Improving Document Import

One of the top issues in all Enterprise Software is that no matter how good the software tool is, unless it is widely used: it is a waste of time and money.

"Shelfware", as it is known in IT circles.

If you purchase a top of the range CRM system to manage all your customer contact details and keep track of your relationships with them, it still falls into disuse unless your salesforce actually use it to record their visits and calls. In fact, 30% of CRM projects completely fail due to insufficient end-user involvement and buy-in.

You may persuade yourself that Business Process Modelling (BPM) will help you understand the critical workflows in the company, but again unless it is well-used and kept in a maintained state it won't deliver. The same is also true of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software.

The core idea behind Document Management Systems (DMS) software is probably the centralized repository for all digital content. Again, unless users are depositing content into the repository, it won't deliver on the promises of saved costs and improved visibility.

It is extremely common to find yourself in a mixed model where some content is in the DMS, while some is not. It could be that the missing content is legacy information, or it might be that it was once believed that the content didn't need to be included, but now you've changed your mind.

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Making it easy to get that errant content into the repository is like an "amnesty" for users. It doesn't really matter about the previous policy, because it can be changed with a swift document import.

We've been working to re-engineer the document import feature in CogniDox for exactly this reason. Coming up in Release 8.0.0, we've created a very minimal model where you can just import a zip file and a slightly more detailed version where a control file will allow you to batch your requests and have them implemented in one execution. It's not that the feature wasn't there before 8.0.0; but rather that it's so much easier to use now.

I've already used it to upload all the minutes from a series of meetings that I realised would be better kept in CogniDox. Talk about not eating your own dog food! At least now I can quickly remedy my mistake.