analyzing
and documenting the way the end users query for images. In a traditional imaging system, rapid retrieval from a simple interface, using
one or two key metadata fields is much more important than
advanced query interfaces and keyword searches. Knowledge management and electronic document management functions usually
require more advanced query screens and keyword searching.

FileNet Integration

Unfortunately, metadata occasionally are missing or incorrect
because the data entry clerk (or optical character recognition engine)
was sloppy, poorly trained, or both. In these types of systems, the
viewers of the documents are rarely empowered to change the metadata associated with them. However, they are usually the first ones
to spot the inevitable indexing mistakes that occurred. To provide
strong exception handling, the issues need to be considered early in
any imaging project.
This makes it valuable to set up an easy-to-use, rapid feedback
system for users to report metadata problems. With a Web-based
system, it is pretty easy to script a function to e-mail an indexing
error notification back to the data capture department. Called from
a button on the Web-viewing interface, it should send the FileNET
document ID number along with the date and e-mail address of the
user that observed the problem.

Electronic Content Management Metadata Issues
Electronic content management systems focus on encouraging collaboration and making valuable intellectual assets easily located and
reused. They manage content objects that are dynamic rather than of
fixed content, like imaging systems. Most of these systems rely on
document authors to assign the metadata to describe the context of
the documents. This usually does not work particularly well. The
purposes of documents like Word documents and PowerPoint presentations are better defined by other people’s use and opinion of
them than by the somewhat limited and biased opinions of authors.
A main rule of content management is this: For metadata to be useful,
it has to be honest.
In the late 1990s, this was demonstrated with Web documents via
the “meta keywords” tag for Internet documents. The meta keywords
tag was created as a way to insert a context description (metadata)
into an HTML page. The meta tag is not visible when the page is
viewed through a browser, but search engines could read the content
of the tag and use the words in it, along with the page’s regular body
copy, to provide results for user queries. Sadly, within a year, most
Internet analysts declared the keywords meta tag useless. The tag had
almost immediately become unreliable because authors tried to

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

promote their works with insincere meta tags. After all, it is an
attention-based economy, and Web-page hits are valuable.
What is needed for EDM systems, knowledge bases, intellectual
asset archives, and the like is a system that generates highly reliable
sources of whatever kind of information is asked for, based on the
search terms provided. For success stories, look to Internet search
engine leader Google and bookseller Amazon.com. Both depend on
highly sophisticated ranking and review systems to ensure the quality
of their metadata archives. They figured out that the key metadata
for their systems are based on managing reputations, relationships,
and links—the key assets in an economy based on attention.
Google WebSearchTM calls its ranking system for metadata
PageRankTM. It typically generates highly reliable sources for most
kinds of information you might ask for. PageRank’s intelligent algorithm allows it to evaluate the context and credibility of Web pages
based on the quality and amount of links between the page itself and
other documents. However, even with Google’s highly sophisticated
system, it is still difficult to research “spanking” in the context of
corporal punishment and avoid seeing a mountain of pornography
sites.
Google does not even bother reading the meta tags the author
assigned to the content. It merely reads the document’s relationship
with other documents on the same subject and uses that information
to figure out how respected is the information or information
provider. The strategy has been so successful that many people cannot
imagine a day when they are not using Google for something.

Legal Metadata Issues
Today, many lawyers are beginning to focus on the issue of the document properties, metadata carried by documents, particularly those
generated by Microsoft products. Such metadata includes information contained in prior drafts, comments, information about authors
and sources, and other items that can result in embarrassing and
damaging disclosures for clients and law firms alike.
Comments can contain text that may be inappropriate to share.
People sometimes use language during document creation that they
would never want in the final version. To address issues like these,
several firms are attacking the problem by using software tools to

FileNet Integration

scrub out all the metadata in their Microsoft Office documents. In
most cases however, these solutions have addressed solely Microsoft
Word documents.
Whatever the objectives of your metadata strategy, you will benefit
from careful planning and dialog among the stakeholders. The metadata choices made during implementation of a content management
system have a huge impact on the systems future effectiveness, performance, and ability to integrate.

Success Story
A worldwide organization operating in more than 25 counties needed
a more effective way for individuals with organizational accounts
receivable responsibilities to query and access A/R information. The
existing system was paper based, with entries being completed
manually in an Oracle database system. The FileNet solution
implemented took advantage of FileNet’s thin client and used Web
technology to distribute purchase orders, invoices, and checks to
customers.
This implementation included the ability to allow authorized
employees to view, print, and fax invoices or purchase orders data
via the Internet.
The system resulted a reduction in the cost of receivables by nearly
50%. Other customer benefits included better resolution of billing
questions and payment disputes, normally during the customer’s call.
Fewer delays naturally created happier customers—and more sales.

Chapter 6

FileNet
Administration
Leadership is getting someone to do what they don’t want to do,
to achieve what they want to achieve.
—Tom Landry

Key Objectives
Seasoned system administrators develop special knowledge and
experience from continuously monitoring and maintaining their
systems. Capturing and distributing this knowledge is important when planning upgrades and vital when planning installation and integration projects.
Learn techniques for managing technicians and administrators
with extremely introverted personalities and underdeveloped
communication skills.
Understand the basic tasks of the average FileNet system
administrator and the new regulatory issues created by HIPAA
and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.
Know where to go and what questions to ask to gather the critical data needed to implement and administrate an enterprise
imaging system.

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101

Become familiar with the key UNIX-based administrative
tools for maintaining a FileNet system and keeping it running
efficiently.
Learn how to build FileNet systems that focus on supporting
transaction-processing or record-keeping goals.
See multiple examples of FileNet system architectures to
support centralized or decentralized data capture operations.
Learn what typical installation and client-side support issues to
expect with a large-scale FileNet project.

Profiting from Your Organization’s Experience
Administrators can be key content and dialog contributors because
of their experience continuously maintaining systems. Most administrators deal with implementing integrations with a number of new
systems regularly. Maintaining highly integrated system equipment
often requires developing clever ways of maintaining uptime, facilitating the replacement of hardware, patching operating systems (OS),
and upgrading applications. Because of the variety of work that
administrators do, they often know (and are willing to admit) more
about the actual operation of a system than the vendor that provided
it. This knowledge is important when planning upgrades and vital
when looking at integration projects.
Although administrators have a lot of vital knowledge, getting it
out of them can be a challenge. Often administrators have held their
positions for years, and sharing knowledge is looked on as giving
away the job. Many technical administrators also have introverted
personalities and underdeveloped communication skills. Building
trust with these communities requires time and effort. It is helpful to
begin developing that trust before the input is needed.
Often, those that administrate a system and those that build
improvements to a system are in different business groups, with competing goals that can build pressure between the groups. This is not
uncommon, but it poses an issue that drains the attention of both
groups and can create strife. To avoid this, the two groups should be
brought together to participate in activities outside the direct work
environment. One of the best examples of this type of activity is a
corporate “ropes” program.

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The ropes course is a highly interactive, energetic program
designed to create individual and work group growth experience. It
aids building a sense of interdependence and shared vision that
facilitates working together as a high-performance team. The alien
environment and high ropes challenges involved are 30–50 feet off
the ground and require team members to pull together, support, and
coach one another. The participants learn to trust and cooperate to
get through the many physical and psychological challenges offered.
No one is forced or coerced to participate; each individual can
choose how much challenge is right for him or her. Individuals and
teams experience the positive feelings that overcoming each ropes
course challenges bring, and no two groups experience the ropes
course in the same way.
Another way to help build these relationships is to create a rewards
program that allows employees to recognize their coworkers for
exceptional efforts. At IBM, employees are encouraged to reward
other workers within “Big Blue” that excel in supporting them. They
personalized their program by providing a number of IBM-logobearing shirts, pens, and other small niceties for rewards and an
online system to track usage and rules compliance. Since all the gift
items carry the company logo, they are also building the IBM brand,
while building better relationships.

FileNet Administrator Duties
FileNet systems are engineered to require a small number of administrative support personnel relative to the size of the user base. Due
to the wide range of potential infrastructure configurations, integration choices, and customer-programmed enhancements, administrating FileNet systems and its customizable applications can require
specialized expertise. The local FileNet system administrator is a critical component of a enterprise content management system, because
of the number of users who rely on the system being up and running.
In this chapter, we examine the administration needs, expectations,
and resources available for FileNet.
Most FileNet support teams are light in the system administrative
area, compared to their FileNet client-side support and development
teams. This typically is no problem because of the stability of FileNet.
Another reason that FileNet systems can be operated with fewer

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103

administrators is that you can always hire FileNet to administrate
your system to cover periods in which support is limited or nonexistent due to such things as emergencies, vacations, extended illnesses,
or employee attrition. However, that solution should be seen as a last
resort.
A FileNet administrator generally handles the following tasks:

Security and backup.
Optical storage and retrieval maintenance.
Document class setup.
System monitoring and diagnostics.
Images services server monitoring and maintenance.
FileNet Web servers.
Oracle database maintenance.
System upgrades.
Configuration changes.
Data migration.

Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002
Administrators of FileNet systems must be aware of the critical
nature of the data and processes they use and preserve. The SarbanesOxley Act of 2002 requires senior management to be personally
responsible for the information and processes by which their organization reports financial information. This means that enterprise
content management is more important than ever before. It also
means that administrators need to monitor their systems and
processes closely to avoid costly oversights.
The top 10 warning signs of potential Sarbanes-Oxley risk are
these:
1. A records-management policy not linked to regulatory
requirements.
2. Retention schedules disconnected from legal department
policies.
3. Formal document handling policies nonexistent or inconsistent across departments.
4. A records management policy that covers only paper
documents.

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5. Document management systems that have no clearly identified
individuals responsible for assuring their continuing regulatory compliance.
6. Document retention periods that are not integrated with
enterprise content management to purge both digital and
analog documents.
7. Records-management policies not communicated to
employees.
8. Lack of processes and tools to authorize deleting documents.
9. No auditing of the entire records-management process.
10. Documents and content without metadata, preventing the
retrieval of required documents.

Gathering Critical System Planning Data
Often, the administrators are put on implementation teams as organizations face expanding their FileNet systems. This means that
administrators are often expected to be experts on system installation, when the majority of their experience may strictly be administration and security. To help with these issues, this section lays out
some common tasks and questions to perform to ease the learning
curve.
This section is intended for FileNet IM (Image Manager) administrators and network planning personnel. It assumes that the reader
has a basic understanding of networks, an understanding of planning
and configuration issues associated with networks, and a strong
working knowledge of the FileNet IM product line. Attending
FileNet’s administration training classes helps in the planning process
but cannot replace genuine field experience.
The first step in planning an IM system is to gather information
about the documents and processes for the in-scope area of the organization. An effective way to gather the needed information is by
conducting interviews with representatives from each identifiable
business process. While this may seem time consuming, it has proven
to be one of the best ways to consolidate and organize the details
necessary for a successful IM implementation.
The goal is to gather information about the nature and flow of
information and documents within the organization. This helps identify the necessary resources for the design of the IM system to meet

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the business’s specific needs. If the time has not been taken to gather
this information before beginning an implement, often the result is a
second project to fix the issues generated by the implementation. This
type of rework is shockingly expensive.
It is important to gather organizational information to help with
the decisions referring to the overall system configuration. This information includes items such as budgetary constraints that could affect
the design of the system. It is also important to collect information
that affects the index structures and metadata. Along with this information, it is important to understand the project’s stakeholder structure and design forms or interfaces for collecting security information
for users.
The following list is a good place to start to gather stakeholder
information: division heads, department heads, administrative assistants, work processing managers, delivery and document handling
personnel, and network administrators (WAN and LAN).
What types of WANs, LANs, servers, and client machines are used,
and what is the available bandwidth? This is important to answer
because a system implementation falls flat on its face if it causes
network issues. If the interviews are performed well and detailed
information is gathered and analyzed, the overall structure and
requirements should begin to follow into place. As you interview
your sources, ask the following questions:
What is the network setup?
Are DNS servers or host files being used for domain name
resolution?
What types of documents will be in the system, and what are
their requirements?
Where documents are to be stored and accessed?
What are the hardware and software requirements?
Is an existing system diagram available?
What custom metadata properties are needed?
Will the FileNet system require multiple document classes?
(Refer to Chapter 3 for more information on document classes
and families.)
Who will access each document class?
How do the individual groups communicate to work together?
(Please list departments, project teams, and functional or crossfunctional work groups.)

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What security rights are needed, for both groups and individuals and for each document class? (Refer to Chapter 3 for more
information on document classes and families.)
What is the expectation for image retrieval speed and system
uptime?
What needs to be added, if anything, to the current network
infrastructure to support a FileNet system at the desired performance level?
Do any of the servers or network components require upgrading to meet the project goals?
Does any existing client software need upgrading; if so, to how
many users?
Are the system diagrams, network information, and LAN/WAN
description documents up to date?
FileNet system configuration and performance depend on the
network as well as the client and server hardware and software configuration. It is critical to have an updated network topology diagram
that describes your network and a detailed system diagram to show
where integration points occur.
The following are general FileNet project questions:

Total number of current documents and pages?
Average number of new documents and pages added daily?
Average number of annotations added to a document?
List of the primary index keys?
How many of the index fields are to be autoindexed?
How many documents are expected to be captured by the end
of first year?
What is the estimated initial repository size?
How much BES cache should be assigned?
How much Page cache should be assigned?
How much total disk storage space is required?

Assemble the following server information:
Server location: Physical location, including building address.
Server name: Full server name, including alias.
Operating system: Type of OS and version (example, AIX
4.3.3).
Database: Type and version.
Memory: Total installed and available.

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107

Disk space: Total installed and available after partitioning and
redundancy.
Replication: Type of mirroring being used.
Each group has its own security template defined for viewing and
manipulating documents stored in the FileNet system. Discussions
with the project team members give a better understanding of security policies and requirements. Keep in mind that administrators, as
a group, have full rights to all documents in the document library.
Only system administration staff members should belong to the
administrators group.
When requesting security information from the project team, be
very specific from the first as to the information that you need. A
good place to start is with the following: project name, user ID, full
name, e-mail address, mirror ID (existing user name that can be used
as a template, helpful if the requesting person does not understand
the document class structure).
A number of possible access levels could be given to a group or
individual. We hope these examples give a clearer understanding of
the levels of security that can be assigned, at the user account level,
to each document class:
Admin: Owner access rights plus the ability to modify all
property values.
Owner: Author access rights plus the ability to modify most
property values, including security, and to delete the document.
Author: Viewer access rights plus the ability to check out and
check in the document and change a few property values.
Viewer: The ability to view, annotate, and make copies of the
document and view the properties.
None: No access; the user cannot even verify that the object
exists in the system.

UNIX Administrative Tools and Resources
The FileNet Task Manager application allows you to control
and monitor the FileNet software. Launch Task Manager by
entering the UNIX command: Xtaskman. The program can be
run in the background to allow the starting and stopping of the

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FileNet software, the monitoring of process, and the preparation of EBR (FileNet’s UNIX-based Enterprise Systems Backup
utility) backups and restorations.
The SEC__tool is a command-line-driven utility for managing
licensing and security account information. From here, you can
see who is logged in and unlock any accounts locked-out due
to excessive concurrent login attempts.
fn__util is a command-line-driven program that allows administrators to start, stop, update, or initialize FileNet databases.
Warning: Use this program with extreme caution; used incorrectly, it can destroy all your index data.
fn__edit is the configuration editor for FileNet imaging systems,
another command-line-driven program. Using fn__edit allows
administrators to edit a long list of configuration values on the
server, such as:
Network addresses
Performance tuning
System attributes
Storage libraries
System defaults
Peer systems
Application services
Procedures
Relational databases
Printing
MKF__databases
Server attributes
The Xapex command in UNIX initiates the FileNet Application
Executive program, which serves as the primary administration
tool for FileNet imaging systems. From the Application Executive’s GUI interface, an administrator can perform a wide
range of tasks, such as:
Create or modify the system database structure.
Create accounts or modify security settings for individuals or
groups.
Perform cache backups and audit security.
Monitor the storage library and system statistics.
Initiate background jobs, such as importing documents, consolidating media, and migrating documents to new storage
media.

