Identifi logo
Identifi logo
Aaron Stine, Identifi SVP Products and Solutions leading CoderDojo, Safety Harbor

Identifi is very pleased to announce our partnership with Safety Harbor CoderDojo. CoderDojo is a worldwide movement of free, volunteer-led, community-based programming clubs for kids 7 to 17. The CoderDojo concept began in Ireland in 2011 and has since expanded to 1,100 Dojos in 63 countries.

When we first heard about CoderDojo, we knew it was something we wanted to get involved with. We were pleasantly surprised to find that there was already an active Dojo in our own backyard! The Safety Harbor CoderDojo was started in 2015 by Dojo Champions Nancy Vellucci and Anastasia Underwood. Identifi Senior Vice President of Software and Solutions, Aaron Stine reached out to Nancy and Anastasia to see if we could work together. There was an immediate connection and we started collaborating in October of last year.

Since then, we’ve worked together to provide the resources the Dojo needs to be successful. In addition to financial support, Identifi staff also volunteer their time as mentors in the program. That’s been instrumental in expanding the scope of the technology available to learn as well helping each Dojo session run more smoothly.

One of the great things about CoderDojo is how it flips the classroom concept. There’s no lecturing or traditional teaching. Instead, Ninjas (students) learn on their own as well as from each other. We provide resource cards called “Sushi cards” that they can use to learn new skills. Ninjas work at their own pace to create their code projects. We reinforce peer learning with “Team Tickets”. Ninjas can earn a Team Ticket whenever they help out another Ninja. Team tickets are required to complete projects so everyone is motivated to help!

Ninjas earn achievements in the form of belts and badges each time they complete a project. They earn colored belt pins just like a regular Dojo.

They also receive a badge that represents the coding language they used to earn their belt. Ninjas can display their belts and badges by pinning them to their lanyard and wearing them at the Dojo.

As they advance, Ninjas are required to create projects that contribute to the “social good”. For example, they can create a new website that benefits the local community or create an app that helps their school. This reinforces the practical benefits that can come from technology.

We’re thrilled to be supporting the growth of kids in the Tampa Bay Area. Every Ninja in the Dojo will gain a better understanding of the technology that’s driving our world. And for some, CoderDojo may be an avenue to a software or engineering job in the future!

We’re enjoying the ability to give back to the community that has supported us and could not be happier with our combined success!

Identifi Products
Identifi Products

Approximately 60% of the average employee’s day is spent working on an organization’s records and documents. How much of that time is truly productive and how much of it is wasted? When dealing with content creation, storage, archiving, distribution, and transfer throughout an enterprise, there are often significant areas for improvement. A cloud-based consolidation and distribution center can vastly reduce the amount of time employees need to spend on document management while also improving business outcomes and customer service.

Boosting Productivity and Reducing Time to Market

With the majority of employee time being spent on document management, there are many opportunities to boost productivity and efficiency. Moving to the cloud allows an organization to take advantage of superior resources and an always accessible platform, both of which drive innovation and make it faster and easier for employees to process their documents effectively. Employees will be able to connect and collaborate from anywhere in the world, and thus they can quickly complete products and reduce the organization’s time to market. The enterprise content management (ECM) market is growing faster than the overall software market, as more organizations find that improving their ECM is one of the fastest ways to reduce project time and boost productivity. Time to market can be extraordinarily important for many organizations, especially those with close competition. Through cloud ECM, organizations can remain competitive with other businesses as they, too, invest in newer technologies.

Increased Reliability, Scalability, and Elasticity

Reliability is a key component of success. Up to 27% of businesses have suffered a loss of reputation due to poor document management. This affects customer retention, customer acquisition, and word-of-mouth advertising.

Cloud-based ECM gains all of the traditional benefits of the cloud. Cloud ECM can offer greater uptime than on-premises solutions, it can scale upwards through the deployment of additional resources, and has the elasticity to deploy resources on-the-fly to compensate for sudden or unexpected intervals of increased usage. All of this amounts to better service for customers and a far more productive and efficient environment for employees. Elasticity has the additional benefit of ensuring that the service is reliable and that organizations don’t need to pay for resources when they don’t need them. Scalability prevents an organization from being forced to invest too much in their infrastructure before they truly need it.

Lower Cost of Deployment and Ownership

By far the biggest driver of cloud-based enterprise content management is cost. When polling organizations, 38% reported that they were interested in cloud-based ECM for the purposes of cost reduction, compared to running their ECM solutions from on-premises servers. Deploying an ECM system on-premises means investing heavily in network infrastructure and physical assets, whereas a cloud-based ECM platform can be quickly deployed and scaled to suit the organization’s budget and needs. ECM deployments may contain as little or as much of an organization’s documents as desired and the costs are fluid; they can be reduced if the organization’s need is reduced. On premise servers and infrastructure often need to be upgraded to compensate for company growth and older equipment. This isn’t necessary with cloud-based ECM deployments, which simply requisition and provision resources as needed.

Integration With Business Process Management

Business process management (BPM) and enterprise content management need to work together for the best business outcomes. For most businesses, their documents are their processes.

Integrating BPM and ECM allows for fewer bottlenecks, improved overall efficiency, increased visibility, improved responsiveness, and fewer human errors. Cloud-based solutions can be easily and quickly integrated with each other for full support and consolidation. Many modern organizations are moving their entire infrastructure to the cloud, including BPM, ERP and CRM systems, and, of course, ECM. By managing and maintaining all of these components through the cloud, an organization can create an always-on completely connected and consolidated network.

BPM and ECM solutions can also be used to reduce liability and improve regulatory compliance, as they create a complete audit trail for documents and procedures, ensuring that the organization always has records for the work completed and the details of that work.

