DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS AND HOW THEY RELATE

TO EMERGENT WORK MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY.

by Dr. Jay Ramanathan, Chief Technical Officer, Concentus Technology Corp.

In the evolution of corporate IT systems, it is too easy to fall into the trap of viewing Document Management technology as a less evolved ancestor to newer Workflow systems. Those of us actually developing Workflow, or as I prefer to call it, "Work Management," are sometimes tempted to make either/or comparisons between the two distinct levels of technology. I've even caught myself saying, "You're either document-centric or process-centric." The implication: Being process-centric, which requires powerful, Work Management technologies, offers a superior management strategy because it frees the enterprise of the limits that can be imposed by allowing the handling of documents to drive the handling of work. It also supports collaborative business processes necessary to supply chain participation. While organizations must become process-centric, I've come to recognize that setting up "process," or Work Management, as a replacement for Document Management makes no real sense. One does not preclude the other. The difference is only in level of control and breadth of views and management of production, distribution and marketing. Both levels, both technologies, are necessary and important.

I'll use the analogy between development of the human organism and the business organization. Both evolve out of necessity. Both evolve through development of very specific capabilities and organic systems ("technologies" in business parlance). But to place Document Management as an alternative to and less effective solution than Work Management is like saying that the nervous system, or the brain, is more essential for driving a car than the eyes.

True, we can compensate for compromised eyesight or blindness, just as we can manage business and engineering documents manually on paper. But severe visual impairment will impair our ability to drive a car, and we certainly won't be competing in Indy racing. Similarly, lack of automated Document Management, regardless of how sophisticated our other software capabilities are, can impair the business organization's efficiency and thus limit its competitiveness. That's because documents, in the form of fixed groupings of specific sets of information, are very much required for a host of purposes, including legal positions, accounting information, design and engineering records and historical reporting. But without the "meta" level provided by Work Management technology, automated Document Management can achieve only limited results, though it is still crucial to business competitiveness

Document Management…the "eyes" of the organization

Managing documents is like taking and then filing photographs or video images. The process fixes an image at a point of time. It can then be referenced at will, manipulated, changed and even shared. And the entire process can be automated.

In that sense, the Document Management system functions as the organization's "eyes." Just as humans can recall, alter, recombine and share what our eyes see, so can the organization's Document Management system.

Even perfect eyesight is not enough…

But what the eyes and their related circuitry, which include all of our visual memories or stored "documents," cannot do is to tell us when to drive, where to drive to or what to do when we get there. That level of decision making is handled by our brains and nervous systems, or in the business analogy, Work Management. And it is handled at a high management level and beyond the capability of operational systems such as ERP.

To further underscore the respective importance of both Document Management and, on the meta level, Work Management, I'd like to labor this "evolution" analogy one level deeper: While IT systems that help manage the business enterprise "evolve" much as human organisms evolve, they do so at an unimaginably faster rate. Human organisms and business IT systems both tend to evolve from the small, the isolated and the single functioning toward the large, the interconnected and the multi-functional. Each step in the evolution of IT systems creates a broader point of view encompassing more subsystems or functional areas and a greater need for communications among these systems and between formerly separate individuals, groups or organizations. Evolution of IT technology does not, however, eliminate the need for the simpler, more focused subsystems.

Work Management systems… adding a level.

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Among humans, the ultimate system is a functioning, productive and peaceful society. That is also true of the business enterprise. Right now, we are calling that community a "virtual enterprise," and the Supply Chain is the "glue" that makes it cohere. It is the Supply Chain that has created the need for sophisticated Work Management systems.