Typical FileNet System Structure
The majority of FileNet root servers operate on the AIX UNIX operating system; however, the SUN UNIX has been gaining ground and

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109

some organizations even use Windows servers for their FileNet root
servers. The majority of the peripheral systems operate on Microsoft
Windows 2000. They are usually put into place to support highly
visible enterprise transaction processing systems.
Transaction processing systems are the most common business
systems. Like most large enterprise software packages, the basic
design is intended to separate the functions of input, processing, and
output. Although this is also true for enterprise-level record-keeping
applications, there are also differences to consider. For example,
although you can use a transaction processing system for record
keeping, it was built with very different goals.
Transaction processing systems are centered on using current data,
saved in the most efficient manner possible with a strong focus on
performance. Record-keeping systems like FileNet are focused more
on consistency, sustainability, and the long-term availability of information. In a transaction system, record keeping may be a by-product
of the business process, but it is not the primary purpose of the
system.
There are a variety of secondary services for FileNet and countless
ways to configure the system. Figure 6.1 shows a sample architectural plan for a typical FileNet configuration. The AIX UNIX operating system is used for the production and development root servers,
but the peripheral servers use the Windows NT operating system.
The Windows NT operating system can be used for small production root servers, but it is not widely considered to be as scalable as
UNIX operating system based implementations.
The Web farm shown in the figure should handle between 300 and
400 concurrent users and offers intelligent server farm load balancing provided by a product called Cisco Local DirectorTM. For more
redundancy you can add additional Cisco directors and more Web
servers to increase stability. For a general idea of concurrent users
versus the total FileNet population, we look to an accounts payable
example.
A large oil company has approximately 10,000 FileNet users that
approve invoices throughout the month. The normal peak usage
during a given week is 300–400 concurrent users, giving an approximate factor of 1 concurrent user to 29 user accounts.
Figure 6.2 shows a similar architecture that includes components
to support remote data capture (scanning and indexing from a remote
site). The figure is a high level example of FileNet server components

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FileNet IS root server — (A) FileNet image services and optical storage
Peripheral systems - (C) Web farm, (D) Print and fax

SCSI

AIX UNIX
FileNet IS root
Server Ver 4.1

NT2000
FileNet print and fax server

FileNet OSAR
6 ⫻ 30-GB drives
107 platters
3.2 terabytes

(A) FileNet
root server
production

(D) Print and
fax
Intranet

Cisco Director
load balancer

NT2000
FileNet Web Server
Ver 3.1

AIX UNIX
FileNet IS Root
Server Ver 4.1

(B) FileNet
root server
development
NT2000
FileNet Web Server
Ver 3.1

NT2000
FileNet Web Server
NT2000
Ver 3.1
FileNet Web Server
Ver 3.1

Figure 6.1
Typical FileNet system configuration

being used in an environment where the data capture (scanning and
indexing) is handled at a distant location or outsourced to a capture
vendor.
Using business transformation outsourcing (BTO) providers is
becoming more common as the drive to decentralize and move
business components offshore increases. Business transformation
outsourcing is similar to business process outsourcing (BPO) but
typically includes additional improvements to existing processes that
the purchasing company could not (or would not) implement while

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FileNet IS root server — (A) FileNet image services and optical storage
Peripheral systems — (C) Web farm, (D) print and fax
Distributed image services — (E) remote capture
SCSI

AIX UNIX
FileNet IS Root
Server Ver 4.1

FileNet OSAR
6 x 30-GB drives
107 platters
3.2 terabytes

(A) FileNet
root server
production

NT2000
FileNet Print & Fax
Server

(D) Print &
Fax

Intranet

Cisco Load
Balancer

Cisco router
NT2000
FileNet Web Server
Ver 3.1

NT2000

AIX UNIX
FileNet IS Root
Server Ver 4.1

NT2000
FileNet Web Server
Ver 3.1

FileNet Web Server
Ver 3.1

(B) FileNet
root server
development

NT2000
FileNet Web Server
Ver 3.1

NT2000
FileNet print and fax server

(E)
Distributed
image
services
(remote
capture)

Cisco router

Intranet

Figure 6.2
Typical FileNet system configuration with remote capture

the task was being performed in-house. Distributed Image Services is
a name FileNet often uses to describe certain image services components that are replicated at remote locations.
In Figure 6.2, both the Batch Entry Services cache and the Page
cache would be replicated on the DIS server. This would enable localized caching of images for quick retrieval and the localized caching
of scanned images and index batches awaiting committal to the
optical storage and retrieval system. FileNet’s IM software can be
configured to automatically maintain replication consistency between
its internal BES and Page caches and the external distributed image
services’ BES and Page caches.
Keep in mind, when looking at remote capture opportunities,
that, although the DIS server has images cached, it does not provide

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replication of the security database. The security database for an IM
resides on the root server (main FileNet imaging system server). If
the root server is down, the DIS server is inaccessible, because users
cannot log in to FileNet’s security.
If an installation requires distributed security, then a second image
services server (and license) is required. FileNet’s IM can then be configured to use replication to maintain consistency between the two
security databases.
Other names for the distributed image services are remote entry
server, batch entry services, and application server. Again, please note
that these are very high-level overviews and describe only a fraction
of the ways that FileNet’s products can be deployed.

Client Installation and Administration
An organization that is building a FileNet imaging application can
expect that more than half of its administrator hours to be consumed
by user support. In addition to the support issues there are ongoing
upgrade path, as well as customer satisfaction issues to overcome.
Project managers need a good understanding of the project’s technical and political complexities to enable them to set the proper expectation when choosing a client type. One example is the FileNet client
software. FileNet offers a thick client and a thin client. Because of
the nature of imaging applications, imaging-thick clients can be difficult to configure and distribute over a large network.
In an SAP installation, SAP defines the procedures and specifications required to access SAP information and provide tight integration with the imaging vendor’s product. FileNet’s product line for this
standard is named ClientLink for R3™.
Depending on the SAP client installation, several thick and thin
configuration options are available for integrating SAP and FileNet.
Figure 6.3 shows an example of a thick client installation on a user’s
workstation. The figure shows the FileNet software being delivered
via an automated software push. Note the order in which the software is pushed is important: If it is not pushed in the correct order,
the installation may not work (thick client first, middleware second).
Another installation item to keep in mind is that SMS pushes of
the SAP GUI updates have been known to corrupt the existing installation of the FileNet client. For this reason, any time an SAP GUI

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User's workstation
thick client installation
Operating system
Applications

FileNet — thick
client and viewer

SMS push

SAP client

FileNet — clientlink

Figure 6.3
FileNet thick client installation

software push is taking place, it is important to test it against an
existing workstation containing a FileNet installation of the thick
client and Clientlink for R3. If the FileNet client is corrupted, a repush of FileNet normally corrects the problem.
Thick client installations are typically more difficult to maintain
because patches or upgrades require packaging and scheduling for
SMS pushes. Moving to a thin client installation, however, more than
likely will not reduce the overall support costs. The main reason for
this is that, although client costs may be reduced, there is an increase
in the total number of NT servers that must be supported. FileNet
resources are typically more expensive than NT resources and can be
difficult to find; therefore, it may be more cost effective to have a
larger number of NT servers to support than trying to recruit more
FileNet technical personnel resources.
Figure 6.4 shows an end-user’s workstation and the FileNet software installed on it, including an example of where the software can
be loaded. The only application, from a FileNet perspective, that
needs to reside on the end-user’s desktop in a “thin client installation” is the FileNet viewer. Web browsers do not natively view TIFF
images; therefore, FileNet provides a viewer that views TIFFs and
approximately 200 other formats. Note: FileNet’s Panagon Document Warehouse version 5.1 provides a thin client that uses a Java
applet downloaded for every viewing session.

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User's workstation,
thin client installation
Operating system
Applications
SMS
push

SAP client

Download page
setup to allow end
users to pull the
FileNET viewer

FileNet — thin client

FileNet Web server

FileNet viewer

Figure 6.4
FileNet thin client installation

Multiple options are available for installing the FileNet thin client
viewer software. One option is to push the viewer to the desktop
through an SMS push, another is to allow the end user to pull the
viewer to the desktop. Both options have strong points and drawbacks. A combination of the two may provide the best opportunity
for success.
The main drawback of the SMS push method is the time required
for the user to receive the push and start using the software. The
drawback with the user pulling the viewer from the FileNet Web
server is the problems that often arise from tasking individuals with
installing their own software. Often this is no option because the
end user lacks administrative rights to his or her desktop. Therefore,
combining the two options may offer the best solution for many
organizations.

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As a FileNet implementation project nears completion, an SMS
push can handle pushing the TIFF viewer to the FileNet thin-client
users. Once the project is completed and for users that were not set
up as part of the implementation need access, administration has the
option of pushing new users the TIFF viewer through SMS or allowing the user to pull it from the FileNet Web server. This combined
approach may offer the best of both worlds.
When a user accesses the FileNet Web interface home page for
the first time, FileNet’s standard interface has built-in code that
examines the user’s workstation to determine whether or not it
has the viewer already installed. If the viewer is not installed, the
interface offers to install it at that time. Expect some users to have
problems with their installations, usually due to not exiting out of
running programs before installing software. This is almost always
an issue with self-service software installations, but it is usually
manageable.

Success Story
A European online brokerage that operates one of the most successful Web businesses in Germany was looking to reduce mailing costs.
The company recently had seen explosive growth because of its drive
to use innovative technology and leadership to maintain its competitive position. As with any corporate growth cycle, this one generated a large amount of documents.
The firm mails millions of confirmations, statements, and other
paper documents each month. To reduce costs and improve customer
satisfaction, the firm again looks to implement innovative technology. The firm focuses on offering online customer access to statements, order information, and cancellations. Another requirement of
the system is to manage the electronic storage of documents in accordance with newly expanding government regulations.
The solution the brokerage company chooses includes a FileNet
ECM system, because of its scalability, security, Web client availability, and ability to accommodate heavy traffic. The brokerage
company’s customers now have online informational archives to
replace the mailed documents. The solution not only reduces the
firm’s administrative costs but also increases customer satisfaction
immensely.

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Summary of Benefits
Reduced administrative costs through the elimination of costs
associated with mailing paper information to customer base.
Improved customer service through faster responses and greater
levels of transparency.
Process improvements that mean savings for the customers and
increased transparency that improves customer trust.
Online access to trade and customer documentation via the
Web, which saves distribution costs and hassles.
Meeting government regulatory requirements to avoid fines and
costly litigation.

Chapter 7

FileNet and
Knowledge
Management
In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns of relationships and the capacities to form
them are more important than tasks, functions, roles, and positions.
—Margaret Wheatley

Key Objectives
Learn how content management systems help facilitate the
creation of new knowledge.
Understand some ways that document management and imaging
systems can support high-level KM initiatives.
Know what differentiates imaging from other forms of content
management.
Learn the four most common methods of managing unstructured data and information while increasing actionable knowledge within an organization.
Understand the value of finding common ground through
mutually shared abstractions.

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Recognize that actionable knowledge leads to innovation only
in the presence of both attention and retention by peers.
Learn to use balanced scorecard documents to monitor and
improve a group’s performance.
Know how document management processes can be evolved to
maximize the three kinds of attention: awareness, reaction, and
reflection.
Understand how workflow can be used to add context to
unstructured data.

Knowledge Management, Culture, and Content
Linking documents and content to people may be the single most
vital technical component of knowledge management. The idea is to
facilitate the creation of new knowledge by capturing information,
identifying patterns, performing analysis, and making the analysis
available to other users when they need it. Explicit knowledge that
is of high value, or for which substantial resources have been
expended to create, always merits some level of management.
Linking documents and content to people in a corporate environment depends on developing a system that includes components for
searching, content organization, collaboration, and learning. Ideally,
all these components should be accessible across the enterprise and
maintainable over the course of time. Obviously, FileNet offers a
powerful platform for content organization and searching, but what
about collaboration and learning?
FileNet has been marketed as a KM solution in the past, but it is
implemented primarily to solve very specific business issues related
to imaging, document management, and workflow. Nearly all
business functions need to be documented to record and regulate
the activity of the organization. Although many documents are now
dynamic, do not underestimate the importance of capturing certain
documents in very static formats.
Static documents preserve vital histories by making a snapshot of
a moment in time. The importance of this activity has been recognized for thousands of years, since marks were first made on clay
tablets to record sales and taxes. Today, as the complexity of business increases, the need for context-preserving technologies, like
imaging and workflow, is greater than ever.

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A document management system can provide powerful tools to
support your organization’s KM strategies, but this requires a paradigm shift for project managers and technical workers, due to the
differences in the form and function of knowledge management
tasks versus document management tasks. In this chapter, we define
a strategy for bypassing some of the classic problems that face KM
implementations by maximizing the utilization of existing resources.

Contrasting Document and Knowledge Management Systems
Most DM systems support core business tasks such as accounts
payable processing, and they are chosen based on firm return-oninvestment figures. These existing systems are built with the following assumptions:
The information contained in the systems must be tightly
rationed to prevent misuse.
Speed of document delivery is a top concern, since workers
access the system hundreds of times per day in exactly the same
way.
Security must be tight since it contains highly confidential
information, such as Social Security numbers and home
addresses.
Data capture hardware and infrastructure requirements and
costs can be heavy due to the need for centralized, high volume,
data capture centers.
Typical KM systems work from a completely different perspective, and the difference needs to be addressed right from
the beginning of the project.
The information contained in the systems should be widely
advertised to assure maximum usage.
Flexibility in the ways to search for information is far more
important than the speed of document delivery, because the
users access the system very infrequently in ways that are vastly
different each time.
Security must be fairly loose, since any additional access hurdles
the users have to leap through discourages usage.
Data capture hardware and infrastructure requirements are low
and often zero in KM systems, since documents are typically

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created electronically and uploaded by the authors, eliminating
the need for scanners and indexers.

Comparing Document and Knowledge Management Systems
Despite the many differences that separate DM systems from KM
systems, in most cases both can peacefully coexist on the same platform, because they have similar resource needs. In fact, many of the
technology products in the KM field have backgrounds in imaging
and document management. Here are some similarities between
document management and imaging technologies:
Both require a high level of scalability, since they are likely to
be implemented across the entire enterprise and accessed from
a variety of locations.
Both require extremely flexible application programming interfaces (APIs), because they often are integrated with other key
systems and processes.
They often require a significant investments in hardware, software, and infrastructure.
Both provide ROI based on both hard and soft dollar savings
but are typically implemented on the basis of hard dollar
savings alone.
Both require an architecture that is modular enough to allow a
diverse selection of interfaces, business rules, and workflows.
Both use technology to enable asynchronous information
exchange, which means that a great deal of thought and planning needs to go into considering what types of information
needs to be exchanged and how they are to be captured and
retrieved.
Clearly, DM systems and KM systems have more commonalities than
differences. Therefore, it is reasonable to try to consolidate these
functions onto a single platform. Building KM solutions on existing
platforms frees up resources to address the critical cultural aspects of
KM and helps to avoid spending all of your time shopping for an allencompassing, out-of-the-box solution that does not exist.
In choosing new platform products for KM activities, you may
benefit from “coat-tailing” onto the implementation of more tradi-

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tional business technologies such as messaging, ERP, document
management, and imaging. These technologies are usually better
funded, better supported, and given much higher priority than KMassociated products like chat, forums, Web crawlers, portals, peerto-peer, and social networking software. The key is to find out which
traditional technologies offer the potential to support your KM
activity goals.
For instance, although FileNet was created as an imaging product,
over time the company has added numerous optional components to
support a wide range of KM activities, such as application integration, portals, business process management, Web content management, managing best practices, and electronic forms. The company
switched tactics by deemphasizing knowledge management. It now
focuses its marketing on the ability to provide a platform to support
complex processes involving widely dispersed groups of workers. The
belief is that the customer base is tactically focused due to budget
constraints. Users still demand and buy tools to help them get their
work done more cost effectively, while supporting stronger feedback
loops behind the scenes.
Many competing products, like Documentum, were designed to
manage libraries of digitally created documents rather than images
of scanned paper documents. This makes them flexible for WCM
functions such as managing the development and maintenance of
websites and other dynamic objects. However, it limits their ability
to effectively manage images, workflows, and other, more static production-level data objects. Documentum even went to the extra step
of purchasing technologies for collaboration and syndication of electronic content. For this reason, many organizations choose Documentum systems for less transactional functions that focus on dialog
more than throughput and disaster recovery. However, they often find
demonstrating sufficient ROI, in hard dollars, extremely challenging
for those systems.
One advantage that products like FileNet have is their ability to
bridge the gap between information and accessibility. Every day organizational personnel grow more geographically dispersed, and yet
they still act as the primary point of customer contact. These globally dispersed knowledge workers cannot possibly rely on business
processes based on shuffling paper documents. Although they need
access to key information like insights and best practices, do not
underestimate the value of more transactional document types such

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as contracts, invoices, proposals, HR documents, and other enterprise records.
In knowledge management, organizations seek to change their
cultures in profound ways. Today, most knowledge workers spend
up to half of their day creating, filing, mailing, finding, or managing
different types of content. In most cases, knowledge hoarders fill
desk drawers, file cabinets, and computer hard drives with mountains of organizational secrets. The toughest KM task is getting users
to believe in sharing knowledge. To achieve an acceptable ROI, the
strategy should be focused on assigning the best resources to the
hardest problems. Obviously, that comes down to the culture and
processes as much as the technology.

Catalyst Management for
Actionable Knowledge
The argument that knowledge is stored in people begs the question,
Then why do knowledge management programs almost always
require the large implementation of a content management platform?
The answer lies in the way humans communicate. Humans are bound
to family, friends, and community. Experiences are a part of this
binding and these shared experiences affect communication.
Regardless of the subject, sooner or later someone will find a
particular point on which to stir a passionate statement, speech, or
debate. Political correctness, which often points out issues that are
too sensitive to discuss, has in some ways engaged individuals to talk
about those very subjects. The ebb and flow of conversation, dialog,
and debate is affected by individual beliefs, experiences, and passions.
Sometimes, these beliefs are shared, providing common ground for
communication. Other times, conflicting beliefs provide obstacles to
understanding, causing words to have different meanings and allow
miscommunication.
Therefore, when discussing KM and content management, the
thought should not be simply to capture, catalog, and distribute
information vital to the business but also to capture the very issues
and ideas that forced the original discussion. In other words, not just
the ideas are important but also the path that brought the individual
or team to those ideas. This content about context is often the very
catalyst of innovation.

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Cata

lyst

Dialog

In discussing catalysts and how they affect KM goals, it is important to understand that individuals often work as idea catalysts for
others. There is always someone in an organization that rubs people
the wrong way. The question is why, and do they serve any use to
the organization? The answer may be discovered if individual’s communication style and habits are examined. Is the individual opinionated? Does the individual continually try to shoot down others
ideas? Can the individual be used as a catalyst to help improve existing proposed ideas, shake out assumptions, or spur new ideas
through the group’s passion to prove this person wrong? This type
of individual can be difficult to work with but truly serve a purpose.
They often teach people civil ways to avoid agreeing with something
that is wrong, just to keep the peace. Figure 7.1 shows how important catalysts are to growing organizational knowledge through
dialog.
Catalysts spur the consideration and debating of ideas until they
become good ideas. However, in the end, someone must take charge

Organizational knowledge stored in individuals
Growth

Figure 7.1
Organizational knowledge growth

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once the knowledge is deemed actionable. When referring to the
way he gained control of the Panama Canal Zone and managed
to succeed in the building of the canal, Theodore Roosevelt said,
“There was much accusation about my having acted in an ‘unconstitutional’ manner. I took the isthmus, started the canal, and
then left Congress—not to debate the canal, but to debate me. While
the debate goes on, the canal does too; and they are welcome to
debate me as long as they wish, provided that we can go on with the
canal.”
Actionable knowledge is knowledge that can be absorbed, applied,
and acted on. Some argue that knowledge is merely information if it
is not actionable knowledge. Today, actionable knowledge has
become vital capital in the conduct of business. Competitive advantage requires greater access to information and, more important, creation of higher levels of actionable knowledge. Success requires
valuing the attention of peers without reducing the amount of knowledge sharing.
Four methods are commonly used to reduce vast mountains of
unstructured data and information while increasing the attention
applied to actionable knowledge that can be absorbed, applied, and
acted on:
1. Pruning. Eliminate obsolete, irrelevant, inaccurate, and out-ofdate information. Removing wood makes the tree stronger.
2. Capturing context. Summary, analysis, comparison, synthesis,
and conclusions all help increase the amount of actionable
knowledge in documents.
3. Presentation. Effective illustration, interactivity, creative
staging, and inspirational storytelling inspire others to take
action.
4. Selecting the medium. Consider the full spectrum of media
available for delivery of the message; different media offer different advantages. Remember that synchronous media improve
attention to the message, and asynchronous media improve
retention of the message. Be sure to focus on your actual
needs and not simply what the vendor wants to sell. Media
include:
Internet and intranet sites (asynchronous sharing).
Video displays and teleconferencing (synchronous sharing).
Slide-based presentations (synchronous sharing).

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Phone calls or face-to-face communication (synchronous
sharing).
Hard-copy reports, e-mail, or faxes (asynchronous sharing).
Direct mail or courier (asynchronous sharing).

