Okay, please excuse the “Wizard of Oz” reference in the title of this column – I couldn’t help myself due to the recent 71st anniversary of the film, which came to my attention via a Google Doodle – those headers at the top of the page when you use the search engine for research. (The Pac Man Google Doodle from a couple months ago was great)! Which gets me on topic – those doodles reminded me of the various ways of catching people’s attention – in other words marketing…

I’m the marketing communications manager for Snowbound Software – and one of the things we, like all of our brethren at other companies, try to do is capture and direct your attention to our products or services. We do this in a variety of ways – both traditional (print, advertising) and modern (online, mobile), hoping that we’ll get leads and therefore sales for our company – so we can all continue doing what we do.

The reality of marketing today though, is that it is getting tougher to get your message out through the sheer volume of information that bombards us each day. This is why the Google Doodle sticks out in my mind so much, what a great way to highlight different themes and topics. It got me to thinking that there must be some way for us to uniquely approach our best prospects as well – but how?

How about a jingle – those old time radio songs of yore – write something catchy about our document and image viewers and converters – set to the tune of some old classic song…hmmm…what rhymes with viewer…bluer…fewer…sewer (no, that wouldn’t work.) Plus, who would sing the song? All the really great crooners have passed along into that final cocktail lounge in the sky…

I know – a contest! Maybe we could raffle off some expensive glitzy item like a car or boat to get people’s attention! Nah, I’d never get the budget approved, and most of our customers (and customers to be) can’t accept anything worth more than twenty five dollars (and some no more than ten) per their company’s collusion policies. Hey, we’re not colluding with anyone – just rewarding good behavior!

Got it – bombard everyone on our customer and prospect lists with tons of email, Webinar invitations, newsletters and other updates until they opt out – then we’ll have their attention – albeit negatively!
Okay – so does anyone else have any ideas?

BTW, if you’re reading this – I got your attention! And thanks!

S~

Over the years, we’ve heard of many things people thought of when they heard our company name, with mostly winter themes of course – and yes, these include snowboards. One online definition for ‘snowbound’ is ‘confined or shut in by heavy snow’, and some Mondays feel that way around here – even in August! (Maybe especially in August – when we’re mentally snowbound – stuck inside while it’s nice outside.)

Aside from selecting a company’s name, people seem to focus on trying to come up with just the right tagline for their firm. When I worked at an ad agency a few years ago, clients would leap upon the tagline as the end-all be-all for their company’s positioning – before we had even begun to talk about what the business actually provided to any depth!

A few years ago, we came up with the tagline ‘Accelerating the Document Revolution’ which has worked pretty well for us as our products are high-speed document viewing and conversion applications and toolkits. (We briefly thought about “Just Do It’ and “Have It Your Way’, but those phrases were taken.)

So what is in a name? Well if you Google ‘Snowbound’, our company is the first listing (hooray for us – good search engine optimization), but the first-page results also feature:

• A poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
• A sappy TV movie starring Neil Patrick Harris (aka ‘Doogie Howser”)
• The Wikipedia listing featuring a number of ‘Snowbound’ titles in music, literature, film and television
• A kennel featuring Bernese Mountain Dogs in Wisconsin
• And last, but certainly not least, a bookstore in Michigan – where one is almost assured of becoming ‘snowbound’ each winter

So we came up with ‘Snowbound Software’ and our tagline; ‘Accelerating the Document Revolution’ to distinguish our firm from others. Based on the online search results mentioned above, and the comments we get from others – it seems we’ve made the right choices for our firm.

And no, we still don’t sell snowboards – maybe we’ll have a raffle for one at our next trade show…

Scott Pasho

MarCom Manager

Snowbound Software

Successful companies face the challenge of growing demand for their products and services, and happily ours is no different.  However I’d like to focus on one aspect of our business – forms processing.  No matter the forms processed, whether for insurance claims, mortgage applications or patient records, the tools and workflow processes are quite similar.

Let’s take a look at two growth scenarios:

A)     In the short term, unpredictable market and sales fluctuations can force reactive rather than proactive actions, unless you have an easily scalable workflow system.  For example, without a scalable system, if your workflow doubles, you have little choice but to increase your staff’s work hours– necessitating overtime at extra cost and perhaps extra errors.  And this solution does nothing for you next time you capacity is stretched.

However, with a scalable and distributed workflow system, you may be able to “borrow” resources from other parts of your company.  In other words, to get additional “hands on deck”, you may be able to work-share with other divisions or utilize part-time, home-based workers via Web access. (Web-based ECM systems can easily provide secure access to forms and documents across corporate divisions or even around the world – for optimal workforce collaboration).

B)      Now let’s consider our second scenario, sustained long-term market and sales growth of a continuing nature.  No one denies that adding a new workflow system is a challenging task that takes time and planning – perhaps up to 2-3 years.  But the benefits realized from enhanced processing productivity through faster workflow and greater efficiency, accuracy, and security as well as ensuring regulatory compliance can easily make up for the cost and effort.