The problem: Change is rapid…

The "systems" and components supporting human evolution develop over aeons, literally giving the species time to adjust. That is not true of the IT technologies supporting the business enterprise and its Supply Chain communities, most recently, Work Management systems. Those technologies, particularly in software, are evolving almost too rapidly to track, easily comprehend or, most importantly, adjust to. Sometimes, before important, but lower-level enterprise applications, such as Document Management systems, are even beginning to mature new, higher levels of IT management evolve. The corporate challenge is great: you must understand and try to incorporate new levels of IT technology, while continuing to monitor developments among Document Management and other more focused enterprise applications. These applications must be integrated into the "flow" of the organization's work at higher and higher levels if successful Supply Chain compliance is to be achieved.

How to identify "evolved" Work Management

Unfortunately, all Workflow or Work Management systems are not created equal. Thus, the first challenge facing those wanting to incorporate the power of these systems is quite simple: How does one differentiate one Workflow system from another? First, that question implies the need for substantial self-analysis to determine whether "state-of-the-art" is really required. A particular business enterprise may simply need to move documents around. Period. However, if the business is truly interested in Supply Chain compliance, dealing with complexity in manufacturing or distribution or integrating the flow of work with other organizations, then that question must be answered. This is true whether the potential investor in Work Management is an end-user, a software developer looking to imbed or attach the capability or a systems integrator.

The complex organization, like the complex organism, must have a higher level of processing and analytic capability to support true decision-making. In the area of Work Management software systems, look for three broad capabilities that characterize truly evolved systems:

1. OPENNESS.

• Liberation. In truly open, collaborative Work Management, the process model is liberated from the data objects (including documents) managed by the system. Document-based, serial processing is replaced by collaborative processing framework. That means that any document, attached to any phase of the product development or distribution process, is accessible independently of the actual work process in place or the stage within that process. In other words, the software supports but does not change or obstruct the way the enterprise works.
• Seamlessness. The Work Management system can specifically handle external applications, data objects or even lower-level workflow data without requiring additional programming by the end user.
• "Embeddable." State-of-the-art Work Management should have the flexibility to be imbedded into (invisibly) or attached to other software applications, including Document Management. One excellent example from our own customer base is at Powerway. This leader in document management for ISO 9000 and other standards compliance will use Work Management (specifically our MetaExpressä and MetaPlannerä products) to enable fully flexible deployment of its capabilities in virtually any work environment.

1. COMPLIANCE WITH MAJOR INTEROPERABILITY STANDARDS.

• At the highest level, Work Management should comply with standards developed by the Consortium for National Industrial Information Infrastructure Protocols (NIIIP). NIIIP has developed the outline of an architecture to support the virtual enterprise, including Supply Chains.
• It must be both CORBA and COM compliant to ensure application interoperability over the Internet.
• OMG, WfMC, NCIMS, and SCOR are standards bodies that are driving requirements into the marketplace and must be adhered to.

1. POWERFUL, BUT UNOBTRUSIVE.

• Look for completed and open logic that can mold to your processes, rather than having to change the way you work to adapt to the software.
• Look for the ability to handle collaborative tasking, seamlessly and invisibly.
• Insist on the ability to handle multiple external applications, like Document Management.
• Require a graphic tool that eliminates software coding and permits change in processes at definition and run times. This allows for optimization of all processes.

There is no question that it would be possible to continue this list into a finer level of detail, but building your selection process around these major capability areas will ensure that you are limiting your choice to true, high-level Work Management products.

Finally, it is important to hold this distinction in mind: While very sophisticated Document Management applications can function with great flexibility, it is only through the new level of control being supplied by emergent Work Management systems that documents can really be accessed, manipulated and moved about as the business process for the extended enterprise requires. Rather than eliminating or hampering the effectiveness of your current Document Management system, powerful Work Management should shoulder the burden of actually improving utilization of Document Management and every other IT application that supports the business enterprise.

IT systems are evolving rapidly. For business organizations, Work Management is current state-of-the-art, because the best systems view the information management challenge entirely from the business process perspective. However, managing the rapid change required to "keep up," must be done right. If rational selections are made, the Work Management system you select should enhance, not diminish, the importance of your other enterprise applications, including Document Management.