Too often, companies fail to realize the importance of these four
activities when they plan their document management systems. This
has resulted in a growing desire to convert huge data stores into
actionable knowledge, by deploying knowledge discovery and data
(KDD) mining applications.
Typically, these technologies work via sophisticated pattern
analysis, consideration of prior knowledge, statistical inference, and
advanced algorithms that analyze massive amounts of data. These
technologies are not cheap and early results have been mixed. So far,
software simply cannot mimic the judgment of people. When you
consider the high price of any enterprise-level KDD application, you
have to wonder why most companies still consider employees as
expenses and the desks they sit at as assets. Often, the best KDD
system available is a strong, ongoing dialog within a large group of
diverse people.

Shared Abstraction Means Common Ground
Abstraction is the process of removing characteristics of something
to reduce it to a set of essential characteristics. Humans do this
instinctively as they examine their surroundings and solve problems.
The process of abstraction relies on setting a goal, defining a data
representation, identifying relevant features, and categorizing the
results. Like a library, the value of an abstraction is as much in what
it leaves out as in what it includes.
Computers do not handle abstractions as well as humans, but
humans must be trained to use this very natural talent consistently
in business. Part of this process is agreeing on a common language
by which the community can communicate. The humans who operate
your business are individuals that have individual passions, backgrounds, and beliefs. A common language brings individuals together
in a way that they can communicate with less frustration brought on
by a communication barrier. The idea is to create common ground
without sacrificing the diversity of experience, opinion, and thought.

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The process of abstraction uses the technique of ignoring a subset
of characteristics and features of a subject. This allows other characteristics to be generalized in an attempt to identify the relevant similarities and patterns. Comparing the results of these generalizations
often leads to powerful insights and actionable knowledge. A simple
example might be the way networking professionals often describe
their technologies in plumbing terms. Ideas like pipes, connectors,
flow rates, and leakage fit well in describing network issues; and they
often point toward potential solutions. Although everything that is
true for plumbing is not necessarily true for networking, the abstraction provides a useful catalyst for new ideas.
In the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy, a pilot drops a Coca-Cola
bottle from his airplane window and deposits a piece of trash deep
in the African jungle. A native of a very remote tribe finds the bottle
and takes it home. Over the next few weeks, the bottle becomes the
center of wonder, experimentation, and discovery for the tribe.
Through the native’s built-in ability of abstraction, the tribe discovers multiple ways the bottle could be used to improve individuals’ lives in the village.
Vigorous debate over the possibilities of the bottle gives way to
jealousy and a desire to control this gift from the gods. As the chief
observes the issues that begin to arise around the bottle and because
he has past experience to draw from, he orders the native who
discovered the curse sent by the gods to get rid of it far from the
accessibility of the community. Even though the bottle was not a
curse sent from the gods, the chief found the abstraction useful
because it brought the tribe a solution to their problem. If the chief
had been instructed on the manufacture of Coke bottles, the lesson
would be worthless, as the knowledge would not be actionable nor
would it address the tribe’s problem.
Regardless of what individuals find before them, they will use their
experiences, knowledge, and abstraction to solve its mystery or at the
very least build a language to describe it. Most of us accept that we
are shaped by our individual experiences, but most of us do not
realize that we also are prisoners of our experiences. Despite outward
appearances, we all experience reality in our own ways. Sometimes,
this leads us more quickly to unique insights; other times, it blinds
us to obvious opportunities. A diversity of abstractions, shared in
constant dialog among the stakeholders, is the best protection from
this type of blindness.

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FileNet—Improving Attention and Retention
Today, most companies understand the critical nature of e-mail
systems to the success of their organization. E-mail enables individuals to communicate asynchronously and have dialog that spans
different time zones and work schedules. Before e-mail, time delays
in communication greatly affected the effectiveness of the message.
Although the telephone is a great technology, it is limited by the
individual’s availability (synchronous), whereas e-mail will wait to
deliver its message (asynchronous). E-mail also has the advantage of
being able to carry visual aids to the recipient to better communicate
the message’s intent.
Similar to how e-mail has added to communication, an enterprise
content manager like FileNet can hold the catalysts of innovation
until a leader comes along to act on them. Innovation typically arrives
in the order of ideas, expertise, and leadership. This is because
someone has to be inspired with a dream, then the technical expertise must be developed, and finally someone must step up and lead.
Skip any step in this hierarchy of innovation and you reach no actionable knowledge. One thing that make this so difficult to achieve in
organizations is that often a member of a different work group must
take each step.
For something to be considered useful knowledge, it must be
actionable. For ideas to be acted on requires the expertise and a
authority to act. It is therefore easy to understand why organizations
that have generated great ideas seem to have difficulty acting on
them. The added obstacle of every group of people working from
somewhat different abstractions makes the confluence of ideas,
expertise, and leadership seem as rare and illusive as true love.
Of the Fortune 100 companies, 93 use FileNet systems today. This
gives those companies a base of existing equipment, applications, and
experience from which to capture ideas and expertise that can be used
with leadership to create innovation catalysts. Capturing ideas and
expertise is only part of the equation. A good idea or even actionable knowledge leads to innovation only in the presence of both
attention and retention by peers. This is where FileNet comes in, not
as the vehicle of KM but as the road that enables the vehicle to
operate.

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Applying Learning to Organizational Processes
An organization must continually be aware of its surrounding
environment. Like any animal in nature, organizations face a rapidly
changing environment, predators, and social issues. Because organizations that are not alert can be damaged or destroyed, they need to
continually use their senses and instincts. Problem recognition usually
occurs at the front lines of a business, but many communication
channels are too focused on top-down messages to allow problems
to escalate upward efficiently.
Animals adapt to environmental changes, such as droughts, by
adapting their bodies to operate leaner and conserve water. Organizations too often fail to sense the economic drought coming or fail
to prepare plans for such environmental changes. Animals have the
advantage of built-in instinct to guide their actions, but organizations
have their own advantage, people. Organizations need to continue to
learn new ways to harness the intellectual power of the individuals
that are a part of their organization.
In the IT world, “grid computing” is quickly gaining popularity
as a way to add processing power through linking many processors.
In the same way, organizations need quick ways to project the current
issues the organization faces to the mass organizational populace for
ideas. Naturally, some issues require confidentiality or must be secure
because of laws that prevent the sharing that information. This does
not remove the authority or responsibility of leadership to make
decisions, but it allows for new ideas to flow upward and gives an
opportunity for providing feedback.
When organizations are polled, individuals deep within an organization often surprise their peers and leadership by offering
exciting innovations that improve the overall process efficiency. These
innovations sometimes reflect the removal of labor-intensive steps
that do little to help the process or allow technology to combine
steps to reduce the wasted attention of the individuals tied to the
process.
As you move down the hierarchy of an organization the compensation drops, but the number of members per level increases. Improving processes at the lower levels can return a sizable decrease in costs.
Managing and leveraging the organization’s intellectual assets can
also improve the overall communication among levels, by demonstrating the value an organization places in individual input.

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Speeding these types of innovations requires a disciplined planning
process that is put into place prior to a need arising. Plans should be
made to include short-term and long-term ways to improve operations to increase efficiently. Short-term solutions include activities
that improve efficiency or reduce cost but are not sustainable over a
long period. Organizations making their lists of these short-term
activities should organize them by cost, ease, and speed of implementation. Then, when environmental changes happen, these
short-term solutions can be rushed into action.
An organization needs to evaluate long-term solutions in a similar
way. Long-term solutions typically have more complexity but often
can be implemented before change forces the issue. These strategic
evolutions often change the operation of the organization forever and
increase its opportunity for survival. Long-term solutions are more
likely to address the fundamental problems within a system, but they
usually require more research, more analysis, and greater levels of
shared vision. One document-based tool for increasing the feeling
of shared mission within an organization is the balanced scorecard.

Balancing Departmental Goals with Balanced Scorecards
Balanced scorecards and organizational development have been hot
trends for several years, and research has shown that building good,
understandable feedback loops can improve both efficiency and
morale. However, in many cases, scorecards simply did not work
because of the metrics tracked, the way the information was communicated to the organization, or the culture itself.
Even if you decide that a balanced scorecard is not for you,
knowing about scorecard tools can be helpful, since some of the tools
can be used independently. A balanced scorecard is a consolidated
list of numbers that reflect the performance of an organization based
on such areas as financials, customers, processes, learning, suppliers,
people, and support systems (see Figure 7.2). The metrics should
measure not just important outcomes but also the factors that influence those outcomes.
The basic philosophy of the balanced scorecard is that people will
focus on what is being measured—more because it shows what is
cared about than because of financial incentives. This gives company
leaders a strong communication tool for pointing to where attention

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Cause and Effect Linkage
Profitability

Highquality
service

Consistent
applications
and services

Skilled
stable staff

Process
improvement

Training and
employee
retention

Perspective

Objectives

Measures

Scores

Targets

Financial
Financial
Financial

Increase Profit
Increase Profit
Increase Profit

Billed Hours per Employee
Project to Baseline Hours Ratio
Number of New Project Assessments

44
1:5
3

Increase
Increase
Increase

Customer
Customer
Customer

Improve customer service
Improve customer service
Improve customer service

Requests to Problems Ratio
Customer Survey Results
Account Unlock Requests

10:1
85%
15

Reduce
Increase
Reduce

Process
Process
Process

Reduce Server Load
Reduce Downtime
Improve Stability

Average Arm Movements
Availability
Incidents

1500
99.99
5

Reduce
Increase
Reduce

Learning
Learning
Learning

Raise In-House Expertise
Improve Performance
Increase

Employee Turnover Rate
% Work Time Devoted to Training
Knowledge Base Authoring

0%
2%
10%

Reduce
Increase
Increase

Figure 7.2
Balanced scorecard example

needs to be applied. Within most organizations, an individual’s actual
behavior often focuses on financial measures, but that may not
always help the person improve his or her results. Why? Because if
you tell your employees to increase shareholder value, how are they
supposed to know what to do?
First, determine what constitutes building shareholder value. Is it
high customer loyalty, high quality, or low-priced products? Once
that has been determined, the balanced scorecard is used to communicate these measurements regularly. This provides the team with a
regularly reoccurring opportunity to improve. Identifying the most
critical areas for improvement is often all employees need to start
changing their behaviors. Empirical research and a history of success
stories show that strategic measurement methods like balanced scorecards can work wonders. However, in many cases, scorecards alone
simply do not work. Process flaws are often the culprits.

Process Evolution
An example of an organization improving its processes is given in
Figure 7.3, which looks at a typical accounts payable process and
some of the evolutions it has gone through. This diagram looks only
at the invoice approver’s component of the process.

FileNet and Knowledge Management

Second Evolution

Reaction

Become aware of
responsibility to
approve a invoice

Awareness

Become aware of
responsibility to
approve an invoice

Launch imaging
application

Track down
purchaser and verify
purchase

Query for invoice

Reaction

Reflection

Approve invoice

Reflection

Reaction

Mail or fax invoice to
accounting

Reaction and
Reflection

Process mail and
distribute to owners

Reaction

Awareness

Attention type

First Evolution

131

Figure 7.3
Evolving an existing process

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Figure 7.3 is split into two main columns, first evolution and
second evolution. These columns represent the changes that happen
in an organization as the process improves. The diagram also examines the process from the perspective of the three types of attention:
awareness, reaction, and reflection. Workers perform their best when
all three types of attention are maximized and focused on the business process.

First Evolution
In the first evolution, the process represents a basic paper invoice
management process and assumes that an enterprise resource planning system exists within the accounting department.

Step 1. Process Mail and Distribute It to Owners
This process box represents the manual processing of mail at the different field locations. This process is replaced, in the second evolution, by centralized image capture and an ERP e-mail notification of
an invoice awaiting approval. The type of attention typically used
during this process is reaction.
Typically, reactions are based on previously established procedures. If reactions become a problem area in a process, you may need
to reconsider your procedures. Even the “best practices” become
obsolete over time, and often the mere act of creating formal documentation for a process points out logical problems and opportunities for improvement.

Step 2. Become Aware of the Responsibility to
Approve the Invoice
This process box represents the attention required to recognize the
need for action and understand one’s responsibilities. The attention
used during this process is awareness. In many cases, awareness is
limited by poor notification mechanisms and other technologies that
do not value attention. Portal technologies often attempt to improve
information awareness by reducing the number of user interfaces
required for job performance. Other awareness improving tech-

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nologies include monitoring software, automated escalation systems,
subscription systems, and syndication of content.

Step 3. Track down the Purchaser and Verify the Purchase
In a semimanual process, significant legwork can be required to reconcile an invoice to the original purchaser or requester to ensure that
the item purchased indeed was received. The attention typically used
during this process is both reaction and reflection.

Step 4. Approve the Invoice
During this process step, the individual with approval authorization
approves the invoice by reconciling it with receipts and any additional background information and manually approving the invoice.
The attention typically used during this process is reflection. Reflection is called for when predefined procedures are not sufficient to
resolve an issue. Reflection is a uniquely human activity where users
strive for answers based on available information and their own past
experiences. Typically, tasks that involve high degrees of reflection,
such as exception handling, are extremely difficult to automate.

Step 5. Mail or Fax the Invoice to Accounting
This step of the process typically concludes the approval process and
begins the next accounting process of paying the invoice (not shown).
The approver or an administrative assistant may handle this step. The
attention typically used during this process is reaction. This concludes
the first evolution column.

Second Evolution
This column represents the first round of automation made to the
approvers’ process. In the first evolution, the process was a basic
paper process and assumes an enterprise resource planning system
exists within the accounting department. The second evolution incorporates the ERP system with an e-mail system and an imaging system
to provide a notification to the approver in the field. The notification

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makes the user aware that he or she has an invoice to view in the
imaging system and approve within the ERP system.
To facilitate these changes, all vendors doing business with the
organization have to be notified of the address for a new centralized
scanning and capture center for the organization. Instead of mailing
invoices to one of a number of business locations, the vendors are
required to mail the invoices to the new centralized scanning and
capture center. Because approvers in the field require viewing the
invoice before approving it, an imaging component is added to the
approval process.

Step 1. Become Aware of Responsibility to
Approve the Invoice
This process box represents the attention required to understand
one’s responsibilities and possibly learn or review the process and
procedures required to complete the activity that comes with this
responsibility. During this step, a notification is received by the
approver, making him or her aware of an invoice awaiting approval
in the ERP system. The time required to become aware of the need
to verify an invoice for approval is drastically reduced because users
watch their e-mail in-boxes for changes much more closely than they
watch the ERP system.

Step 2. Launch the Imaging Application
During this evolution of the process the imaging application is tied
to the ERP solution, but both must be launched and logged in to.
The attention that is typically used during this process is reaction. A
user reacts to the need to verify an invoice by finding and launching
the imaging application and querying for the invoice that they need
to see. Although training users to find invoices in the imaging system
can be somewhat costly and time consuming, it is much quicker and
easier than digging through file cabinets and desktops.

Step 3. Query for the Invoice
Both the ERP and the imaging application require user knowledge of
the individual interfaces for navigating to the invoice data record and
invoice image. The attention typically used during this process is reac-

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tion. The user reacts to the invoice verification notice by both launching the imaging application and following the query procedures
previously set up. The problems come in when procedures become
inconsistent or are simply not defined at all.

Step 4. Approve the Invoice
During this process step the individual with approval authorization
approves the invoice via the ERP application and records any extra
comments. The type of attention used during this process is reflection, and this is the key activity of this particular business function.
The main effect in automating the approval process is a reduction
in the time required by the approver to handle the paperwork. Additional benefits include keeping the invoice and all relevant information pertaining to the invoice available as well as removing the need
for packaging and mailing the invoice information to the Accounting Department.
One drawback of this evolution is that it does not remove complexity for the approver: The approver has fewer steps but must be
trained to understand the ERP system and the imaging system. Also,
more time is spent reacting than reflecting.
As the process continues to evolve, we see additional improvements through the refining of systems and procedures. Figure 7.4
compares the second evolution with the third evolution.

Third Evolution
The right column, third evolution, represents the second round of
automation made to the approvers’ process. In the second evolution,
the process incorporated the ERP system with the e-mail system to
provide the approver in the field notification that he or she has an
invoice to approve within the ERP system. The third evolution picks
up at this point and pushes forward.
The third evolution integrates the ERP system, imaging system,
and e-mail system to a Web application that maintains a client
relationship with the ERP system. Nightly extracts keep the Web
application up-to-date and preclude the need for the approver to log
into the ERP system. The Web system is also linked to the imaging
application and maintains a direct link to the images via URLs.

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Awareness
Reaction

Launch imaging
application

Reaction

Query for invoice

Reflection

Approve invoice

Become aware of
responsibility to
approve an invoice

Approve invoice

Reflection

Become aware of
responsibility to
approve a invoice

Third Evolution

Awareness
and Reaction

Attention Type

Second Evolution

Figure 7.4
Continuing process evolution, the third evolution

The result is a much more user-friendly system, with automated
workflow to assure consistent procedures. Other benefits from this
evolution include the ability to reduce user software licensing costs
and eliminate the need for training invoice approvers on how to
query the imaging system.

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Step 1. Become Aware of the Responsibility to
Approve the Invoice
During this process step, the approver in the field receives an e-mail
that he or she has an invoice that needs approval. The e-mail contains a URL link to the image that requires no navigational training
to understand. The e-mail also contains the ERP record’s information embedded in the e-mail, removing the need for the approver to
log into the ERP system. Although the approver is still required to
know his or her responsibility for approving organizational invoices,
the amount of time and attention that this process requires has been
greatly reduced.

Step 2. Approve the Invoice
During this final process step, the individual with approval authorization approves the invoice by choosing a link embedded in the
notification e-mail. The embedded link functionality sends an update
to the ERP system for posting. The type of attention typically used
during this process is reflection.
The impact in this evolution is the reduced approval process steps
facilitated through the automation of the e-mail notification and the
strict management of workflow. These improvements reduce the time
required by the approver to handle the entire process and allows for
critical attention to be focused on the individual’s primary job function. The new process is focused more on reflection, because many
of the reactions have been automated and awareness has been
reduced.
One drawback of the second evolution is that it does not remove
complexity. The approver has fewer steps than before but requires
training to understand the ERP system and the imaging system. The
third evolution reduces complexity and any retraining could probably be handled via a document e-mailed to the approvers.
These examples have been high level, and it is easy for the reader
to ask why not just jump to the third evolution from the beginning?
Although that conclusion may be easy to draw from the provided
information, real world situations are much more complex and
seldom well documented. Individuals in the field using these processes
everyday are full of excellent ideas for improvements. Their suggestions may need refining and technical input, but bringing them

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together with technically savvy analysts pays off. Workflow management systems make creating these feedback loops much easier.

