Creating Value from Document Management

What is a content strategy?  To figure this out, ask yourself, “What you are hoping to gain by implementing a DM system?”  Document Management as a term insinuates that we are managing files, either electronic or paper.  Managing files is a growing concern, including records management, destruction policies, and archiving processes.  

If your firm does not already have established policies along these lines, what good is a system to manage files based upon your policies going to do?  The more important question is, “How much value exists in an archiving system?”  

Spending thousands of dollars for a better system to store and move files fails to add value to your firm.  Instead, I intend to present to you an approach that I have used, based in the idea of adopting a content strategy to create value for your employees and clients.  If you can effectively manage the content in your documents, opportunities to create value are abundant.

Managing content means that you can use the information in the document, as opposed to just work with the file properties of a document—hoping that the name, location, and a key field or two are capable of delivering valuable information.  Let me explain the nature of this problem from a staff perspective.  Pretend you are a staff member with limited prior knowledge of your firm’s work and have been charged with creating a proposal for a client with a unique tax situation related to natural resources.  Let’s consider a few approaches.

Are you interested in finding all documents for your tax clients?  Perhaps you may turn to your engagement management system to find a list of engagements for clients in that industry.  Maybe from that list you can search a few network folders for key words.  Will you be successful working autonomously?  Probably not.  Most likely you will need the expert knowledge from those who were involved in the prior engagements.  And what specifically can they provide?  Just what you need—a specific paragraph in a document that contains the advice.

Even when users were successful, finding such content previously required a keyword search on a network drive that took hours to execute.  And if you use a product such as CaseWare, the documents are stored in a compressed format which is not even searchable.  Once you find a list of documents, then you may spend hours of reviewing documents to find relevant sections.  

Instead, let’s consider another method that will work better.  Information sources such as Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis include advanced search terms to allow attorneys to search for documents referencing specific statutes, and common law, either upholding or overturning statutes and regulations.  Further, it shows the relevant sections immediately for review, no opening and closing of files one at a time.  

Google works in a similar method.  The results show a section of the document with the most search terms on a given web page.  This provides great power to the searcher by leveraging the content within an information source.  

Now, imagine that we can perform a similar search for accounting.  Is there value if you can find other companies that have been through an IRS audit, received a no change decision and includes a classification that the IRS is trying to disallow?  There are many examples like this—this is called knowledge management.

Consider your needs for knowledge management —the ability to leverage key knowledge within your firm is more important than ever, as firms strive to gain a better understanding of their clients.  

Where does knowledge in your firm exist?  Knowledge management studies report that knowledge exists in three places: people, processes or in relationships.  Process knowledge is inherent in the way your firm operates or executes work, and while critical for the service delivery of your firm, it provides little value to understanding your clients.  

People and relationships are the greatest sources of knowledge to improve your understanding of your clients and their needs.  How do we capture this information?  People document their knowledge all the time, as they produce content in emails and documents.  The key to finding this knowledge in millions of emails and documents is to understand your people.  Who are the knowledge experts within each topic that you can think of?  What are the topics?  

Likely you would have a list for each topic (who is the billing principal for a client, the manager for the engagement, expert in a specific industry, etc.)  It is important that these people can filter and audit the content where they are experts.  A good content management system allows knowledge experts to identify content, which is flagged and searchable by your entire firm.

Leveraging relationship knowledge from a content management system is somewhat elusive, yet it provides the quickest and highest ROI in many instances.  In law firms, it is common to find not only a DM system, but also a CRM solution and an employee portal that integrates both systems into different views.  This portal overcomes a key issue that email, CRM, DM, practice management, and most systems in accounting suffer from—the inability to cross-reference content between systems.
 
What do I mean by this?  Referencing three systems by client number alone is ineffective for discovering knowledge or delivering value.  Understanding the deeper content links is difficult for systems built in a vacuum.  

One way that EKSH leveraged Interwoven Worksite was to share key communications to and from clients, and to share key documents between service areas, in a chronological fashion.  In this way, we grant the ability for a tax staff member to understand the nature of any items of concern expressed by the client during our audit of the same client.  More importantly, the information includes the full context of the conversation and discovery process.
 
Likewise, the relationship that a principal has with a client can explain to a new manager the context of a specific client relationship, helping the manager to build his or her own relationship with the CFO or Controller.  Relationship knowledge is the least natural to use, as it requires a change in process for people to review and leverage this information, before and during an engagement.  In firms with more than 100 people, this can also provide the greatest value, creating consistency in delivery to your client.

How can you accomplish some of these goals with a document management project?  First, start by creating a goal beyond managing documents.  Incorporate a vision of sharing and value creation that your firm can receive from the document management project.
 
Implementing any system in a manner to accomplish this requires creativity, dedication to the end-result, a lot of patience, support, and training.  The primary challenge to delivering value from any document management project is setting these goals, and never losing sight of them.  

These may sound like lofty goals; however, they only require a change in mindset, and approach to accomplish them.  Once your product selection committee agrees on the goals and strategy, consider these things in your product selection process.  This does not need to be a core function of the product; however, the functions should support your vision.  

This will not dramatically increase the size or complexity of the technology implementation project.  Instead, a content management strategy challenges you to execute a business change project in concert with your new technical capabilities.  A year of detailed planning is common, and its common to be revising, reviewing processes, and updating the system design for a couple of years after the technology implementation is complete to find harmony with your firm processes.

Fast-growing firms need consistent and effective processes in their engagement execution to ensure profitable growth.  A content management strategy requires a firm to evaluate how it executes engagements, and to create value in terms of knowledge management, customer relationship, and productivity.  If your firm has experienced organic growth, this also offers a natural opportunity to revise processes in ways that create value both inside and outside of the organization.

Remember, document management is not magic; it’s a better filing system.  Rely on your IT staff to understand and deal with the data-integration challenges such as master-data management.  Make sure that you do not short-change your training efforts; this change is pervasive through the organization and poor user processes are magnified quickly.  Most importantly, remember that technology success alone never creates value.  Improving your firm’s service execution is the key to creating value.

About Ryan Posener

Mr. Posener holds a B.S. in Information Technology from University of Phoenix, and is currently working on his M.B.A. with a focus in Technology Management.  Mr. Posener currently serves as Enterprise Content Management Business Analyst for EKS&H, a 320-person business advisory firm in Denver, Colo.  Mr. Posener’s current projects include the firm’s document management project, which began in 2005, as well as the firm’s SharePoint, and Knowledge Management initiatives.  

Mr. Posener joined EKS&H from Mission Critical Systems, a Denver-based integration firm, and Interwoven partner, where he led WorkSite document management integration projects.  For the six years prior, he focused on document management integration in the legal industry, working for eSentio Technologies and SRA International, Inc.  Prior to beginning work as an integrator, Mr. Posener worked for several large law firms in the Atlanta, Ga. area, including Alston & Bird LLP as Database Administrator and Application Developer, and Troutman Sanders LLP as a Network Support Engineer.