Content Is Cool

Co-authored by Tom Donnelly and Jim Sinur.

Many people think that content is just a fact of life that needs to be captured, stored and managed. This is not that cool, but some organizations are proving this wrong. To that end, we challenged ourselves to find some cool content enabled process applications.

Cool Today:

Come over and see my pad

Have you ever gone to a county office to look up information on a complex document only to find the county options to view this information are somewhat limited? In a county office in the western U.S. they have solved this problem by providing the public with a 42-inch flat-screen monitor to retrieve and view blue prints and other engineering drawings.

This allows a customer to zoom and pan large images, eliminating the need for the traditional magnifying glass. When they have identified the information they need, they can either request a print of the zoomed section(s), or the entire document. Thus making it easier for the customer to not only find, but add that information to the report or contract they are researching.

What makes this solution even more valuable to the county’s customers is the window-in-window functionality. Zooming is great, but the issue with zooming is that the user often loses perspective of the entire document in the process. They find the information they need, but do not know how to get to the next item on the image they want to view? The conservative users among us have become familiar with the process of zooming in to what you want, followed by zoom out to find out where to go next.

While the more adventurous users get lost while panning into the unknown of a zoomed document, relying on bumping into familiar features to at least identify you are going in the right direction. These county customers have overcome this technical issue inherent to traditional zoom technology with the addition of the zoom pad and a navigator function.

The zoom pad allows an adjustable and movable window that lies on top of the full image. As the user moves a magnifying glass icon across the image, the zoom window displays the information under the icon. This simulation of the traditional magnifying glass function allows the customer to zoom to multiple points of information on a complex document without loosing perspective of the entre document.

The zoom pad might be easy to relate to, but the more popular function is the navigator. The navigator also has a resizable and moveable window-in-window, but in this function, the full image is in the smaller window. As the user increases the zoom, a shaded area is reduced in the smaller document to highlight the section currently be viewed in the main window.

This not only allows the user to keep perspective of where they are in relationship to the entire document, but also allows the relocation of the zoom to occur by moving the shaded area across the full document view. This definable pan cursor allows a customer to easily change the focus from a mail box in the front of the house to a gazebo in the back yard with absolute ease and speed – and without the headaches.

Overall this function reduces the time of searches and views and allows customer to eliminate unwanted prints.

Avoiding the stick in the mud:

Who hasn’t gone into a county office to find the specifications of your property? Later, you walk around the yard with a tape measure and a print out checking to make sure that you didn’t expand your garden into your neighbors yard or if that sickly-looking tree is your problem or your neighbors.

In a county in the western U.S., the public can now perform this task in one simple step by retrieving land plot specifications using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) images that can be overlaid and later removed. Now these citizens can not only see their plot dimensions, but often see the feature of their concern. That old sick tree is sure to be displayed with the property line showing who is responsible for dealing with it.

While your garden expansion might not show up right away, it will eventually show up on a future image. What is important to private land owners and contractors with this feature is the quick addition of updated landmarks and features that allow more detail plans to be drawn.

Many a contractor has run a foul by a tree or addition that didn’t show up on the original plot.

The celluloid hero exists:

It is a word we don’t like to say anymore: microfilm. But realize that it has been around far longer than digital imaging and is arguably still considered a better long term archive media. Customer will often not admit to it, but if you are a company with an extended history, most likely you still have documents stored on microfilm. But why are they still there?

Isn’t it a digital world? Often the reason is that the last item a company wants to spend money on is the conversion of historical documents. And why should they? After all, maybe only 10% or 5% or even 2% of these documents may ever need to be retrieved. So we leave it in the backroom, reluctantly performing retrieval for documents that are still active.

In an insurance company in the mid-west, a system exists that allows them to find and convert active folders to digital images - thus finding the needle in the haystack. How? By letting the customer find them. As customer service and underwriting departments request documents from their digital content system, request for microfilm documents are sent to a microfilm retrieval system.

In this system, every request for a single document will propagate a request for the entire customer’s folder. This request produces a media hit list that allows the operator to efficiently insert roll after roll of microfilm while the software drives the analog device to produces digital images. What is returned is the customer’s original request along with the rest of the customer folder, which is automatically indexed into the digital system. Follow-up requests are easily managed since the rest of the folder is already available as digital content.

The end result – A cost effective method to put active documents online while minimizing the cost of conversion.

Cooler Tomorrow:

Rules-driven BPM and content used in concert promise to create some new forms of efficiency. Consider the insurance company that took variable terms and conditions, guided by core policies and constraints, to dynamically create policy contracts that eliminated getting the legal department in the critical path except in rare cases that only required a quick review by a paralegal to ensure compliance with the policies.

Bottom Line:

This is just the beginning of leveraging content in cool contexts. BPM 2.0 is going to accelerate the use of content and micro content in new ways to support knowledge-heavy processes. We believe the spotlight will shine on those processes that learn to leverage content in cool and effective ways.

Cross-posted from www.global360.com/blog