Using Workflows to Add Structure to Data
The FileNet Corporation produces a vast array of products focused
mostly on managing unstructured data and managing workflows.
Unstructured data represent one of the most vulnerable areas of most
organizations today, and workflows are one of the strongest ways to
gain control over unstructured data.
Managing unstructured data is like herding cattle, it is slow, dirty
work. Organizing unstructured data can be terribly cumbersome.
FileNet’s management tools allow organizations to take this information and harness it into powerful workflows that provide for more
automation, accountability, and more dynamic feedback loops.
In Figure 7.5, unstructured data lie as a roadblock in the business
flow. The reason it is a roadblock in most organizations is their inability to gain actionable information from the data. This typically results
in labor-intensive work-arounds that are unable to capture the true
value of the unstructured data.
When the business flow hits the unstructured data, it splits into
two streams, one fork flows into a procedural work-around able to

Procedural
work-around

Business flow

Database
containing
some
unstructured
data

Unstructured data

Disrupted business flow

Figure 7.5
Roadblock caused by unstructured data

Business flow

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capture some of the unstructured data to use as the business flow
resumes. The second fork represents the lost initiative and business
flow that to often happens when organizations fail in their attempt
to use unstructured data.
To harness unstructured data, a context needs to be captured
(preferably at receipt or creation) and added into an object manager
that serves the organization’s business need. FileNet’s object managers include imaging, workflow, document management, and Web
content services. Imaging, content, and document management all
enable the manipulation of unstructured data, but the workflow components best exploit the unstructured data. In Figure 7.6, the workflow manages the unstructured data using FileNet tools and resumes
the business flow carrying the relevant unstructured data along in a
database feed.
This is a very high-level view but only to make an important point
about the crippling impact of unstructured data. Every organization
has some unstructured data, how it chooses to deal with the data
drives its adaptability and survivability.
FileNet tools, like many other toolsets, can be used to overcome
the issues described in the unstructured data diagrams; however, business expertise is needed to make the workflows a reality. FileNet can
provide the document management experience needed or an organization can employ a FileNet ValueNet partner. In either case, the
FileNet expert’s knowledge must align with the business expert’s
knowledge. Their competing objectives must be balanced and expectations set accurately.

Unstructured
Business flow

FileNet

data
Figure 7.6
Dealing with unstructured data

Database
containing
relevant
unstructured
data

Business flow

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Some organizations may be uninterested in a FileNet ValueNet
partnership and have reasons for not wanting to purchase resources
directly from FileNet. In these situations, the organization should
look to the large consulting firms like IBM. In addition to IBM’s own
imaging offering, it also manages some very large FileNet installations and has developed strong centers of expertise. The tools and
expertise are available, so organizations no longer have excuses for
not attacking the unstructured data issue.

Success Story
A county’s assistance department is faced with new state and federal
government regulations requiring the collection of documentation
from applicants and recipients of human services. The federal agency
hopes to inform decision makers with well-analyzed aggregate information. Unfortunately, the department’s ability to comply is limited
because case folders containing critical documents are kept by individual caseworkers.
Because of a previous success using FileNet, the county again turns
to FileNet to help develop a solution. Using FileNet’s capture professional and image services products, the county begins capturing
all the incoming content electronically, including forms, personnel
documents, applications, and faxes. Once captured, the documents
are distributed to caseworkers via online in baskets and stored centrally in electronic folders, where all the content is organized by document type, case number, and client name.
The solution enabled the county to save 35,000 hours per year
through ease of access and the use of online forms and fax capabilities. Additional improvements include the ability to access content
quickly, easily, and simultaneously by multiple workers. Even while
undergoing staff reductions, customer service was improved, storage
of paper documents was reduced, and 3000 square feet of valuable
office space was reclaimed. In addition to meeting the federal guidelines, the new system delivered improved customer service by
enabling the workers to respond faster to service and information
requests, and it eliminated the need for clients to resubmit information when seeking additional services or benefits.

Chapter 8

FileNet and
Enterprise
Resource
Planning
One machine can do the work of 50 ordinary men. No machine
can do the work of one extraordinary man.
—Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915)

Key Objectives
Understand that ERP applications are used to carry out
common business functions usually based on very documentcentric processes.
Recognize the need for ERP systems to be integrated with other
strategic computing resources, such as imaging applications,
mainframe applications, and sales databases.
Understand how to implement ERP integration solutions that
are secure and flexible enough to extend outside the organizational boundaries.

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Become familiar with ServerLink (formerly known as
ArchiveLink), the approved application program interface for
connecting document management systems to SAP.
Learn the different types of archiving relevant within an SAP
system and understand the differences between late, early, and
simultaneous archiving.
Understand the capabilities of the FileNet middleware component Document Warehouse for SAPTM.

Enterprise Resource Planning
An important topic when discussing imaging solutions is enterprise
resource planning integration. Since the level of integration varies by
product and project design, it pays to research this issue thoroughly
before any ERP implementation. Another key factor in the ERP arena
is whether the design, oversight, and implementation should be
handled internally or externally.
ERP applications are used to carry out common business functions, such as financial management, plant maintenance, order entry,
procurement, billing, warehousing, transportation, and human
resource. Centralizing these key functions in a database application
allows executives a bird’s-eye view of their operations to observe
major trends and still enabling them “drilling down” to troubleshoot
a single transaction.
The importance of these applications often requires organizational
IT departments to integrate their ERP systems with other strategic
computing resources, such as imaging applications, mainframe applications, and sales databases. Most ERP solutions have basic imaging
functionality built-in, along with APIs to integrate other imaging
systems, applications, and workflows. The major ERP vendors
include SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle, and Baan.
Typically, ERP solutions are at the very heart of organizational
initiatives to automate business processes. Often these initiatives
require the reengineering of internal processes to match the design of
the ERP solution being implemented. Most ERP-savvy consulting
organizations tell you that altering the default ERP processes
creates significant risk during system upgrades. This calls for significant planning to create integration points that are effective and
sustainable.

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143

SAP does not provide enterprise content management capabilities.
However, to perform business tasks efficiently, SAP users need easy
access to an external content management system containing related,
unstructured information. Document Warehouse for SAP (DWSAP)
document linking and viewing enables SAP users to easily find,
manage, and link externally stored documents to SAP transactions
and enables faster processing of payments and other activities.
Another complexity to imaging integration with ERP solutions is
that the ERP solution may extend outside the organization’s boundaries and require the imaging solution to be flexible and secure
enough to handle this. If the goal is supply line integration, you can
expect to have to open part of your network to outside users, such
as vendors, customers, and new clients. This type of openness can
create some complex networking issues, but the payoff is often
massive. The DWSAP software integrates the FileNet and SAP applications via the SAP ServerLink interface. Warning: This application
was formerly known as and is still often referred to as ArchiveLink.
See Figure 8.1 for an overview of a common FileNet/SAP integration
scenario.

BAPI

SAP document
management
system

SAP business
application
ServerLink
(ArchiveLink)

SAP business
workflow

Figure 8.1
SAP and FileNet communication

FileNet
imaging services
or
content services

A Consultant’s Guide to Enterprise Content Management

Server

IDM for R3
ClientLink
client

SAP GUI
client

Gateway

FileNet's
panagon
client

SAP

Server

cServer
Bar code

Client

144

FileNet

FileNET

imaging
services

content
services

Figure 8.2
Integration layers
It is helpful to understand the three main layers of the imaging and
content management integration to any ERP solution. The three integration layers are client, gateway, and server (see Figure 8.2). Each
layer contains components that affect other components in other
layers. SAP is used in the following list to demonstrate these zones
and the FileNet products that support each zone of integration.
Gateway integration. The starting point for platform-to-platform integration is a common set of protocols that allows different systems to communicate with each other. Encapsulating
integration components into the portals or gateways between
systems can make connecting them together as simple as scripting tasks within a graphical user interface. Gateway integration
allows advanced functions such as bar code indexing and
automatic document or data capture from fax- and Web-based
electronic forms.

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Server integration. In mixed computing environments, essential
data may be held in an unwieldy combination of proprietary
database and storage servers. Standards such as XML and technologies including data transformation services give users the
ability to access and query the information they need without
having to worry about where it resides or how it is stored.
Client integration. As the power of an existing infrastructure
expands by adding new functions and services, it is critical that
the new technologies operate well with existing applications,
business rules, and data formats. Integrating multiple systems
within a single interface can be beneficial in improving process
speed and reducing training costs. Minimizing the number of
custom interfaces an employee must learn can also reduce help
desk calls. Integrating your processes to include fewer interfaces
helps make sure the solution to data overload does not become
part of the problem.
These complexities often lead major companies to seek out imaging
and document management systems “certified” by their ERP vendor.
Becoming certified requires creating an integration point through an
API approved by the ERP vendor. For example, a Business API or
BAPI is an interface to one of SAP’s R/3 applications. It enables thirdparty developers to write enhancements that interact with the R/3
modules. Once the middleware has been written, it is submitted for
review and testing by the ERP vendor. If cleared, the ERP provider
certifies the middleware product and makes a commitment not to
break the integration point during regular upgrade cycles.
This keeps middleware software developers from wasting their
time, customers from wasting their money, and allows the ERP
vendor to manage strategic alliances with other software makers. The
approved API for connecting document management systems to SAP
is called ServerLink (formerly ArchiveLink) for R/3, FileNet created
the middleware component Document Warehouse for SAP to meet
this specification.

Document Warehouse for SAP
Document Warehouse for SAP enables SAP’s business applications to
access FileNet document images, as well as providing document and

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data archiving for SAP. The application consists of two key components: IDM Services for R/3 and IDM Desktop for R/3. IDM Services
for R/3 provides server-side integration and IDM Desktop for R/3
provides client-side integration for use on a desktop or Web server.
SAP ServerLink connects SAP systems to document management
systems that utilize SAP’s API to build a connection. Most major
imaging and document management software companies have
written components for ServerLink. SAP integrates with the various
imaging and document management systems via a standard set of
messages that perform the following ServerLink functions:
Process incoming documents before, during, or after SAP
archiving.
Link incoming documents to SAP transactions.
Link incoming documents to workflow items being processed
in SAP.
Archive ongoing documents generated in SAP into the FileNet
system.
Retrieve and display documents linked to SAP transactions.
Automatically store data archiving files and provide access as
needed.
In the SAP world, an archive is defined as a logical representation
of a physical storage system. With the DWSAP 5.0 release, customers
can work with both major interface methods: thick client and Web.
Both IDM Desktop and the thin-client Web viewer can be used with
SAP via the ServerLink middleware integration component.

Client Integration
FileNet Image Services offers many different ways to integrate clients
with ERP solutions and other software packages. With the major
ERP solutions FileNet offers tight client integration. The client integration is referred to as tight when the ERP solution maintains the
overall control, passing the user to the imaging application when necessary and then returning the users back to a refreshed ERP interface
on exiting the image viewer (see Figure 8.3).
With “tight” integration, the end user is often unaware that he or
she has launched an application outside of the ERP solution. The

FileNet and Enterprise Resource Planning

ERP client

Passing contol

Returning contol

147

FileNET
imaging client

closing
application

Figure 8.3
Tight integration between FileNet and SAP
ERP application launches the imaging application and passes the critical object information to the imaging application that, depending on
how the application is configured, may or may not require a second
login.
Without “tight” client integration, the user is required to launch
the imaging application and manually transfer the key index field
data to the imaging application search interface. This follows the customary login security verification stage. Such “loose” integration has
some benefits, including making it somewhat easier to troubleshoot
application failures, but most users prefer the speed and ease of use
offered by tight integration.

Archiving with FileNet
When implementing business application software, application data
archiving should be taken into account right from the outset. Since
volumes of transaction and master data can expand rapidly in the
course of productive operations, consider how to ease the pressure
on the database.

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Some side effects of rapid SAP system growth are these:
Since the physical tables are usually stored on hard disks
directly attached to the database server, an increase in storage
requirements is unavoidable.
Due to an increase in administration, in an effort to support the
database, maintenance windows (system backup, table maintenance, and so forth) claim increasingly unacceptable amounts
of time.
The increased number of rows per database table delays basic
operations (searching tables, print jobs, and so forth). The accumulation of these delays leads to a degradation of response
times when accessing the data.
ERP solutions generate vast quantities of data, which often must
be maintained for years; for this reason, FileNet with its design for
long-term storage is an excellent choice for ERP archival storage. SAP
recommends archiving application data to reduce database growth
and improve system performance; this means moving SAP data from
SAP database tables to a FileNet system. Archiving frees up the ERP
database and optimizes the system’s performance.
According to FileNet, only about 15% of SAP installations have
implemented a third-party archiving solution.
Companies typically implement FileNet’s DWSAP product to
enable the following features and functionality:
Save training costs by providing easy access to image or document content, stored in a FileNet system, via folders or queues
from within SAP.
Archive SAP data for later use by utilizing the SAP ServerLink
and DMS (SAP’s Document Management System) standard
APIs for linking FileNet content to SAP records or documents.
Sharing documents like POs, invoices, vouchers statements,
remittances, correspondence, material safety sheets, certificates,
drawings, proofs of delivery, and reports.
Every business process uses documents, and most of those documents
are still in paper form. However, the continued development of
business-to-business (B2B) data exchange demands instantaneous,
global access to documents and the information stored in them. Any
company or department that supports B2B efforts can gather sub-

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149

stantial savings through the electronic archiving of documents. These
benefits can include faster processing, reduced costs, shortened
response times, and better ways to meet legal requirements for storing
data.

Types of Archiving within SAP
The three basic classes of archiving are inbound archiving, outbound
archiving, and data archiving.

Inbound Document Archiving
Inbound document archiving links inbound documents, captured into
image services or content services, to an SAP record. Most ERPrelated imaging needs relate to inbound document archiving, of
which there are three primary types:
1. Early archiving. Support staff scan documents when they arrive
at the company, often performing indexing later in the process.
To gain the maximum advantage from this approach, some
organizational and process issues must be addressed. The benefits can be significant and usually much greater than in the late
archiving approach, since it is so easy to use early archiving
with manual or automated workflow systems to globalize business processes. In connection with early archiving, many companies use late archiving to handle exceptions.
2. Late archiving. Dedicated data capture staff scan documents
after paper versions are processed. Once the documents are
processed (e.g., a purchase invoice is entered, checked, authorized, and posted), employees then batch-scan and -process the
documents, so they are accessible via the ERP system. A very
common way of enabling this is to apply a bar code sticker to
the front of each document during document sorting. The bar
code number is then captured into the ERP database, which
facilitates the storage of a link between the scanned image and
the related ERP data without requiring significant changes to
the business process or manual data entry.
3. Simultaneous archiving. It is possible to extract information
automatically from the imaged documents via OCR. Software

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tools are available that “learn” to recognize certain types of
scanned images (e.g., is the image an invoice and, if so, from
which supplier or is it correspondence, statement, or the like)
and process them according to previously established business
rules. This delivers the benefit of removing the need to have
indexers key in data, however it usually requires some ongoing
quality control. It usually works best in low-volume environments with extremely consistent documents coming in.

Outbound Document Archiving
Capturing outbound documents can be used to improve workflow,
accountability, and processing efficiency. Outgoing documents
include quotations, sales invoices, delivery notes, certificates, purchase orders, and the like. Furthermore, long-term access to periodically created reports is often required. Additionally, some systems
produce lists of documents, containing links to original documents.
Implementing a document management solution for outbound
documents can dramatically reduce photocopying, printing, and
postage costs. To be prepared for regulatory auditing, many types of
documents have to be archived in a way that allows them to be easily
retrieved to electronic formats via bulk queries.

Data Archiving
When implementing business application software, application data
archiving has to be taken into account right from the outset. Many
ERP systems experience volume-related problems as early as 15–18
months after going into production, depending on the modules implemented and the number of transactions processed. Often the choice
is made to simply throw more disk and CPU resources at the
problem; but it frequently requires upgrading the development, question and answer, and production machines in parallel. Also more and
more database administrators may need to be employed, increasing
the time it takes to back up the system.
The best solution is to archive the data to some external media,
physically deleting data from the database as it is archived. This keeps
the database at a constant, predictable size; reduces growth of the
disk farm; maintains performance; and over time can lead to a twothirds reduction in total cost of ownership. Optical media, although

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slower than magnetic, usually satisfies the most stringent legal
requirements; and the data still are centrally accessible, although not
directly online.
Results and achievements are noticeable after the data archiving
project has been completed in the production system. Changes in
system performance and in backup and administration time are especially apparent, although it is difficult to measure improvements in
these areas prior to the project. Hardware cost assessments, however,
can be estimated using the current database growth, along with the
cost of additional hardware resources needed without archiving.
Whatever data archiving option you choose, it should be developed in coordination with any ongoing enterprise data quality management initiatives. A data quality management project has three
main segments: data cleanup, data archiving, and data prevention.
Each segment can be done separately or in conjunction with the
others.

Three Segments of Data Quality Management
1. Data cleanup. Data eligible for archiving, due to age, may not
be of the necessary status and therefore cannot be archived.
This occurs if the business process was not properly closed in
SAP, even though the process may be complete from a business
point of view. To ensure that all data beyond the specified residence time can be archived, these processes must first be
“cleaned up” (completed) in SAP.
2. Data prevention. The creation of certain types of data can be
deactivated. If you no longer require the data from a business
point of view, automatic updating should be deactivated to
prevent such data from entering the SAP database. Other types
of data can be created on a summarized (aggregated) level,
reducing the overall amount of data created.
3. Data archiving. This process relocates aging application data
attached to completed business transactions and, therefore, no
longer needed for online operations. Data are moved from the
R/3 database to archive files. Data archiving handles data that
cannot be prevented, easily deleted, or that needs to be saved
for legal or auditing reasons. FileNet provides an excellent
repository for SAP data archiving.

