Gartner, Forrester and Doculabs
have all been following the Integrated Document Archive and Retrieval System
(IDARS) marketplace since all the way back in the early 90’s. The concept is not new: store high volumes of
internally generated content in a highly efficient system with a database for
metadata, and separate storage for documents themselves. With security, allow internal users and
external customers access to the database, and the documents that the database
points to.
The concept has been a smashing
success. Virtually all mid-to large
sized enterprises have deployed some version of IDARs to reduce printing costs,
make content available to CSR’s so that they can answer customers’ questions on
their statements or bills in real-time, and vendors have built solutions that
have scaled, integrated them into total content management infrastructures with
federated search across IDARs, and other content repositories. And we’ve all
made or saved a few bucks in the process.
So, after 30 years of solid but
rudimentary success, you’d think there would be nothing further to do
here. These systems are now embedded
within the enterprise, the vendors have built mini-empires based upon the
results they’ve delivered, and it’s a pretty static landscape in terms of new
developments. So, it’s surprising that a
division of Actuate, squarely in the business analytics space, has decided
after all this time to throw their hat in the Repository ring as well:
There are two compelling reasons
why customers want more than the traditional IDARs: User Interactivity and Cost
Allocation. Let’s first discuss why
users are bored with their current IDARS:
Internally generated content like reports,
customer statements, insurance claims documents and complex financial reports
are not an island unto themselves. This content
fits into a framework of information that organizations are increasingly mining
to make decisions, predict behaviors, and satisfy broad regulatory
requirements. I recently visited a top
five P&C insurer, and the news is that first tier organizations are no
longer content with content as usual.
They are thinking about the requirement to store underwriting documents,
and all the process-related decisions that generated the documents, for
example. They need to generate a view
into the rules that generated the
decision to underwrite a policy with a specific risk calculation, so they can
evaluate that decision against actual claims data mined from data warehouses
and claims reports. This is not your
granfather’s IDARS or ECM system anymore.
We are talking about merging, linking structured and unstructured
content and being able to present not only views of documents, but more interactive views of rules engines,
documents and compare predictions with data actuals.
Cost Allocation: Traditional IDARS systems are pretty vanilla when
it comes to how they report on who uses the system, what percentage of the
content is being retrieved from, say, the Variable Annuities LOB, vs. the
Protection LOB. You get a pretty
standard set of admin screens and you basically have to build your own
reporting based on system logs. Because
ECM is truly an enterprise application these days, set up centrally to manage
content from all business units, the need to do this reporting is key from a “who
pays, and how much” standpoint. What if
you could generate dynamic reports that allow you to generate dynamic reports
that show usage be department in terms of total bytes stored, total numbers of retrievals,
which departments added the most new reports, and do all of this with a simple,
no-programming interface? The answer is
that you’d be able to better allocate costs, but you’d be able to better
predict what your costs will be for new applications, because you can easily
view what’s happened in the past. And,
there is more going on here than simply the ability to generate beautiful, 3D
graphs, and interact with the reports, we are also talking about being able to
make associations between the granular data you store, how it is indexed, and
how it ties into records retention. It
is not good enough to store and records manage “corporate financial reports.” These
reports relate specifically to individual corporate entities, and people, and
if you have a system that can see those associations, and allow you to manage
at that level, you get a much more elegant content delivery platform, and you will
attract user communities that know they will get value based upon actual usage.
Figure 1: dynamically generated
reporting about what’s in the repository
And this brings us to why an
analytics company announced a new IDARS system.
Today’s ECM systems are primarily focused on systems of record. Store unstructured content, and serve it up
to users who request it. But, as the
insurance company told us, those are yesterday’s requirements. What’s needed now, is a system of engagement that
can store, link and dynamically present information derived from a variety of
structured and unstructured content, and to do so over web, mobile and
touch-tablet device channels. The Next
Gen Repository discreetly manages content by the audience that views it, not
just by the name of the content. Please
stay tuned as we uncover more trends on this topic. One thing’s for sure: yesterday’s methods will
only produce yesterday’s results!