Some Implementation Guidelines

A) Enhancing Home grown systems – In the right scenarios, enhancing an existing, departmental or even enterprise content system can provide all you need at lower cost and faster implementation.  After all you’re starting with a system that works for you, which is familiar to your staff and whose stored content is already easily retrievable.  There are bolt-on products like universal viewers that can often easily enhance such a system.  There may also be open source or other kinds of free products that are available for easy integration.  Just be sure that you’re making these choices for the right reasons.  Those reasons should include reducing risk, insuring greater likelihood of success and the knowledge that with the bolt-on, your system will satisfy your needs for at least 2-3 years.

Beware making such choices because the IT or engineering staff will find it fun or resume-enhancing.  Also beware going down this road if you’re delaying the inevitable for too short a time.  Other major considerations:  major system maintainability – can your system be maintained if your development staff is promoted or leaves? Can the system comply with current regulatory requirements?  Can it be upgraded easily?  So go ahead and enhance, but make sure what you’re adding is up-to-date and supported.

B) Can you modify your existing commercial system?  Is there a catch?

A very popular approach for the implementation of a departmental content management System is using Sharepoint.  Most companies have it, it is free or cheap per department, it has a large set of capabilities and it is easy to work with, and it can also be very scalable.

This approach has worked for many companies over the past few years.  Its spread within enterprises has been likened to “wildfire”.  The catch is that Sharepoint wasn’t designed for ECM from the ground up.  It has migrated that way because of its ease of use and low expense, and those are admittedly good reasons.   But creeping implementation may result in a large amount of investment – over time- in a product that ultimately can’t support your enterprise.  So take the time to review your migration path every 6-12 months and ask the following questions:  Is your system still maintainable, still complying with the latest regulatory requirements, still supporting your workflow processes as they are modified, and is it scalable when needed? Is the system compatible with available enhancements such as document viewers, low support client interfaces, archival systems or even the latest operating systems?

C) Full-fledged Enterprise Content Management Systems – These systems may be more expensive than you’d like, they may be more complicated than you want, and they may require more resources than you think you need.  But if you pick the right vendor, that system may be robust enough to satisfy your needs for many years.  Just keep in mind for their level of investment, such systems should be very full-featured, offer many security levels, handle all types of documents, offer Web-based access so your users can log-in from anywhere in the world, and be very scalable through increasing server sizes or numbers.  Enabling secure world-wide access to your documents from a diversified work force that may be in other countries or working from home empowers greater colleague communication and collaboration – a very worthwhile benefit.

Summary

Going with the status quo or making only small changes is not a proactive way to make your company more agile, efficient or competitive.  You must actively plan for the future!  Taking the old approach of increasing the number of hands to reduce your workflow bottleneck is not an acceptable solution.  Technology and new designs must be employed to provide performance and scalability benefits as well as to satisfy compliance and security requirements.

More information about ECM Enhancements

I’m very pleased to announce that the resurgent economy, as well as the development of new document viewing and conversion products designed to meet customer needs, has resulted in the best first quarter ever for Snowbound Software, and the best March in our fourteen year history.

Specifically, our Q1 2010 sales exceeded Q1 2009 by 18% and exceeded the previous Q1 record (2008) by 14%.

March 2010 sales figures were 63% higher than March 2009 and 42% higher than the next highest March (2007).

Contributing to these results were strong showings from the financial, insurance, and health care records management markets. Several leading banks, a number of insurance companies and the dominant health care records players were all instrumental in helping Snowbound achieve these numbers.

Also a factor in these results was Snowbound’s new VirtualViewer AJAX 1.8.  This product meets customer needs for a Web-based, support-free, as well as installation free universal document viewer.

They say that a slow economy is the best time to prepare to make gains in your market and against your competition, and with the confidence we’ve shown in our products, our people and our industry we’ve made great strides. We’ve used the relative slower pace of 2009 to further invest in our product development and our company – improving our Quality Assurance and our customer support, as well as developing new products driven by market demand. Our customers have expressed great satisfaction in what we’ve brought to them, and we think our recent success and growth is just the tip on the iceberg.

Thank You!
Simon

So the contravening factors of high importance and a revenue sink means that we are driven to create systems that are efficient, economical, accurate and reliable. Scalability is also important so that a system we devise today can still be producing for us several years into the future – as demand increases. Additionally if such systems can integrate with other corporate tasks that share a need for content management, then other savings can be found with regards to servers, communication, staff training, and economies with system development and software licensing.

Clearly, Snowbound believes we have solutions to assist the industry in our mutual need to solve these pressing requirements. (See our Virtual Viewer DETAILS). However there are many differing needs and a wide variety of combinations of products and processes that can be utilized to solve differing requirements.

We would like to offer a “Using ECM Systems for Compliance” Forum for our audience. We believe this forum can be used for members to share problems and ideas on an on-line basis, allowing them to avoid re-inventing the wheel. If you feel that such a forum would be of value to you, please respond to the email below to indicate your interest and optionally provide specific issues you’d like addressed.