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Success Story
The disbursements accounts payable group for an airline is consistently missing tax audit deadlines. In time, the company begins
to incur severe penalties. Invoice tracking had become a timeconsuming, labor-intensive process that caused delays due to misplaced invoices, which led to angry vendors and missed tax audit
deadlines. Eventually, the airline realizes that SAP alone provides
insufficient invoice tracking capabilities to meet the company’s
complex needs.
The airline cannot afford the unplanned expense of these fines and
penalties or the overtime costs associated with the paper management
tasks of dealing with lost documents. To remedy the situation, the
company seeks an automated invoice handling system that would
work with SAP and still integrate with an existing purchasing system.
This would help improve service to everyone who needs fast, accurate access to invoice data, including vendors, tax auditors, and internal employees.
In the past, approved invoices were received and gathered into
folders. Each “keyer” collected a folder of paper invoices, typed them
into SAP, then filed each individually into file cabinets. If there was
a problem with an invoice, the keyer had to walk the invoice to the
appropriate person to solve the problem. In addition to the extra time
expended on handling the invoice, this manual process also carried
the risk of lost or misplaced paperwork. This inefficient system had
a drastic impact on the productivity of everyone processing the
invoices.
The airline chooses to leverage an existing relationship with
FileNet to implement a new, imaging system within the SAP environment for the accounts payable group. A FileNet Document
Warehouse for SAP solution is implemented, using an internal centralized capture department to digitize the incoming invoices on
receipt.
With the new FileNet system in place, both SAP users and nonSAP users receive instant access to all invoices in the system. This
sent productivity soaring. The time-consuming process of physically
routing papers from desk to desk is eliminated, as is the risk of losing
or misfiling invoices. Most important, the group began meeting its
tax audit deadlines and avoiding fines and penalties.
This solution uses the following four-step data capture process:

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1. Scanning. Invoices are received by mail and fax. They are
prepped for scanning, batched with headers, then scanned and
imprinted with an SAP link number. Faxed invoices are received
by a FileNet capture application and placed into batches for
indexing.
2. Indexing. All batched invoices are saved in the FileNet repository and routed through the system to the indexers, who enter
index values and route them to distributing.
3. Distributing. Based on the index values, the distributors route
the invoices to one of several queues, depending on the type
and status of the invoice.
4. Linking. In an automated linking process, processors enter the
SAP link number and invoice number into their automated purchasing and inventory control system. The purchasing and
inventory control system processes batch runs nightly and
creates SAP invoice transactions.
The benefits of the process improvement include the following:
Reduced costs associated from manual paper handling labor.
Elimination of fines due to lost invoice documents and failed
tax audits.
Cost savings from ending the storage of paper invoices with an
archive vendor.
Easier access to invoices by non-SAP users, saving on software
licensing costs.
Improved visibility and tracking of invoices.
Decreased turn-around time and follow-up on “problem”
invoices, through automated exception handling workflow.

Chapter 9

Funding and
FileNet
For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down, first,
and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish, it?
Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to
finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, this man
began to build, and was not able to finish.
—Luke 14:28–30

Key Objectives
Learn tips for preparing to bid and gain approval for a FileNet
implementation.
Become familiar with a number of different FileNet architectural solutions for common content management needs, such
as Web interfaces and distributed document capture.
Learn more about the basic FileNet system architecture and
how it manages its memory caches to improve performance.
Get a general overview of the range of FileNet system licensing
costs and what can be expected.
Understand how to expand the FileNet environment to include
a load-balanced Web farm and external production printing
and fax servers.

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Recognize where to find promising document management supporters within your organization and how to successfully gain
funding approval.
Know how to improve your chances of gaining project-funding
approval by combining imaging initiatives with existing knowledge management initiatives within your organization.
Know the basic job roles and functional issues of data capture
center operations.
Gain a detailed understanding of what resources are required
to manage a document imaging project and conversion on a
continuous basis.
Understand how new regulations, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley
Act of 2002, create increased need for content management and
workflow systems within organizations.

Projecting the Cost
Before an organization leaps into any purchase or project, it must
be able to assess the full cost. History is full of stories where the cost
was not fully considered, resulting in a failure of some sort. Missing
or hidden costs, scope creep, inexperience, and poor project management can affect the cost of a project. These issues must be factored in
as possibilities when building an assessment, but first you must capture
the big items. This chapter will arm you with information to prepare
for bidding and gaining approval for a FileNet implementation.
FileNet purchases are not for the weak of heart or companies that
do not plan to be around for long. The dot.com phase of the information age will be remembered for its flashy companies, which made
lots of promises and delivered little. These are not the kind of companies that can afford to purchase FileNet or other high-end imaging
products. Established companies that seek to build an architecture to
support a sustainable future usually put FileNet systems into place.
FileNet systems are built to keep information available for decades.
First, an example of a typical FileNet implementation’s costs are
examined. Second, complexity is added into the model by adding in
a distributed capture operation; and finally, we look at a Web-access
model with its high-level costs. This is not the final word on FileNet
system costs but simply a starting point to begin negotiations and
help set expectations.

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SCSI

AIX UNIX
FileNet IS Root
Server Ver 4.1

FileNet OSAR
6 x 30-GB drives
107 platters
3.2 terabytes

(A) FileNET
root server
production
Intranet

AIX UNIX
FileNet IS Root
Server Ver 4.1

(B) FileNet
root server
development
Figure 9.1
Basic FileNet image services installation: (A) image services and
optical storage, (B) image services development system
Figure 9.1 shows a basic FileNet image services installation with
no frills at all. The system consists of a primary FileNet Image Services server with attached optical storage unit for generating tranlogs
for disaster backup and a development system that contains everything but the OSAR.

Basic System (AP Configuration)
The installation uses the optical storage and retrieval unit as its
primary storage and a large Page cache to enable quick retrieval of

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the most active documents. This type of configuration is good for
accounts payables systems because it allows 6–9 months worth of
invoices to remain in the Page cache, while the older documents are
retrieved from the OSAR when needed. Retrieval time from cache
should be 3–5 seconds for a 1–3 page invoice. From the OSAR, it
should take between 8–11 seconds, depending on network traffic and
configuration.
When evaluating the size of Page cache to determine the disk space
needed, compute the total number of monthly invoice pages (not
documents), times the number of months they need to be available
for immediate review, times 50 KB (50,000 bytes). Double this
number—that should provide sufficient storage space for the permanent database, Oracle database, BES cache, and Page cache.
However, note that most companies plan to roll out a single FileNet
system to serve many document types, so build it to scale upward
over time.
Figure 9.2 shows the relationship between the two memory
caching components of a FileNet application server. Although the
BES cache and Page cache are separate, they are tied together when
setting up and distributing the overall disk space. It is important to
make overall disk space requirements estimates that allow for all four
areas together. Later on, allocate the overall cache space as BES
cache, Page cache, permanent database, and Oracle database.

Basic System (AP Configuration) FileNet Costs
The system shown in Figure 9.1 is a basic FileNet system built on an
accounts payable model, with both the production and development
system shown. Table 9.1 contains the FileNet components and their
approximate costs. This is a high-level look at typical FileNet system
licensing costs and contains none of the labor, hosting, or hardware
costs.
Table 9.1 lays out the high-level FileNet costs for the basic system
described in Figure 9.1. It does not contain user licenses costs, but it
does contain a cost range for an OSAR unit. The unit listed is an
OSAR 107HTL, with four 30-GB drives. This unit has 107 optical
slots for 30-GB optical platters. The storage capacity for this
unit, fully populated with optical platters, is approximately 3.2
terabytes.

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Oracle
database

Permanent
database

BES cache
This cache is used during the
capture phase of imaging by
the scanners and indexers.
Once a batch is completed, it
is committed to the OSAR,
written to optical
storage, and copied to the
Page cache.

AIX UNIX
FileNet IS root
Server Ver 4.1

Page cache
This cache facilitates quick
retrieval by maintaining
recently created or accessed
items to prevent the need to
retrieve from optical storage.
Items are kept according to
FIFO (first in, first out).

Figure 9.2
FileNet memory cache division

Table 9.1
Typical FileNet Licensing Costs
FileNet Product

Cost Range ($)

Enterprise image services
Optical drivers, high capacity
OSAR 107HTL, 4 ¥ 30-GB drives
Enterprise image services development

38,000
11,000
210,000
6,000

42,000
13,000
260,000
7,000

Total

265,000

322,000

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The Plasmon optical platters used in this OSAR setup are 12” platters, each containing 30 GB of space, and have a cost range of
$560–600 each. The approximate media cost for a fully populated
OSAR is $59,360–63,600. Note: These costs do not include client
licenses costs.

Basic System (AP Configuration) with Peripheral Components
In Figure 9.3, we add the peripheral components into the picture.
These include fax and print servers and a Web environment.
A Web farm can be very important when considering a FileNet solution. It allows for additional stability for the end users and reduces the
overall cost of packaging thick client applications and software pushes
to the end users. We cannot overemphasize the importance of good
planning when considering a rollout to a large user population.
The figure shows a configuration of a Web farm with four Web
servers controlled by a Cisco director (load balancer). The licenses
costs for four FileNet Web servers (Web services) are in the range of
$4000–6000 each.
The figure also shows the peripheral print and fax environment. The
license cost for these products are in the range of $4000–6000 each.
The figure shows a basic FileNet system with addition peripheral
environments (Web access and print and fax). The FileNet root
servers for production and development are shown as AIX UNIX
servers; however, on small systems, these can be NT-based operating
systems. (Keep in mind that if an NT-based operating system is used
instead of AIX, the auditing capabilities of “check sum” are forfeited.) If the organization plans on more than 70–80 concurrent
users, UNIX would be the recommend platform.
The Web environment and the print and fax environments operate
on Microsoft NT-based servers. The size of the Web farm is tied
directly to the number of concurrent users. A good rule of thumb is
approximately 75–80 concurrent users per Web server. If the Web
environment includes any customization, a duplicate DEV Web environment is recommended.
Please note that this Web farm is shown as an intranet-only Web
farm. FileNet’s products are built to handle the security requirements
of the Internet, but it is advisable to build the proper physical
network components into the figure to ensure that FileNet security

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SCSI

AIX UNIX
FileNet IS Root
Server Ver 4.1

NT2000
FileNet Print & Fax Server

FileNET OSAR
6 ⫻ 30-GB drives
107 platters
3.2 terabytes

(A) FileNet
root server
production

(D) Print and
fax
Intranet

Cisco director
load balancer

NT2000
FileNet Web Server
Ver 3.1

AIX UNIX
FileNET IS Root
Server Ver 4.1

(B) FileNet
root server
development
NT2000
FileNet Web Server
Ver 3.1

NT2000
FileNet Web Server
NT2000
Ver 3.1
FileNet Web Server
Ver 3.1

Figure 9.3
Typical FileNet system including peripheral components: (A)
FileNet image services and optical storage, (B) FileNet image
services development system, (C) Web farm, (D) print and fax

would be the last line of defense and just a small part of a more
sophisticated overall security plan.

FileNet Clients
Figure 9.4 adds another piece, the Panagon suite. This is the suite of
FileNet client products marketed under the FileNet Panagon name.

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SCSI

AIX UNIX
FileNet OSAR
FileNet IS Root 6 ⫻ 30 GB drives
Server Ver 4.1
107 platters
3.2 terabytes

(E) Panagon suite
FileNET's Client Software is the
Panagon Suite:
- Panagon Thick Client

NT2000
FileNet print and fax server

(A) FileNet
root server
production

(D) Print and
fax
Intranet

- Panagon Clientlink /
SAP Integration
- Panagon Thin / Web Client

Cisco Director
Load Balancer

NT2000
FileNet Web server
Ver 3.1

AIX UNIX
FileNet IS Root
Server Ver 4.1

(B) FileNet
root server
development
NT2000
FileNet Web Server
Ver 3.1

NT2000
FileNet Web server
NT2000
Ver 3.1
FileNet Web server
Ver 3.1

Figure 9.4
Typical FileNet system including client software components:
(A) FileNet image services and optical storage,
(B) FileNet image services development system, (C) Web farm,
(D) print and fax, (E) Panagon suite

User licenses costs vary greatly, depending on the quantity purchased
and the savvy of the contract negotiator. For base image services,
shared user licenses not including any extras like ERP integration,
the cost range is in the ballpark of $3000–5500 per user.

Funding Strategies
Funding an expense initiative can be challenging, but projects that
include imaging, workflow, and a sound business plan can almost
always show significant savings. Process improvements lower overall
costs and payoff year after year; therefore, the challenge in getting
funding approval for a FileNet implementation initiative is finding
the best workflow improvement opportunity and making it a high
priority. The key to long-term success is making sure that those

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process savings exceed the costs of the FileNet system being put into
place. This often requires pushing out the usage of this enterprise
system to a large group of departments and individuals, to spread
out the costs.
A good combination for savings can usually be found in any area
of an organization that combines managing large amounts of paper
documents with customer service. One of the biggest issues is that
few people understand the cost of existing paper systems. Customers
never want to wait for an answer and paper document retrieval is
inherently slow, error prone, and inefficient. Call centers can offer
excellent opportunities to combine applications and improve workflow with good document management.
Another item that makes call centers and customer support centers
good candidates for imaging projects is that they already track
metrics for response times and the average required time to close a
ticket. Reducing document retrieval time in a call center environment
always produces significant performance increases. Individuals operating call centers are usually quite willing to become project participants, because they are continually rewarded for improving the
efficiency of their centers.

Building the Business Case
In building the business case, project managers must first capture the
entire cost of the project, including both implementation and ongoing
operations costs. After determining these numbers, the organization
should completely map the process that is the focus of improvement.
Areas of improvement must be documented and quantified to determine the amount of time and attention that can be removed from the
process due to the project implementation. Next, time and attention
have to be converted into dollars and cents and compared with the
implementation and operations cost model. Finally, the project team
must determine whether the dollars add up to justifiable savings.
Sometimes, after completing an assessment that clearly shows
strong savings from implementing a project, the pursuit for funding
still fails to gain final approval. Often, this is because the business
decision makers do not understand the consequences of doing
“nothing” on the project. Therefore, doing nothing appears a safer
decision.

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To reduce the chance of this happening, it is important that the
project manager compute the cost of the existing paper-based workflow system. This should be done before the initial proposal is made;
because once a proposal has been turned down, it is very difficult to
convince leaders that they may have been wrong. Determine the cost
annually for using paper, present this first, second show the cost of
using an imaging solution, and third compute the saving for the
audience.
The strongest cases for imaging projects are typically made around
return on investment; however, risk to the organization may soon
surpass ROI for the chief reason that organizations implement
imaging and workflow. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 threatens
to turn the business world upside down. To comply, businesses must
rethink every process and make those processes clear and concise.
Looking into the future, the argument could be made that most organizations will be unable to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of
2002 without some type of imaging and workflow system.

Combining Initiatives to Gain Project Approval
Because of the cost of high-end imaging systems, it makes sense to
combine initiatives whenever possible. One option already mentioned
is the idea of joining the imaging initiative with the knowledge management push happening in the organization. Knowledge management is also an initiative that happens in organizations planning for
a future and focused on long-term sustainability.
For this marriage to work, however, the environment must believe
in the possibilities of all the organization’s employees. In a “star
culture,” the organization has a difficult time justifying combining
an imaging initiative to a knowledge management initiative, because
a star culture generates too little content. This is because star cultures typically filter out the input of the employees to capture only
what some “knowledge auditor” believes relevant.
The Roman empire had a similar star culture of elitism. Because
of this culture, the documented working principle of the steam engine
was tabled for another millennium and a half after its creation.
Imagine how the steam engine, which ushered in the Industrial Age,
would have changed history had the Romans not only captured the
idea but valued it enough to make it available to others. History has

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shown how difficult it is to accurately prejudge what information will
be valuable in the future.
To prevent a star culture, organizations like IBM build KM communities and implement knowledge-sharing events that deliver the
opportunity to share ideas within the organization without the strict
filtering. The hoarding and wasting of knowledge and information
can be overcome with the right organizational culture.
Like KM, enterprise content management should also be considered when looking for combining initiatives. Both can share infrastructure resources, and separation of the two often leads to the
following deficiencies:
Lack of integration of electronic forms, telephone systems, messaging-based applications, and intranet databases into overall
imaging and content management approach—the basics of
information management are very similar despite the differing
data formats.
The need to evolve office systems from paper-based to an integrated system, which combines imaging, enterprise content
management, and intranet strategies into one cohesive organizational initiative.
Limiting imaging and content management to departments with
ample funding may restrict these technologies from being used
in the areas where they are needed most.
In paper- or microfilm-based environments, customer service
response is often very slow because of the time required to retrieve
information. Sometimes, paper documents cannot be found because
they have been misfiled or lost. The result is a dissatisfied customer,
and ultimately, the loss of business, money, and time. Typical imaging
installations have realized the following benefits:

25–50% increase in transactions per employee.
30–40% reduction in clerical staff.
50–80% reduction in storage space.
100% reduction in transaction time.

Imaging Capture Center Operations
Organizations considering imaging projects should also consider
whether to build a centralized imaging conversion center. This is a

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very important consideration because of the significant cost represented by both the creation of an imaging conversion center and the
use of outsourcing. Also, when building processes for which senior
management is responsible, it is important to measure the risk of all
of the options. Before discussing the differences between internal or
external capture services, the components and terminology of the
imaging conversion process are examined.

