Rock and a Hard Place

A really intriguing article went up on B-eye-Network.com today. It's almost a thesis, really, focusing on the future of the information management system. As many of the top names in the industry have suspected that sooner rather than later - traditional document management programs (IE, hard copy storage, delivery services, etc.) and newer forms of data warehousing will converge. The other of this piece disagrees, suspecting instead that these areas will stay independent of one another, although with significant overlap in places. Below is what I would point to as the main selling point of the article. Follow the link for complete text.


The position of this article is a skeptical one that data warehousing, e-discovery (email), and enterprise content (document) management will not converge. These will remain separate markets for the foreseeable future, but with an increasingly broad and deep overlap of infrastructure and application functionality that embraces structured and unstructured data, especially email and the structured transactions that correspond to the messages.
There is such a substantial installed base of data warehousing that bridging the gap between transactional data and archiving, document management, email, and e-discovery will be a requirement for the foreseeable future. The same thing can be said about the giant installed base of document management systems.

New in eDiscovery

CBROnline has a great article on their website about the function of eDiscovery in the legal field. In the past year alone, rules have changed in the Federal Rules and Civil Procedures. As a result of the ever-changing demands and regulations of the industry, eDiscovery and electronic content management in general has become of the the single most important business processes of any legal firm. GRM's new division - GRM EDM can provide your practice with all the security you need from a name that you can trust.

From the CBR article:

The process entails more than storing and securing email records. It can involve any one of a broad series of procedures in which electronic data is sought, located, secured or searched with the intent of using it as evidence in a civil or criminal legal case. Data of all types can serve as evidence, something that can cause huge problems for IT managers tasked with trawling enterprise assets for specific evidence held as text, or in an image or calendar file, on a database or spreadsheet, on a website or even in an audio file.

Document Management More Important for Lawyers

In a report from OneStopClick.com, industry experts weigh in on document management in the legal field. The findings, are that a comprehensive document management program (in particular programs like eDiscovery) are crucial to the field and arguably more important than in any other industry. Sighting the deposition review process as a strong example, the author of the article makes a good case for any legal firm to invest in document management services.

From OneStopClick:

"The need for international law firms to have innovative computer forensics and document management technology at their fingertips is increasing, it has been claimed.According to Kroll Ontrack, the deposition review process in particular can be time consuming when multiple legal professionals in different global locations have to work on the same document sets."

Documents are a Critical Business Function

This morning I came across an excellent case for how important document management is as a business function. Documents are the most basic aspect of any organization, and without the proper tools in place to handle, distribute and access that core information - no business can be successful. GRM can provide you with those tools.

Here's a clip from the article:

"Documents, both digital and paper, touch every corner of an organization regardless of size, industry or locale. Gaining control of the volume of documents flowing through the business – and the costs associated with printing, sharing and updating them – can be a swift way to impact the bottom line. Research from Xerox shows that document output costs in the office average more than $3,400 per employee each year – that's a seven figure budget item for organizations with 300 or more office workers. "

Green Business Solutions

One of the most prominent ways businesses have moved to green their day-to-day affairs is through improved and increasingly virtual records and document management. Paper usage in America alone is still at an outrageously high level, and moving towards the ever-elusive "paperless office" is perhaps the best chance we have to cut back on wasteful business proecesses. There was an article posted last week to KMWorld.com discussing the environmentally friendly benefits of EDM, or even a more traditional professional document management program.

From the article:

"Many knowledge management solutions, including records management (RM) and enterprise content management (ECM), reduce the use of paper. In addition, online collaboration and online meeting solutions can greatly cut down on the need for travel to meetings. Although reducing the carbon footprint of IT centers is also important, transportation accounts for 33 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, according to the Energy Information Administration. That contrasts to just 2 percent accounted for by information and communication technology, according to figures from Gartner, so savings in travel has a larger potential impact on the environment."