Here’s to a healthy discussion
Simon

Click here: pres2010@snowbound.com

Note: All submitted information will be protected under Snowbound’s strict confidentiality guidelines unless otherwise noted.

I firmly believe that we serve our customers best by always understanding what they want and need.  So help us help you.  Let’s start off the New Year this way:  click on the email below and tell me what you need (or what you want changed) from Snowbound this year and I’ll respond with what we think we can do to fulfill your needs.

Don’t be constrained by the choices below but here’s a sample list:

• Need more extensive viewing or conversion applications solutions?

• Need special capabilities in our components or tools?

• Need better installation instructions?

• Better documentation?

• More knowledgeable or more responsive customer support?

• More programming samples?

• Need new document or format support?

• Need media format support?

• Need more products on our Java, .NET, Unix or other platforms?

• Need connectors to ECM systems, scanning systems, reporting systems, database systems?

• Need faster performance on a particular product?

Happy New Year to all

Simon

Click here:   pres2010@snowbound.com to send a direct message to me.

Note 1:  An exposed email address like this will be spammed pretty quickly so we may need to change the address regularly.  So don’t hesitate, send me your message now.

Note 2:  All submitted information will be protected under Snowbound’s strict confidentiality guidelines unless otherwise requested.

Earlier in the year some economists expressed concern over whether the nation had enough “shovel-ready” projects to quickly ramp up contracts and jobs. But recently NPR reported that AutoDesk, a California-based engineering software company, is having a difficult time keeping up with the demand from the stimulus-plan-funded projects.

AutoDesk designs 3D construction software that transforms old construction plans into digital blueprints, making for example, a 700-page document containing permits, blue prints and change notices into one searchable electronic file.

Managing these documents electronically is especially important for municipalities and states that are launching shovel ready projects. Proposals that receive funding are obligated to begin construction within 90 days after the contract has been awarded. Providing secure, yet accessible electronic documents can be complicated by incompatible systems or unreadable documents.

Snowbound Software focuses on how contractors, suppliers, and municipal leaders can leverage technology in order to meet the 90-day deadline for breaking ground. This includes maximizing the efficiency of all projects by using technology that allows different stakeholders to review and communicate through an application for a universal document and image viewer.

Quality viewing technology should ensure that critical content – from project proposals and change notices to approvals, schematics and blue prints – are accessible to the entire project team. A browser-based viewing solution, for example, would enable team members to easily access images and documents through devices that connect to the web.

This includes portable devices like the iPhone or a BlackBerry which would enable busy contractors and project managers to view documents from the office, airport, or construction site. Quality document viewers should also provide annotation and redaction which enable reviewers to comment on information, approve a proposal or block out sensitive information. And it should support the user-permissions set up initially in the document management application.

These are just a few of the benefits offered by feature-rich imaging technology. Snowbound’s document and image viewing solutions ensure community development departments, zoning board review teams, and more, the ability to access virtually any electronic proposal, plot plan or blue print, whether in the office, on the road, or at a construction site.

Learn more about Snowbound’s viewing solutions for shovel-ready projects and other industry applications.

Though the acquisition of a company that provides your mission critical technology may be a benefit to you (for example, if they’re stumbling), it can also work against your best interests. . . click here to read the entire article

Simon Wieczner, CEO

These document versioning steps are often essential for users engaged in customer facing roles or business process management tasks – save one caveat: the activity must not impact the integrity of the document as a record. Organizations should keep a history via audit trails and demonstrate access to the original (unaltered) version. This new ability to work with “flexible content” or perform page manipulations such as: mark-up, split, reorder, copy, delete, create new documents and offer multiple print options, all within the image viewer, is often an afterthought when planning and implementing a TCM/BPM solution. Enterprise content management vendors must incorporate the right image viewer as an essential component to complement their customer’s business process methods.

Micro-blogging (contrary to blogging) is a web service that allows users to post short messages (typically 140 characters) to their subscription network. These quick bursts of information can then be viewed on any browser, and recreational micro-blogging services like Twitter have become mainstream. This new form of publishing content has found its way to corporate communications services as well. With the surge of corporate executives blogging and in-turn, utilizing blog content as a way of information gathering, the faster information (or news) is disseminated, the better. In this economy, good news goes a long way, and you’ll want to get your news out as quickly as possible.

So how does this translate to the ECM space? The key is beginning where and when images are ingested. At the capture stage of the document lifecycle, content can converted into “searchable full text”. This function can be integrated directly, as an automated step within the application. As part of the conversion process, one must ensure that text and formatting data are also maintained (and in good quality). This is vital for an optimal text extraction application.

Once the images are in an electronic form, the content is available to use. Even with content committed to storage; near line or offline, it can be retrieved, utilized and shared. In a virtual smarter world, controlling and sharing information, adds a Web 2.0 advantage to traditional content management use.