Conversion and Capture
Inventorying is the process of assessing the paper files, file types and
usage patterns of the paper documents. Scanning is the process of
converting an input document to a digitally stored image that can be
displayed on a workstation screen. Scanning and inventorying combined with indexing are the key components of an imaging conversion system. Input documents may be one or more sheets of paper,
facsimiles in digital form or paper, computer-based files like Word
documents, photographs captured by digital cameras, or even signatures captured by digital signature pads.
Once an image is scanned and stored (“captured”), it can be
displayed, printed, faxed, exported, or archived. Using the image
viewer, the imaged documents can be re-indexed, annotated, zoomed
in or out, or rotated depending on the end user’s needs. Conversion
from paper-based filing to an imaging system requires significant
planning.
The term indexing refers to the addition of metadata to a image
file. The index facilitates the retrieval of electronic files by giving them
searchable properties. While an imaging system provides much faster
retrieval of documents (a financial benefit), the mere availability of a
new technology does not justify its acquisition. The real measure of
value should be whether the solution fixes an important organizational problem and improves the overall business process.
Effective indexing can add value to a process far beyond improving the speed of retrieval. Good metadata indexes enable users to
retrieve documents in many different ways. Think of organizational
records as part of a hierarchy of “containers” that includes levels
such as folder, section, document, and page. A folder can have many
sections, sections can contain many documents, and documents can
consist of many pages. Yet traditional paper-based filing systems

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require users to retrieve all information at the folder level of the hierarchy. By contrast, imaging systems allow information to be retrieved
at many levels. This flexible retrieval capability is built on the metadata indexing, which is the bedrock of imaging. The accurate and
consistent indexing of digital records is absolutely critical to the
success of any imaging system.
The cost of imaging conversion and capture is typically based on
several factors, including the following:
Document size.
Document prep labor costs for removing staples and sticky
notes attached to them.
Document sorting labor costs, prior to scanning.
Paper type and color.
Single-sided paper or double-sided scanning (simplex or
duplex).
Optical character recognition/intelligent character recognition
(OCR/ICR) costs versus labor savings.
The number and length of indexes to be entered.
Document reassembly labor costs.
Because of the differences in imaging options, it is important to build
common abstractions on which the customer and capture provider
can agree. Metadata serve as a document container that facilitates
retrieval and reuse of content. The following are examples of simple
categories that can be used as a basis for bidding and building
imaging projects:
Box-level imaging. This represents a low-cost imaging solution
that indexes metadata at the container level. A single set of
metadata properties serves for as many as 2000 pages. The cost
of this type of capture is around 7–9 cents per page. This
product was designed to be a replacement for microfiche and
provide cheap, simple document retention suitable for rarely
retrieved images.
Folder-level imaging. This solution is designed to capture documents that are accessed only occasionally. Like recreating
filing cabinets in electronic form, document images are indexed
with the same information that would appear at the top of file
folders. Folder-level indexing brings the basic flexibility and

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mobility of imaging while keeping costs low. It offers a higher
level of indexing for approximately 20 cents per page.
Full-service imaging. Companies may need a higher level of
searchable metadata for documents that are retrieved often.
Comparable to a desk drawer, full-service imaging places the
most often retrieved documents at any number of users’ fingertips. Full-service imaging usually includes more advanced
services, such as data proofing, advanced sorting, full text
indexing, optical character recognition, or intelligent character
recognition.
These services begin at the document level of indexing and move
upward in complexity and cost. They typically require custom bids;
and the price varies depending on project size, location, and specifications.
Provided next is a description of the staff of an average imaging
conversion center. This should help you better understand what
resources are required to manage an imaging project and conversion
on a continuous basis. Most imaging conversion centers have a
variety of team member roles that are essential for sustainable
success. These are the most common roles found in an imaging conversion center:
The department manager provides vision, leadership, and
strategic direction for the entire department. The manager also
enforces policies and oversees training, budgeting, and resource
investments. Typically, the manager also participates in the
bidding for new customers and selling of large imaging conversion projects.
The project managers provide leadership and facilitate logistical support to conversion projects. They also promote imaging
throughout the enterprise and deliver detailed, customized bids
and products to customers.
The system administrators could be separate from the department or housed within the imaging conversion center. Their
main duties include technical support of the imaging system,
security, and account management; they also may help with the
bulk loading of data.
The analysts manage development of small projects, document
procedures, supervise interns, research best practices, and

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perform low-level customization and configuration of existing
systems and testing of new technologies. They also meet with
customers to define new procedures and products that support
the customer’s goals.
The project coordinators duties include team leadership, maintaining existing customer relationships, providing critical
appraisal of indexing employee output, and training new
imaging clerks. This position also provides a promotion path
for imaging clerks.
Imaging clerks (half organizational employees, half temporary
employees) operate scanning or indexing workstations, perform
basic clerical functions, physically move paper documents to be
converted, enter metadata into indexes, and check records for
data integrity. Over time, they develop a strong understanding
of the nature of their customer’s documents and how customers’
retrieval needs change.

In-House or Outsourced
Because of the number of options that can be included with any
imaging project, it is very important to have some expertise in-house,
regardless of whether the actual work is outsourced. It is very easy
to overpay on an imaging project, because of the complexity of the
decisions and negotiations the project manager makes. The project
tasks and procedural enforcement issues look different between inhouse and outsourced data capture, but in either case, those responsibilities still chiefly lie with the project manager.
Look at the differences in responsibilities listed in Tables 9.2
and 9.3. First, we examine outsourced data capture. Regardless of
whether the actual document conversion work is outsourced, the
responsibility stays with the organization. Table 9.3 examines the
responsibility in an in-house conversion.
When considering a large, back-file imaging conversion of documents, weighing the options is important. However, any organization considering imaging documents should realize that that it cannot
outsource the responsibility for managing the conversion process.
Because of this, many organizations choose to build internal departments that handle large back-file conversions and smaller pointforward conversions.

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Table 9.2
Responsibility in an Outsourced Conversion Project
Task

Organization’s
Responsibility?

Outsourcer’s
Responsibility?

Define the scope of the imaging project
Define the document retention period
Define the type of documents and their proper
indexing
Define and manage an outsourcing contract
Manage the transportation of the documents
Manage the conversion of the documents
Quality assurance and validity check
Load the converted images into the production
system
Determine the success of the conversion
project

Yes
Yes
Yes

Yes
No
Yes

Yes
Yes
No
Yes
Yes

Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Yes

Table 9.3
Responsibilities When Using an Internal Conversion Center
Task

Departmental
Project Manager’s
Responsibility?

Internal
Conversion
Center’s
Responsibility?

Define the scope of the imaging
project
Define the document retention period
Define the type of documents and their
proper indexing
Manage the transportation of the
documents
Manage the conversion of the
documents
Quality assurance and validity check
Load the converted images into the
production system
Determine the success of the
conversion project

Yes

Yes
Yes

No
Yes

No, unless requires
leaving a campus
No

Yes
Yes

Yes
No

Yes
Yes

Yes

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Another key consideration is cost and efficiency. The outsourced
model is built on the idea that the outsourcer has created an organization large enough to handle large back-file conversions and its
overall efficiency provides a cost advantage. Basically, its efficiency
offsets the markup on its services. This makes it reasonable for an
organization to consider sending the work off-site.
Some organizations handle the document conversion offshore, and
others actually use the state prison systems for cheap labor. However,
these organizations also have to accept an increase in the risk of
losing certain documents and the cost of moving the data back to the
organization and loading it into the content management system.
Also, the company hiring convicts to handle customer records, risks
a public relations nightmare.
One key advantage of internal conversion centers is that documents typically do not leave the organizational campus to be scanned.
This can be important for several legal and regulatory reasons.
Another advantage is that the documents are loaded into the system
on a daily basis, not as part of a large bulk load. This means that
the internal customer can almost immediately begin viewing the
results of the imaging work and determine quickly whether the conversion department is properly sorting, indexing, and scanning the
documents.
The time delay that typically happens with an outsourced conversion shop can also mean that work progresses for several days or
even weeks before a problem is caught. Once a problem is caught, it
typically means that the organization’s project manager and a managing representative of the outsourcing conversion shop must reach
a compromise solution. Often, this requires an amount of rework
that grows in relation to the time delay.
You need to understand the difference between outsourcing task
items and outsourcing an entire business process. For example, outsourcing invoice scanning and indexing (document conversion) to
improve the Accounts Payables Department’s efficiency is completely
different than moving the accounts payables process to an outsource
provider.
The first example is delegation; and for every scanning or indexing error, the customer’s project manager spends the time to make
corrections. In contrast, outsourcing the entire A/P process means
that, if errors occur, a manager’s time is spent correcting the process
at the departmental product level, which is much more cost effective.

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Outsourcing an entire process, back-file, and point forward conversions through a network linked, outsourcing provider solution is
often very feasible. Organizations such as IBM, Xerox, and Kodak
provide process outsourcing that includes imaging conversion. In
most cases, the decision to build an internal imaging conversion shop
versus outsourcing to an outside provider is made based on the age
old question of whether the organization wishes to amortize a capital
investment over the next few years or record the cost this year as an
expense.

In-House Imaging Conversion Services
The first area examined is in-house imaging conversion services. If
the imaging conversion is handled by an internal imaging center,
many other internal services might be offered. One service that is typically very important to Human Relation Departments is job resume
conversion and management. Managing the shared resume databases
that support recruiting for an organization can be challenging, but it
can also be very important for company success. Resume handling
services are very expensive; and by converting all of the resumes into
digital documents and sharing them throughout an organization,
paper consumption is reduced, recruiters’ time is saved, and the
overall cost for hiring is reduced.
Another reason for building an internal imaging department is the
expertise that becomes available when looking to increase efficiency
in any department affected by the flow of paper documents. Imaging
is an enabling technology, and when coupled with workflow, it can
strongly leverage an organization’s people and processes. Many
times, the need is not only the long-term storage of paper documents
but also the ability to transfer documents electronically as part of an
automated work process.
Corporate recruiters are constantly handling resumes, either
receiving and reviewing them or forwarding them to potential hiring
managers. Many times the resume is included in a workflow, where
the hiring manager’s thoughts and opinions about a candidate can
also be recorded. This type of feedback is often lost if the hiring
manager uses a paper resume, because those comments are handwritten on the resume copy instead of a comments field in the recruiting system. Imaging systems can also help to prevent the

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embarrassing situation where two recruiters from the same company
compete for the same candidate.
Although this type of process management can be handled by an
outsource provider, smaller groups typically ask the personnel to
manage the relationship with outside providers. Internal services can
often be promoted throughout the organizational communication
streams, allowing small departments to understand their value and
availability.

Centralization and Decentralization of Imaging Conversion
Data capture strategies should be looked at on a project-by-project
basis by the supporting project teams to determine whether or not to
employ centralized capture. If the volume of pages to be converted
reaches an amount that merits a new centralized capture center being
built in another location, the original capture centers procedures and
specifications can be implemented to save time and money. Centralized and decentralized capture are discussed further in Chapter 3.

Funding through Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance
In recent years, the all too common cover story has been “Auditors
Uncovered Evidence of an Even Wider Fraud,” then the eventual collapse of the organization and the arrest of the key executives. What
happened to the improved organizational vision that information
technologies was suppose to enable? Did the executives have a clear
understanding of what was happening in their organization? Good
business processes manage the handling and monitoring of data, but
keep in mind that technology has its limits.
The world economy has reeled from the accusations of multibillion dollar fraud at organizations like Andersen, Enron, and WorldCom. Because of the negative effects of the faltering organizations on
Wall Street, a large number of regulations have begun falling on businesses. This change in the business climate has affected not only the
U.S. market but European businesses as well.
The most prominent of these new regulations is the SarbanesOxley Act of 2002, which many lay claim to being the most important legislation governing public companies since the establishment

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of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 1934. With all
the new business regulation, the big question is: How will companies
comply?
Lawmakers have begun applying pressure for businesses to keep
accurate records and document internal revenue processes and controls. Without the right expertise and available IT systems, success
seems impossible. Whether the job is achievable or not, IT executives
are quickly being hit with questions about direction in this issue. IT
must develop or purchase the architecture to face these new challenges. None of this has been lost on the IT industry, which is desperate for new sources of growth. Many companies are driving
forward with implementations of their products as businesses begin
racing to conform.
Since the initiation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, companies
like FileNet, IBM, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Kodak, Clearswift, Hyperion,
Citicus, and BoardVantage began offering products to help business
executives with their regulator requirements. Most of these are existing tools that have been enhanced and refocused. The original tools
used a variety of technologies, including performance management,
enterprise resource planning, document management, content management, and e-mail management applications.
Many organizations fear that the scare around these new regulations will overshadow other initiatives. The job of helping the organization set priorities often falls to the project managers. Project
managers need to work very closely with the executive team, which
must be able to understand and act on the statistical information provided them. Without their understanding of the business, the metrics
mean nothing.
Beyond the overload of information is the control of information
at the top of organizations. Where does the buck stop? It may not
stop until it reaches the board of directors. This means some shakeups in how information moves up the chain. Too often, the board is
not operating with the information needed to make sound decisions.
This has to change before Wall Street can bounce back.
The big question now being asked is: Can the organizations afford
to make these changes? Recent surveys found that more than 75%
of organizations spend more on IT infrastructure and consulting services as a direct result of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, but many
of those organizations are concerned that they may not be able to
conform quickly enough and their original estimates were low.

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Technical costs are not the only costs businesses face; there are also
the costs of financial audits to make sure the new systems and procedures meet the requirements. Recent surveys have set expectations for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance at 5000–10,000 hours and
$500,000–1 million to complete the task. Many software companies
believe this to be an opportunity second only to the pre-Y2K software and services buying spree.
Regardless of these costs, CFOs must certify that their companies’
financial statements are accurate. They must also demonstrate that
their internal financial controls and processes produce accurate
results. Failure to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 could
cost some CFOs their wealth and freedom.

FileNet/Steelpoint Offering
FileNet joined compliance and risk management specialist Steelpoint
Technologies to design a solution to aid in the compliance of
Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. FileNet with its existing expertise in
enterprise content management and business process management
technologies and Steelpoint’s Introspect litigation support application
are well aligned to quickly enter the Sarbanes-Oxley support software foray. At the core of their software solution is Steelpoint’s eDiscovery product, which enables organizations to capture, index, and
store content from many sources. The product also aids in identifying relevant content and the collaboration on risk issues. The combination of the two corporations’ efforts has been the development
of a compliance and litigation risk management (CLRM) solution.
The partnership does not stop with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of
2002 but is designed to help organizations manage risk and comply
with a wide range of corporate governance requirements and regulations. Also in the scope of this new offering is the Health Insurance
Portability and Accountability Act and the U.S. Patriot Act, as well
as a many environmental and government antitrust regulations.
A few of the companies offering software and services to deal with
Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 are FileNet, IBM, Oracle, PeopleSoft,
Kodak, Clearswift, Hyperion, Citicus, BoardVantage, Nth Orbit, and
Cognos.
Other regulatory compliance issues on the horizon include Basel
II and IAS 2005. Also known as the New Basel Capital Accord, Basel

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II is an updated global code of conduct for information risk-management that financial institutions must comply with by the end of
2006. European companies must consolidate their financial reports
in agreement with International Accounting Standards (IAS) by 2005
under a European Union directive.

Success Story
A financial services company, with offices in 20 countries worldwide,
generates thousands of pages of computer reports everyday. Over
time, managing this mountain of reports became progressively less
efficient. The company is faced with the need to provide secure
access, for auditors and accountants, to customer transactions. These
transactions need to be maintained for many years in a system that
provides quick access, regardless of the age of the document. The
system has to be extremely reliable and compliant with strict SEC
regulations.
After examining the requirements and needs of the company,
FileNet’s Report Manager tool was chosen because of the flexibility
of its user interface and its ability to scale into an enterprisewide
ECM solution. To meet the mission-critical nature of this implementation, two servers were used (primary and fail-over).
The benefits include the following:

Quick access to reports.
Data mining capabilities.
Savings of $150,000 per year over paper and microfiche.
Elimination of paper handling costs (printing, copying, and
distribution).
Improved problem resolution.
Reduced re-keying of information across multiple legacy
systems.

Chapter 10

FileNet,
Knowledge
Management, and
Leadership
Leadership is lifting a person’s vision to higher sights, raising a
person’s performance beyond its normal limitations.
—Peter Drucker

Key Objectives
Learn how FileNet can help organizations automate their
processes, provide better connectivity throughout the organization, and integrate existing processes and applications.
Understand FileNet’s potential to support organizational
knowledge management initiatives.
Understand how enterprise content management can improve
attention management and organizational decision making.
Gain an awareness of how documents can help to balance
competing objectives by identifying potential solutions, making

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177

them explicit, and helping groups reach acceptable levels of
consensus.
Understand why the intelligent management of documents is a
key component in empowering companies to harness the ideas
and innovativeness of their employees.
Catch a glimpse of future enterprise content management
systems.

Processes and Integration
Humans are skilled in making judgments about complex subjects;
computers are designed to follow procedures strictly. An organization’s computer systems should be used to prevent mundane tasks
from using up the individual employee’s attention and ensure that
processes requiring strict procedural compliance are automated to the
highest degree possible.
Currently, many products are designed to integrate processes and
exchange information to enable effective workflow. These content
management tools are changing businesses by removing the topdown hierarchies previously required to manage processes.
FileNet’s Business Process Manager and the other products in their
application suite were designed to compete in this very competitive
market by providing predictable results and stability.
Organizations that typically need this type of toolset are:
Businesses whose processes have become unpredictable.
Departments and organizations that have complex, interrelated
processes.
Organizations suffering with disconnected systems and information barriers.
Groups fragmented by distributed locations and time zones,
leading to sluggish tactical decision making.
Companies bound to well-established manual environments
with strong resistance to changes in the status quo.
Automating business processes can build predictability into
processes, but organizations also need tools from which to build
metrics that help project future business. FileNet’s Business Process
Manager (BPM) uses OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing) tech-

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nology for data analysis. The data cubes it creates allow “slicing
and dicing” the data to interactively explore data from different
perspectives.
FileNet’s Business Process Manager, along with its suite of content
managing applications, can help organizations automate their
processes, provide connectivity throughout the organization, integrate existing processes and applications, as well as provide connectivity for future endeavors. To be successful, project managers must
ensure that the correct set of FileNet components is chosen for implementation. If all the required components are not implemented,
custom programming could be required to make the business process
work. If more components are implemented than actually needed,
there is a risk of project cost overruns and excess complexity.

Enterprise Content Management Components
An organization hoping to move into ECM should first establish clear
business objectives and process documentation. Use investigation,
analysis, and dialog to determine what organizational information
flow problems exist and whether a proposed solution will actually
solve those issues. An organization needs to understand the components of an ECM solution. Figure 10.1 provides a glimpse of the
typical ECM components and how they integrate together. Understanding what ECM solutions offer begins the development of a new
abstraction that includes new ideas, terminologies, and solutions.
The following is a general list of components found in typical ECM
systems. Remember that each vendor will try to convince your organization that the component in which it is strongest is the key component to solve your organization’s problems. Do not be misled, arm
yourself with as much knowledge as possible before even contacting
any vendor companies.
Document imaging. These are applications designed for scanning, indexing, retrieving, and archiving digital images and
managing metadata. Images could be of paper text, graphics,
engineering drawings, or photographs. The better imaging
systems also include powerful workflow engines to assure that
paper is not only converted but that the new images become
part of the accountability and workflow of an organization.

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Data warehouse
Imaging
management

Content
management
3rd party apps

Knowledge
management
Portals

Web content
management

Document
management

Business to
business

Processes

Legacy applications

CRM

People

ERP

Connectivity

Figure 10.1
Enterprise content management

COLD/EDI (Computer Output to Laser Disk and Electronic
Document Interchange). These applications are designed to
manage high-volume computer-generated reports and data
archiving. Some provide components for data mining and form
formatting to reprint the data in its original format.
Records management. Applications of this type are for managing long-term document archives and document life cycles. This
typically includes the documented, systematic, storage and
eventual destruction of documents, both paper and electronic.

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Web content management. These applications manage the
capture, presentation, delivery, and maintenance of online
objects, including documents and graphics for the primary
purpose of disseminating information via the Web.
Document management. These applications manage electronic
documents through the building of metadata to allow collaboration, revision control, annotations, workflow, and connection
to retention applications and processes.
Digital asset management. DAM applications manage the life
cycle of large collections of digital assets, such as photographic
images, graphics, brand logos, and compound documents. They
focus on maximizing effective reuse of digital objects.
Content integration (content federation). These middleware
applications integrate multiple vendor repositories.
Media asset management. A subset of DAM, MAM is specific
to rich media, such as video and audio, that require complex
management tools.
Collaboration tools. Any of several applications that promote
groups working together effectively. Typical applications
include project workspaces, project management tools, automated reporting tools, and basic workflow.
When an organization has documented its issues and become
acquainted with the major enterprise content manager products, it is
ready to set the project scope and begin taking bids. Once the scope
has been set, most companies issue a request for proposals (RFP) document. If ECM solutions are new to the organization, research should
include obtaining process roadmaps from several ECM vendors.
These process roadmaps delineate the integration of disparate
content technologies from beginning to end.

