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June 15, 2005

A Better Chance of Survival

It seems like we just closed one of the severest hurricane seasons in decades and now it is time to start all over again. As I hear reports from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) '2005 Hurricane Outlook', I am once again reminded of how critical a role technology can play in disaster recovery.

Hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, floods and other destructive weather conditions can destroy an organization's most valued asset--its information. Dangerous weather conditions are only a single possible cause of a data storage disaster. Typical weather conditions such as humidity, computer viruses, prolonged power outages are other possible causes for a data storage disaster.

Note the following statistics from Contingency Planning Research regarding businesses that suffer an incapacitating disaster without a disaster recovery plan:

"Only 43 percent resume operations"
"Of the 43 percent, only 29 percent are in business two years later"
"A total of 87 percent will be out of business in two years"

Those statistics are overwhelming given the fact Inc. Magazine recently reported an estimated "75 percent of small to medium size businesses have no disaster recovery plan."

On a recent flight I was paging through the in-flight magazine and came across an ad from the Department of Homeland Security titled "Every Business Should Have a Plan."

The copy of the ad included this statement "whether it's a flood, terrorist attack or other disaster, every business needs an emergency plan. You can't control what happens, but you can be prepared."

Being prepared includes protecting the critical paper-based information. Paper still remains the highest percentage of information for most organizations. To protect the paper-based information, organizations need to convert it into an electronic format for the purpose of redundant off-site storage. Experts in disaster recovery recommend mirroring the data to two or three off-site storage locations to ensure business continuity.

By Pamela Doyle

June 15, 2005 | Comments (0)
Posted by DocuVantage

June 13, 2005

What the Morgan Stanley Judgment Means

Many industries have had notable tipping points. The point at which everybody woke up and said, 'we have to pay attention to this'. Some within the records retention and document management sector say the recent $1.45 billion judgment against Morgan Stanley is that tipping point. A big number like that will get the attention of CEOs, COOs and general counsels.

Have we received more calls or questions from clients? Not really from our existing base but we do believe decisions to purchase are being made much faster because the ROI regarding legality is obvious.

Records retention issues related to Sarbanes-Oxley and previous regulatory rules has thrust EDM and ECM to the forefront for a while, but we've always been here. EDM and ECM shouldn't be viewed as a way to 'comply' with regulations, it should be a way to operate more efficiently. Managing your information from the beginning means compliance isn't such a scary thing after all.

The clients we do get because they are looking for compliance only are amazed at what we can offer them. They think compliance means putting all the documents in a repository. Anybody can store documents (or maybe not in Morgan Stanley's case), it's the intelligent retrieval that's the trick. It''s not the technology, it's the correct application of technology that creates the efficiency.

When we meet with a compliance-seeking client we start by asking how the documents might be searched for or the paths that they may take to multiple people. Often they don't want to go down this road, they think we're trying to 'pad' our proposal. After discussing the matter a bit more they realize that there is value in the solution and the 'proposal padding' is going to save them time and money.

What does the MS judgment mean? For the less-than-ethical sales people it's a great F.U.D. headline. For us it is an opportunity to switch the conversation from compliance to efficiency

On a related note, PR blogger Neville Hobson talks about some other issues related to Sarbanes-Oxley.

June 13, 2005 | Comments (0)
Posted by DocuVantage

June 01, 2005

We've Opened up the Case Studies

When we first launched the new DocuVantage web site we required any visitors to fill out a simple form to review our case studies. That didn't go over very well, so we have removed the form. You can now review all our case studies without losing any privacy.

June 1, 2005 | Comments (0)
Posted by DocuVantage

The Pitfalls of Content Management Systems - CMS

Content management systems (CMS) can save an organization a great deal of time, but if not properly planned a common trend appears. It goes like this:

CMS Planning
During the phase where a CMS solution is sold/pitched to a client or internal group statements such as "We'll save so much time" - "Look at what we can do with CMS" - "We can repurpose content with ease" - "We can do that" - "We can do this" etc... are made.

But then the content management system is put in place....

Post CMS Rollout
Suddenly statements such as "We can't do that with the CMS" - "We can't change the content layout" - "We can't index in that way" - "We can't......" start to be heard.

The majority of these issues are due to lack of experience from the CMS vendor. Many times the information was there, it was just a poor discovery process on the part of the consultant. You want a CMS vendor that can say "Been there, done that" to just about every situation.

June 1, 2005 | Comments (0)
Posted by DocuVantage