Choosing FileNet
FileNet is a widely recognized leader in document imaging and the
production workflow field, and it has competitive COLD and document management products. FileNet has seen the ECM field emerge
and reengineered and rebranded its product lines for document
imaging, Web content management, document management, workflow, and business process management.

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The FileNet P8 product line includes Business Process Manager,
FileNet Content Manager (document management, low-volume
imaging, and workflow), FileNet Web Content Manager, FileNet
Image Manager (high-volume imaging and workflow), and FileNet
Forms Manager. These products are available for .NET and J2EE
platforms, with the exception of FileNet Image Manager, which is
Microsoft centered. FileNet’s J2EE products are built on a business
process management foundation and offer event-driven architecture
and life cycle management for both process and content, portal integration, and business process simulation.
FileNet recently strengthened its ECM offerings with the purchase of the Web content management vendor eGrail and e-forms
vendor Shana. These purchases demonstrate its focus on managing
active content. FileNet considers “active content” to be documents
that can launch processes like retrieving and distributing content,
exception handling, initiating queries, or automating approvals.
An order document could be thought of as active content because
it kicks off the sales process. The active content focus will continue
to be critical as organizations attempt to comply with regulations
like Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, Department of Defense 5015.2,
Securities and Exchange Commission 17 CFR 240 17A-4, CFR 21
CFR Part 11, HIPAA, and emerging regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Patent and Trademark
Office.

Good Leaders Value Attention
An organization that values knowledge management works to ensure
that learning occurs before, during, and after any major event or
project. A variety of procedural, technological, and cultural tools are
used to support those goals. KM is not simply the toolset used to
pursue the goals but also the philosophy of valuing the attention of
other people and appreciating the diversity of opinions and experiences they offer. In fact, most experts agree that learning is essentially
a social process. This means that the most valuable KM initiatives
usually address the culture rather than focus blindly on the technological infrastructure. However, it is important to note that organizations with a focus on the value of KM place a premium on the
sound management of their employee’s attention.

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Attention Management Issues FileNet Can Help Address
Developing workflows that build in information sharing and
unbiased performance metrics.
Providing technological integration points that support and
automate information sharing and collaboration while mitigating geographical distances.
Providing transparent, easily accessible repositories for mission
critical content that values the attention of users.
Engaging management and business process leaders to work
more closely with IT in planning projects, setting policy, identifying opportunities, and analyzing risks.
Developing, formalizing, and distributing strong procedures for
evolutionary improvement of critical business processes.
Often KM consulting groups spend a great deal of time arguing
over whether an IT system manages information or knowledge. Since
most documents can represent knowledge to one employee and information to another, this activity is not especially helpful. In fact, information hoarding is as popular as knowledge hoarding, and corporate
employees are provided many incentives to avoid admitting ignorance of anything.
As the organization changes over time, finding something as simple
as the phone number for a process owner can become a nearly impossible task. Workflow systems like FileNet allow for automating
information sharing behind the scenes. This means the information
provider has no chance to refuse sharing the information, and the
information consumer is not forced to admit ignorance. This transparency drastically reduces the amount of trust required to effectively
collaborate, and trust is a very rare, valuable resource in any
company—smart businesses use it accordingly.
To a large extent, KM is about finding new ways to encourage and
facilitate openness within an organization. In an environment that
does not value transparency, ideas are filtered by command rather
than dialog. Ideas cultivated in this environment tend to yield a crop
of unchecked assumptions and bad practices. Culture is important to
KM strategies, because the filtering of ideas is much too difficult to
automate. The only effective filter for ideas is a dynamic dialog
among a diverse group of stakeholders.

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Transparency Improves Both Vision and Judgment
A dialog among a diverse group of stakeholders can deliver two key
benefits: far-reaching vision and sound judgment. Most company
executives agree these are two of the most important assets a
company must have to be successful. They may even tell you that
these two critical assets are what they “bring to the party.” No technology vendor pitches these two deliverables in its statement of work.
Vision and judgment are beyond the ability of any technology ever
created, and no one wants to pitch automating the boss’ job anyway.
However, it would be short-sighted to assume that vision and judgment are solely the domain of managers. Humans have two eyes
because each eyes receives only two-dimensional retina images with
no special component for depth perception. However, clear and accurate vision is obtained by seeing an image from multiple points of
view and examining the differences between the two images. Similarly, the accuracy, completeness, and value of the knowledge and
learning in the organization will always depend on the full and
informed participation of the stakeholders.

Balancing Competing Objectives
An active, informed dialog is critical for dealing with conflicts caused
by competing objectives. In any partnership, team, or organization
conflict is bound to arise between members who do not see eye to
eye. The issue is not so much about who is right and who is wrong
but how to successfully work together when efforts contradict one
another.
For instance, a company hires a worker hoping to gain an efficient
employee that will improve the productivity of the business and save
money. The worker goes to work for the company to make as much
income as he or she can. On the simplest level, these objectives are
in competition. When dealing with complex issues, competing objectives are more the rule than the exception.
During the years leading to the American Revolutionary War, not
everyone in the colonies was excited by the idea of self-rule. Many
citizens believed that common men were not intelligent enough to
participate in ruling the country. They believed that a society of noble

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people should control the affairs of state and the common man
should know his place in the order of things. Even after the Revolution, a similar argument was raised with regard to states rights.
States-rights proponents felt that individual states should govern
themselves with a loose confederation to bind them together. At the
same time, many advocated the need for a stronger federal government to protect the rights of individuals. The southern states were
even willing to go to war over this issue. The southern states feared
the power that was being centralized into the hands of a few powerful federal leaders. However, their solution was to centralize power
into the hands of the planters, the nobility of the South.
Whenever a group of people unites to achieve something, a structure of rules and expectations are created. In some cases, the rules
that balance the rights and expectations of the individual with the
goals of the group are explicitly defined, such as in a constitution. In
other cases, the structure is informal and unspoken, such as so-called
pecking orders. In any case, there is a dynamic tension between the
individual’s need for liberty and the group’s need to achieve its objectives and sustain the survival of the group itself.
For people to function in groups, some collective decisions must
be made that are generally regarded as binding on the group and
enforced as common policy. A constitution explicitly details how to
balance the competing objectives between the individual citizen and
the population as a whole. The rules may not be perfect, but they are
widely available to the group’s members and open to review.
Groups that are formed without this explicit documentation of the
group’s structure are not without structure. Interactions between
groups of people always have a structure, but many have informal
structures or combinations of formal and informal structures.
Making the process for balancing the competing objectives of the
individual and group explicit is an important part of ensuring the
success and long-term sustainability of the group.
Today’s companies face a wide range of competing objectives, but
the fundamental issue is the conflict between dialog and direction.
Companies desperately need a rich diversity of dialog to ensure that
best practices remain “best.” However, often dialog can stymie
efforts to respond quickly to a changing situation. When the business climate changes suddenly, an organization’s leader must be able
to rapidly direct the actions of the workforce, with the full expectation of timely compliance.

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The new battlefield for the confrontation between dialog and
direction is the organization, company, or corporation. How does the
organization allow authoring of ideas to their knowledge bases or
innovation databases? Do only the “stars” ideas get accepted into
these information repositories? Have they created a “knowledge
nobility”?
This is critical to understand because businesses in the United
States are at a crossroads. Do they move forward into the Information Age, where the individual’s attention is the currency, or stay in
the Industrial Age, with the hierarchy of control that was instituted
by the rail barons of the nineteenth century? Ultimately, the answer
is in our decision-making processes.

Decision-Making Processes
When teams work on complex tasks that require judgment, it is often
useful to “decide how to decide.” Developing a group constitution
is one way for a group to reach consensus on the issue of deciding
how to decide. Decision analysis techniques use specialized documents to help decision makers clarify problems and separate facts
from priorities and preferences. Unfortunately, attempts to obtain
objectivity are often thwarted by measurement difficulties, problem
complexity, or time constraints.
The issue of competing objectives is so prevalent that a number of
decision aid tools have been developed to help mitigate these types
of issues. The utilization of decision aid tools can significantly
improve the decision-making process in terms of efficiency, efficacy,
and transparency. Although there are numerous decision aid tools,
for this chapter, the focus is on two: multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) and the nominal group technique (NGT).

Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis
The MCDA technique evolved from the field of economic theory. The
technique consists of applying mathematical modeling in an attempt
to support decision making involving trade-offs. The problems it
addresses generally involve choosing one of a number of alternatives
based on how well those alternatives rate against a previously defined

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set of criteria. The criteria are weighted in terms of importance to the
stakeholders and the overall “score” of an alternative is the weighted
sum of its rating against each criteria. Through ordering the alternatives by their decision scores, a preference ranking is derived.
Balancing competing objectives via categorization and ranking like
this involves managing three key issues: uncertainty regarding what
is known and unknown, motivations and values associated with
objectives, and the options or alternatives from which to choose. The
process consists of developing value criteria with stakeholders, measurement guidelines with experts, and then ranking the alternatives.
In the end, the result is a matrix as exampled in Table 10.1.
Even though this technique often appears to be 90% defining the
problem and 10% finding the answer; the key benefit is in improved
understanding, communication, and a greater sense of shared mission
among team members. One of the biggest risks in using multiple
criteria decision analysis is that group participation is low, leading to
weighting bias in the various scales used to balance the objectives.
The nominal group technique, discussed next, is a variation of
MCDA devised to improve group participation in the decisionmaking process.

Nominal Group Technique
Most experts agree that 50–80% of the typical manager’s time is
spent in meetings. Sadly, most managers feel that much of this time

Table 10.1
Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis Matrix
Options

Response

Flexibility

Mobility

Service

Ease

Option
Option
Option
Option
Option
Option

3
5
10
5.5
3
3

8
4
3
5
10
6

5
7
10
7
5
5

7
5
3
5
10
6

7
8
10
5
3
2

Total

29.5

Weight

1
2
3
4
5
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is wasted. Teams (that are often teams only in name) trying to generate ideas and encourage active member involvement while maintaining agendas and time schedules encounter many problems. Too
often, certain team members are excluded from active participation.
In other situations, discussions are controlled by a subset of the
team’s members. As the meeting progresses, everyone either talks or
listens; and there is no time for people to think through the issues.
The team strives for impartiality, consistency, and objectivity in its
decision making; however, the more outside views that are allowed
into the group, the more difficult it is to make sure these ideas are
shared. The rationality of the objectives is neither necessary nor sufficient for the attainment of success. Research in the field of group
dynamics indicates that more ideas are expressed by individuals
working alone in a group environment than those expressed by
individuals engaged in a formal group discussion.
To address these collaboration issues, Andrew Delbecq and
Andrew Van de Ven created the nominal group technique. NGT is
similar to brainstorming, but it uses a more structured format to
obtain multiple inputs from several people on a particular problem
or issue. Individuals, working alone then later in groups, brainstorm
ideas using procedures that encourage creativity and discourage
criticism and evaluation.
The name nominal group technique attempts to make it clear that,
in the beginning, a team is that in name only. It takes time and effort
to create a team that shares common abstractions and balanced
objectives. Until then, it is merely a named (nominal) group. A team
shares common abstractions and has worked to balance the competing objectives. Being part of a demographic (program users, Web
programmers, marketing managers, and so on) does not make one
part of a team. Teams are interdependent.
The NGT seeks to build a matrix similar to MCDA, but extra
measures are taken to encourage creativity and discourage the early
criticism and evaluation that often lead to low levels of group
participation. Typically, participants not only produce more ideas
when working alone but do so without sacrificing quality. Too often,
people fail to actively participate in a team because they fear they’ll
look foolish or stupid; therefore, they censor themselves. The following is a high-level overview of the NGT process:
1. Individuals generate ideas privately during or before the team
meeting.

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2. The ideas are collected and listed on a whiteboard or a piece
of paper.
3. Each person takes a turn reading one of his or her ideas in a
round-robin fashion.
4. The group discusses the ideas on the list, possibly adding new
ideas as they go.
5. Each group member ranks the listed ideas.
6. Individual rankings are summarized for each idea to form a
group ranking.
7. The group ranking of ideas is discussed in an attempt to arrive
at a consensus.
8. If the group ranking is unacceptable and consensus cannot be
achieved, repeat steps 3 through 6.
The technique can be very time consuming, and group size is a
critical issue. Typically, group size should be seven to nine people.
Eleven people is the absolute maximum, so larger groups should be
divided into groups of seven to nine for the process. It is quite difficult for most people to keep from discussing issues before all the
points are listed, clarified, and ranked. So, the meeting facilitator
must take care to prevent the discussion phase from starting too early
in the process. Properly conducted, the NGT leads to better decisions
with much higher levels of team buy-in.

Do Not Discount the Value of Documents
Multiple criteria decision analysis tools and nominal group technique
exercises have in common the use documents to identify potential
solutions, make them explicit, and help a group reach an acceptable
level of consensus. These decision aid tools use documents not simply
to capture knowledge and make it explicit but to actively aid in thinking and enabling dialog within a team. Further research will lead to
a wealth of examples of documents that facilitate communication and
dialog in corporate settings.
Documents help mitigate the frailty of human memory as well
as ensure common understandings that support shared meaning.
They also help improve employee accountability by mitigating the
confusion caused by he said/she said conflicts. Documents have
long been the glue that holds organizations together. They support

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189

decisions, aid in communication, and provide the critical information infrastructure for almost every business process. This is why the
intelligent management of documents is a key component in empowering companies to harness the ideas and innovativeness of their
employees.
A few companies have recognized the need to embrace the individuals within their organizations and harness their ideas. IBM has
many internal programs for rewarding individual and teams that
share their ideas. One program, mentioned earlier in this text,
empowers individual employees to give gifts of IBM logo-bearing
merchandise to others within the organization for appreciation and
sharing of ideas. IBM also spends attention meeting with individuals
that author to their innovation databases. These types of activities
are important steps in harnessing the vast knowledge and strength of
an organization’s individual workers.

Attention, Analysis, and Dialog
This text has made a point to drive home the importance of attention to the individual and the organization. As stated before, attention is the currency of the Information Age. Organizational leaders
that do not value the attention of their employees risk wasting their
most vital resource.
Because of the importance of attention, it is vital that individuals
and organizations effectively manage the attention they give and
receive. To often, Communications Departments fail to get representation on company projects. In the end, these departments risk presenting an image of the organization that sets a false expectation or
is just plain wrong.
Getting internal feedback can often be critical in stopping a possible “black eye.” The 2003 public relations ad campaign for the city
of Hong Kong was to be based on the phrase, “Come to Hong Kong,
We Will Take Your Breath Away.” This would have been a complete
disaster in light of the 2003 outbreak of the respiratory illness SARS.
Luckily, someone noticed the problem and the campaign was
changed, much to the relief of the Hong Kong leaders—and to the
detriment of an army of stand-up comics around the world.
Norman Vincent Peale said, “The trouble with most of us is that
we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.” If

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attention is the currency, then analysis is the accounting of the Information Age. What good is attention if results are not analyzed to
determine patterns? Every system generates information, some of
which leaves the system. We all regularly send information to other
systems, and we receive information from them. Feedback from
another system often enables us to evaluate our services and to make
them more self-renewing.
A feedback loop represents the pattern of interacting processes,
where a change in one variable, through interaction with other variables in the system, either reinforces the original process (positive
feedback) or suppresses it (negative feedback). Feedback loops occur
whenever part of an output of some system is connected back into
one of its inputs. Lack of frequent useful feedback is a leading negative influence on worker performance. Implementing feedback loops
that encompass the whole supply chain, as in Figure 10.2, within a
workflow offers a cost-effective intervention solution that rapidly
leads to improved performance.
In the end, dialog must happen, because regardless of the graphs,
databases, or spreadsheets created from the information gathered, the
complexity of our world requires human judgment assess its value
and relevance. This is why conversations are the cornerstone of all
business operations.

Partners

Analysis

Dialog

Customers

Vendors
Attention

Figure 10.2
Attention, analysis, and dialog

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191

The Unique Characteristics of Conversation
Conversation has always been considered essential to business. In
fact, it is the key medium for learning and decision making. The mere
presentation of information does not necessarily result in learning or
action. People have to become actively involved for behavior to
change, insight to occur, and problems to be solved. The unique characteristics of conversation make it the ideal way to get people actively
involved in problem solving:
1. Conversation is dynamic. In conversation we notice how our
audience is reacting. The pace of communication is slowed or
advanced based on listener needs, speaker objectives, and even
surrounding events. These needs are indicated subtly through
eye contact, head nodding, questions, facial expressions, fidgeting—even heckling. These dynamic characteristics of human
conversations make them incredibly flexible and powerful for
solving problems.
2. Conversation is personalized. In conversations, we instinctively
refer to already established understandings, shared memories,
and past history. We tailor our language to inform without
offending, to inquire without interrogating, and to balance
advocacy with inquiry. This personalization improves the
chances of reaching shared meaning and consensus.
3. Conversation is self-correcting. When misunderstandings
occur in conversations, we attempt to fix them by creating new
metaphors, defining our terms, rephrasing our words, and the
like. Active listeners provide both verbal and nonverbal cues
to confirm their understanding (or lack of) of complex topics.
The self-correcting nature of conversation often prevents the
major communication breakdowns that come from differing
abstractions.
The best document management systems of the future will not only
allow documents to be stored but enable people to converse with one
another and exchange viewpoints using the documents to provide
clear context and long-term persistence to the conversation. Such a
system would capture things like user reviews of documents, retrieval
counts, user activity-level assessments, and even disputing opinions
and information. It would integrate content management, searching,

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collaboration, and learning to enable an endless cycle of business
process improvement.
Knowledge management is not simply a matter of archiving and
distributing information. However, it is also more complicated than
simply setting aside more time for storytelling around the water
cooler. FileNet products are robust enough to vastly improve the way
a company manages the attention of it workers, and for many companies, that is where KM begins.

Conclusion
Globalization and changing corporate regulations are altering the
business landscape and will continue to drive the enterprise content
management business forward for the next few years. The result is
an evolving understanding by organizations that they need control of
their content and the processes that go into creating that content.
This includes all content, not just the documents in their document
repositories or a knowledge base somewhere on their intranet, but
all documents, including paper and electronic.
Because of this push, the ECM business is growing rapidly in the
Information Technology sector, and vendors are rapidly ramping up
their offerings. This can make choosing the best platform a constant
challenge. The interesting part of this new growth is that it involves
some older technologies and processes that were available before the
current global regulatory situation changed.
For example, despite being in usage for approximately 30 years,
imaging still continues to provide strong return on investment. Many
futurists predicted that imaging would fade away, replaced by online
signature capture systems and digital libraries. Surprisingly, imaging
systems have stood the test of time and withstood the scrutiny of the
legal system. Since companies still use paper and paper is still unmanageable on a large scale, companies continue to need imaging systems
to manage the flow of paper documents within their organizations,
in addition to management of digitally created documents.
Business leaders and project managers should shift their organization’s approach for managing unstructured content away from focusing solely on electronically created documents and Web content
management solutions to an integrated ECM direction. Whatever
solution the company chooses should include a phased-in approach

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193

that clearly defines each phase’s components, deliverables, and
expected savings. Spread the costs of the biggest system components
over a group of departments large enough to allow the expense to
be absorbed slowly into the enterprise, while demonstrating a healthy
ROI.
To accomplish this, it is important that the ECM project managers
work with business process owners to communicate how an ECM
approach provides economic benefits, such as more accountability,
better risk management, and lower overall operations costs. ECM
project managers should also develop a conservative, welldocumented strategy for ensuring continuous improvement of the
business processes involved. Developing a thorough business case not
only demonstrates the costs versus the benefits of ECM but also highlights where a company needs to improve as a business. ECM is not
easy, it is complex; but in the right hands, it can deliver tremendous
business benefits.
Although FileNet is not the end-all solution in enterprise content
management, it is a major player with a strongly entrenched customer
base and a continuously evolving product line. If an organization is
looking for an experienced market leader in this field with the bench
strength to continue delivering value for decades, it can look to
FileNet.

Success Story
In 1996, analysts noticed large differences among regional hospitals
in the success rate for heart surgery. In response, teams of highly
experienced heart surgeons from five major medical centers observed
each other’s operating-room practices. Next, they conducted a dialog
about their most effective techniques and policies. The results were
documented and distributed, which led to more dialog and more document distributions.
The result was an astounding 24% drop in the overall mortality
rate for coronary bypass surgery. This was not a savings of projected
soft dollars but the confirmed saving of 74 lives. Surely, saving lives
represents the ultimate return-on-investment, and the key tool
required was simple collaboration.
This success story did not involve a FileNet implementation, but
it does show how data analysis, documentation, and dialog enable

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groups to find new collaboration opportunities, examine potential
process improvements, and recognize best practices to share.
Seeking to use computing as a tool to simplify the storage and
organization of business records is an important goal. However, the
ease with which digitally created objects can be controlled will never
alone provide sufficient value to justify the loss of flexibility that
comes from giving up use of paper documents.
Study the paper documents and their workflows within your
company before you attempt to eliminate them. For centuries, the
sharing of information most often occurred verbally through myths,
legends, and stories. Printing technology improved the process in
many ways, but it never eliminated its predecessors. Directing the
evolving role of documents within an organization requires studying
both the history and the future of knowledge sharing.

Index

A
Abstractions, 125–126, 127, 166,
191
Active content, 181
Active Server Pages, 86
Admin access level, 107
Administration of FileNet,
100–116
administrator duties, 102–107
gathering critical system
planning data, 104–107
overview, 102–103
and Sarbanes-Oxley Act of
2002, 103–104
client installation and
administration, 112–115
overview, 100–101
profiting from organization’s
experience, 101–102
typical system structure,
108–112
UNIX administrative tools and
resources, 107–108
Airline case study, 152
AIX UNIX operating system, 108,
109, 159
Amazon.com, 98
American Revolutionary War,
183–184
Analysts, 167
Application Executive program,
108
Application integration, 85–86

Application programming
interfaces (APIs), 120, 142
Application server, 112
Archive, defined, 146
ArchiveLink (now ServerLink), 143
Archiving, 147–151
overview, 147–149
segments of data quality
management, 151
types of, 149–151
Assumption management, 77, 78
Attention, 189–190
improving, 127
value of, 181–182
Auditing capabilities, 159
Author access level, 107
Automated invoice handling
system, 152
Awareness, 132

B
Back-file imaging conversion, 168
Balanced scorecards, 129–130
Bar code, 149
Basel II (New Basel Capital
Accord), 174–175
Batch entry services, 112
Batch Entry Services (BES) cache
and precommittal indexing, 66,
69, 70
purpose of, 158
replication consistency, 111–112
storage space for, 157

195

196
Box-level imaging, 166
Bureaucracies, 65
Business API (BAPI), 145
Business Process Manager, 181
Business Process Manager (BPM),
177–178
Business process outsourcing
(BPO), 110
Business-to-business (B2B) data
exchange, 148–149
Business transformation
outsourcing (BTO) providers,
110

C
Call centers, 162
Capture application, 67, 69
Capture client, 70
Capture product, 66
Capturing context, 124
Case studies
airline, 152
county’s assistance department,
140
European online brokerage,
115
financial services company,
175
heart surgery, 193–194
transportation services provider,
81
worldwide organization, 99
Catalysts, 122–125
Centera solution unit, 70
Centralized image capture, 132,
134
Check sum, 159
Cisco director (load balancer),
88–89, 109, 159
Client installation and
administration, 112–115
Client integration, 145, 146–147
ClientLink, 90, 112, 113

Index

CLRM (compliance and litigation
risk management) solution,
174
Coat-tailing, 120
COLD (Computer Output to Laser
Disk), 179, 180
Collaboration tools, 180
Common abstractions, 187
Competing objectives, 183–185,
187
Compliance and litigation risk
management (CLRM) solution,
174
Component Object Model (COM)
components, 86
Computer Output to Laser Disk
(COLD), 179, 180
Content integration, 180
Content management
and employees, 62–63
metadata issues, 97–98
vs. “process voodoo”, 62–63
tools for, 177
Content Manager, 181
Conversation, 191–192
Corporate regulations, 192
Corporate “ropes” program,
101–102
Cost estimation, 80–81
Cost protection, 155–161
basic system (AP configuration),
156–157
basic system (AP configuration)
FileNet costs, 157–159
basic system (AP configuration)
with peripheral components,
159–160
FileNet clients, 160–161
overview, 155–156
Critical system planning data,
104–107
Cross-functional flowcharts, 94–95
Customer support centers, 162

Index

197

DAM (digital asset management),
180
Data analysis, 193
Data quality management, 151
Decision aid tools, 188
Decision-making processes,
185–188
Departmental goals, 129–130
Department managers, 167
DEV Web environment, 159
Diagrams of workflow, 92–95
Dialog, 184–185, 190, 193
Digital asset management (DAM),
180
Disintermediation, 85
Distance delay, 92
Distributed Image Services (DIS),
111–112
Distributed security, 112
DMS (SAP’s Document
Management System),
119–122, 148
DNS servers, 105
Document handling policies,
103
Document ID number, 96
Document imaging, see imaging
systems
Document Management
System (DMS), 119–122,
148
Document retention periods,
104
Documents, value of, 188–189
Document Warehouse for SAP
(DWSAP), 143, 145–146, 148,
152
Dual database systems, 84
DWSAP (Document Warehouse
for SAP), 143, 145–146, 148,
152
Dynamic conversation, 191

EBR (Enterprise Systems Backup)
utility, 108
ECM (Enterprise Content
Management), 175, 180, 181,
192, 193
ECM project managers, 193
EDI (Electronic Data Interchange),
68, 69, 179
EDiscovery product, 174
EGrail, 181
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI),
68, 69, 179
E-mail, 127, 133, 135, 137
Employees, value of, 62–63, 65
Enterprise Content Management
(ECM), 175, 180, 181, 192,
193
Enterprise-level record-keeping
applications, 109
Enterprise Resource Planning
(ERP), 141–153
archiving, 147–151
overview, 147–149
three segments of data quality
management, 151
types of, 149–151
client integration, 146–147
Document Warehouse for SAP,
145–146
integration, 89–91
overview, 142–145
Enterprise Systems Backup (EBR)
utility, 108
Environmental changes,
128–129
Equipment considerations,
73–75
ERP, see Enterprise Resource
Planning (ERP)
Estimating
costs, 80–81
project timelines, 75–76

198

Index

European online brokerage case
study, 115
Excel application, 85

F
Fax environment, 159
Feedback loop, 190
FIFO (first in/first out) rules, 67, 75
FileNet P8 product line, 181
FileNet thin client viewer software,
114–115
FileNet viewer, 113
Financial services company case
study, 175
First in/first out (FIFO) rules, 67,
75
Flowcharts, cross-functional,
94–95
Fn__edit program, 108
Fn__util program, 108
Folder-level imaging, 166
Formal structure, 184
Forms Manager, 181
Fuegoware, 90
Full-service imaging, 167
Funding, 154–175
cost protection, 155–161
basic system (AP
configuration), 156–157
basic system (AP
configuration) FileNet
costs, 157–159
basic system (AP
configuration) with
peripheral components,
159–160
FileNet clients, 160–161
overview, 155–156
strategies, 161–172; see also
imaging capture center
operations
building business case,
162–163

combining initiatives to gain
project approval, 163–164
through Sarbanes-Oxley
compliance, 172–175

G
Gateway integration, 144
Globalization, 192
Goals, departmental, 129–130
Google search engine, 98
Grid computing, 128

H
Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act (HIPAA),
174
Hewlett Packard, 70

I
IAS (International Accounting
Standards), 174, 175
IBM, 102, 140, 164, 189
IBM’s WebSphere platform
resource adaptor, 86
ICR (intelligent character
recognition), 166
IDM Desktop, 146
Image Manager (formerly known
as Image Services), 181
and postcommittal indexing, 67,
68
and precommittal indexing, 69
replication consistency,
111–112
Image Manager server, 74
Image retrieval, 106
Image Services Connector for
Centera (ISCC), 70
Image Services (now known as
Image Manager), 68, 87, 146,
156
Image Services server, 156
Imaging application, 135

Index

Imaging capture center operations,
164–172
centralization and
decentralization of imaging
conversion, 172
conversion and capture,
165–168
in-house imaging conversion
services, 171–172
in-house or outsourced, 168–171
overview, 164–165
Imaging systems, 96–97, 178
Implementing FileNet
estimating costs, 80–81
project planning, 75–79
replication options, 66–73
inquiry and investigation
regarding, 70–73
media options, 70–71
overview, 66
postcommittal indexing, 66,
67–68
precommittal indexing, 68–70
specialty equipment
considerations, 73–75
Indexing, 153
postcommittal, 66, 67–68
precommittal, 68–70
Informal structures, 184
Information repositories, 63–66
Installation, client, 112–115
Integrating FileNet, 82–99
application integration, 85–86
enterprise resource planning
integration, 89–91
metadata, 95–99
electronic content
management metadata
issues, 97–98
imaging system metadata
issues, 96–97
legal metadata issues, 98–99
overview, 95–96

199

overview, 82–85
Web integration, 87–89
workflow analysis, 91–95
overview, 91
steps in, 91–92
workflow diagrams, 92–95
Intelligent character recognition
(ICR), 166
International Accounting Standards
(IAS), 174, 175
Intranet-only Web farm, 159
Introspect litigation support
application, 174
Inventorying, 165
Invoices, 132–133, 134, 135, 137,
152
ISCC (Image Services Connector
for Centera), 70
ISRA, 86

J
J2EE Connector Architecture v1.0,
86
J2EE platforms, 181
Java applet, 113
JAVA application component,
86–87

K
KDD (knowledge discovery and
data) mining applications, 125
Knowledge bases, 63, 64
Knowledge discovery and data
(KDD) mining applications, 125
Knowledge management, 117–140
abstraction, 125–126
applying learning to
organizational processes,
128–138
balancing departmental goals
with balanced scorecards,
129–130
first evolution, 132–133

200

Index

overview, 128–129
process evolution, 130–132
second evolution, 133–135
third evolution, 135–138
attention, 189–190
improving, 127
value of, 181–182
balancing competing objectives,
183–185
catalyst management for
actionable knowledge,
122–125
conversation, 191–192
decision-making processes,
185–188
vs. document management
systems, 119–122
overview, 118–119
processes and integration,
177–181
Enterprise Content
Management components,
178–181
overview, 177–178
transparency, 183
using workflows to add
structure to data, 138–140
value of documents, 188–189

L
LAN network, 105, 106
Large back-file conversions, 170
Learning, applying to
organizational processes,
128–138
balancing departmental goals
with balanced scorecards,
129–130
first evolution, 132–133
overview, 128–129
process evolution, 130–132
second evolution, 133–135
third evolution, 135–138
Licensing costs, 158

Linking, 153
“Loose” integration, 147
Lotus Notes 4.6.2a, 86

M
Mail processing, 133
MAM (media asset management),
180
MCDA (Multiple Criteria Decision
Analysis), 185, 187, 188
Media asset management (MAM),
180
Media options, 70–71
Message-oriented workflow
architecture, 92
Metadata, 95–99, 165–166, 167
electronic content management
metadata issues, 97–98
imaging system metadata issues,
96–97
legal metadata issues, 98–99
overview, 95–96
Microfilm-based environments, 164
Microsoft Office, 85, 99
MSAR unit, 66, 68, 70, 72
Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis
(MCDA), 185, 187, 188

N
Negative feedback, 190
.NET platforms, 181
New Basel Capital Accord,
174–175
NGT (Nominal Group Technique),
187
None access level, 107
NT-based operating systems, 159
NT Web servers, 88

O
Objectives, competing, 183–185,
187
OCR (optical character
recognition), 149, 166

Index

OLAP (On-Line Analytical
Processing) technology,
177–178
Open database connectivity
(ODBC) interface, 85
Optical character recognition
(OCR), 149, 166
Optical media, 150, 156
Oracle database, 67, 68, 99, 157
Organizational processes, applying
learning to, 128–138
balancing departmental goals
with balanced scorecards,
129–130
first evolution, 132–133
overview, 128–129
process evolution, 130–132
second evolution, 133–135
third evolution, 135–138
OSAR unit, 73–75, 157
document retrieval from, 157
optical platters in, 67, 159
and postcommittal indexing, 68
pros and cons of, 72
Outlook application, 86
Outsourcing, 170–171
Owner access level, 107

P
Page cache, 156–157
extending life of OSAR unit
with, 74–75
and postcommittal indexing, 68
and precommittal indexing, 70
purpose of, 67, 158
replication on DIS server, 111
PageRank, 98
Panagon Document Warehouse, 66,
113
Panagon IDM Desktop client, 86
Panagon suite, 160–161
Paper-based systems, 163, 165
Paper document retrieval, 162
People, see employees

201

PeopleLink, 90
Peoplesoft integration, 90
Personell, see employees
Planning projects, 75–79
Plasmon optical platters, 159
Platform-to-platform integration,
144
Pointforward conversions, 168
Portals, 85, 132
Positive feedback, 190
Postcommittal indexing, 66, 67–68
Power Point application, 86
Precommittal indexing, 66, 68–70
Prefetching, 76
Presentation, 124
Print environment, 159
Processes and integration, 177–181
Enterprise Content Management
components, 178–181
overview, 177–178
“Process voodoo,” 62–63
Professional Services ISCC (Image
Services Connector for
Centera), 70
Project coordinators, 168
Project managers, 167
Project planning, 75–79
Pruning, 124
Purchase verification, 133

R
Reaction, 132, 133, 134–135
Records management, 103, 104, 179
Reflection, 133, 135, 137
Reindexing, 67, 68
Remote entry server, 112
Replication options, 66–73
inquiry and investigation
regarding, 70–73
media options, 70–71
overview, 66
postcommittal indexing, 66,
67–68
precommittal indexing, 68–70

202

Index

Report Manager tool, 175
Request for proposals (RFP)
document, 180
Resume handling, 171
Retention, 103, 127
Return on investment (ROI)
achieving acceptable, 122
of DM vs. KM systems, 120
estimating, 80
of imaging projects, 163
tracking, 76
RFP (request for proposals)
document, 180
“Ropes” program, 101–102

S
SAP’s Document Management
System (DMS), 148
SAP ServerLink, 143, 146, 148
Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002
and administrator duties,
103–104
effect of, 163
funding through, 172–175
Scanning, 153, 165
Scorecards, balanced, 129–130
SEC__tool, 108
Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC), 173, 175
ServerLink (formerly ArchiveLink),
142, 145
Shareholder value, 130
Simultaneous archiving, 149
SMS pushes, 112, 113, 114
Specialty equipment considerations,
73–75
Staff, see employees
Stakeholder information, 105
Standardization, 88–90
Star culture, 65–66, 163
Steelpoint Technologies, 174
Structure, using to add data to
workflows, 138–140

Success stories, see case studies
SUN UNIX operating system,
108
Swim-lane diagrams, 94–95
System administrators, 167
System planning data, gathering,
104–107
System structure, 108–112

T
Task Manager application, 107
Testing projects, 79
Thick client, 112, 113
Thin client, 99, 112, 113–114, 146
TIFF images, 113
TIFF viewer, 88, 115
Tight client integration, 146–147
Timelines for projects, estimating,
75–76
Training, 79
Transaction processing systems,
109
Transparency, 182, 183
Transportation services provider
case study, 81

U
UNIX administrative tools and
resources, 107–108
UNIX server, 87
Unstructured data, 137–138, 192
U.S. Patriot Act, 174

V
ValueNet partners, 139–140
Viewer access level, 107

W
WANs (Wide Area Networks), 105,
106
WCM functions, 121
Web Content Manager, 181
Web farms, 88, 109, 159

203

Index

Web integration, 87–89
Web Services, 87
Whitney, Eli, 89
Wide Area Networks (WANs), 105,
106
Word application, 85
Workflow
analysis of, 91–9
overview, 91

steps in, 91–92
workflow diagrams, 92–95
tools for, 64–65
using to add structure to data,
138–140

X
Xapex command, 108
Xtaskman command, 107

Source Exif Data:

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PDF Version                     : 1.5
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About                           : uuid:63da5b47-a14f-406f-8548-35f5d6dddaf1
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Isbn                            : 075067816X
Create Date                     : 2004:10:24 21:46:56+08:00
Modify Date                     : 2004:11:02 11:29:00+02:00
Metadata Date                   : 2004:11:02 11:29:00+02:00
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Format                          : application/pdf
Title                           : FileNet: a consultants guide to enterprise content management
Creator                         : Todd R. Groff and Thomas P. Jones.
Description                     : Team DDU
Author                          : Todd R. Groff and Thomas P. Jones.
Subject                         : Team DDU
ISBN                            : 075067816X

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FileNet: A Consultants Guide To Enterprise Content Management Butterworth Heinemann File Net. Consultant's

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