Universal Accessibility and Improved Collaboration

Cloud platforms can be used to effectively connect offices from city to city or nation to nation. Not only can organizations leverage the power of a global office, but they can also empower employees with the flexibility to set their own hours or work from home. Flexible work schedules aid in courting top talent, sourcing affordable talent, and keeping employees happy and productive. Cloud-based systems can be accessed from anywhere in the world and are “always on,” allowing for improved collaboration and the support of multiple time zones and regions.

Through a cloud-based ECM, an organization can freely grow throughout the globe. And by integrating a cloud-based ECM with other cloud-based solutions, better collaboration can be achieved throughout business processes. Cloud-based solutions can work on virtually any platform and generally only need a browser to connect to, freeing up employees to work from anywhere and to work on multiple devices. On-premises ECM applications can cost $1 million or more, with $200,000 or more being invested in hardware alone. Not only do cloud-based ERP solutions have a lower cost of deployment and maintenance, but they can significantly improve productivity and efficiency by creating an always-on solution through which employees can effectively collaborate and share.

Document management is a core business process that has to be effectively streamlined and managed for the overall productivity of a business. Through cloud-based enterprise content management solutions, an organization can improve the efficiency of every level of their business operations, accelerating speed to market and their customer happiness.

For additional information contact sales@identifi.net

Posted under "Thought Leaders" on the cbanc website  cbancnetwork.com

According to IDC (International Data Corp) – between now and 2020…  there will be 44X the growth in information BUT… only 1.4X growth in IT professionals.  For example, according to MBA Online there are 294 billion emails sent every day.  To give you an idea of the impact it would take the US Postal Service two (2) years to process that many pieces of mail.  Every day 172 million people visit Facebook, 2 million Blog posts are written (guilty as charged), enough posts to fill Time Magazine for 770 million years!

So why are we waiting to manage and store all this information?  According to an AIIM, the leading trade association in a Enterprise Content Management (ECM) survey, “the problem is we don’t think we have a problem!” The number one answer to the survey is “management is still dragging their feet;” followed by “people still want to hold onto their paper.”  Finally, “people still think they need a wet signature (signature on paper)” …and so on.

Yet AIIM also asked the following question, “How much more productive do you think your organization would be…with ECM?”  The median answer is “at least 33% more productive.”  So where is Enterprise Content Management (ECM) headed?  We see the traditional ECM model moving from document centric to people centric, open and collaborative, community oriented and so on…  A focus on the customer, rather than on products, is a critical ingredient for financial institutions to maintain and grow their business with their customers. 

ECM is an effective approach to helping financial institutions manage the information, the content necessary to achieve a customer-centric focus.  As business and consumer customers become empowered by social media and pervasive communications, they are starting to realize they have choices for their financial services. These trends are reshaping the financial industry and are putting financial institutions into a more competitive atmosphere than before.

Technology innovations today and into the future have been turned up-side-down! It used to be business drove innovation, today people do.  So how do you manage the information tsunami so your customers don’t end up knowing more about your products and services than you do?  That is the imperative for going paperless and more.

We have moved from an era of the PC, to the internet and today the cloud.  Each subsequent move has happened more rapidly.  You can see how things were processed from the document, to the web page and today it’s an interaction.  Consider the best known companies.  Look how over time we have moved the cheese from IBM to Microsoft and now to Facebook.  Content has moved from microfiche to image, to document, to content to social business systems?  We see financial institutions moving from the PC to the web and mobile devices, but not nearly as quickly as their customers and the growth in the devices themselves.  What’s next?  Go paperless.

What are 2 or 3 greatest misperceptions associated with implementing doc imaging?

Centralized scanning (capture) is NOT the only way to control the document imaging capture and workflow.  Scanners become increasingly powerful and inexpensive.  Scanners for less than $1,000 include features such as duplex and color document capture.  Software as a Service (SaaS) and in-house web-server based ECM applications offer  click-once deployment, employ barcode recognition, forms recognition and e-signature technologies which allow for a more automated and accurate method of capture.  Centralized capture out!  Distributed capture in!

Your ECM implementation happens overnight.  False!  Technologies such as report archive and a basic backfile scanning application, like signature cards may be in place in weeks, but careful planning and best practices while employing ECM applications for all new account and loan products, HR, accounting, Accounts Payable and so on take time and teamwork.

You're going to go "completely" paperless.  False!  There are going to be documents you have to keep, such as a mortgage and a deed.  Your lawyer must decide.

How long is a ‘typical’ timeline to get a doc imaging system up and running?

If the ECM vendor provides "templates" for the applications the customer wishes to implement and best practices guidelines during the pre-implementation stage and during implementation a "typical" document imaging implementation timeline will be 30-90 days.  If the customer is exceptionally well organized in terms of defining their applications and indexes it can be 30-45 days.  The customer must provide good feedback and be fully engaged.

Who is best suited to serve as the project owner for implementation: IT, the business line being imaged, or some other area?

The IT department or IT consultant needs to be involved as well as the business line managers of the department or organization being implemented but the ECM project owner should be a person that has project management skills.  They might not have all the answers but have the ability to get the answers and keep the project on track internally and be an advocate to promote the system throughout the organization.

Besides loan origination, what are 3 other areas that should be considered for doc imaging?

Deposits, Operations, Legal, HR, AP, Vendor Management, Facilities Management Wire transfer and more...

Are there any business lines or areas that are NOT good candidates for doc imaging? Why?

There are areas that will be more challenging than others.  If you are new to ECM, pick an area of the institution where there is a quick ROI like new account signature cards, new account documents, consumer loans, HR then make your way to more challenging are such as commercial mortgages.  The primary concern will always be the same best practices and teamwork.

What recommendations can be made to minimize staff keeping ‘ghost files’?

If you cannot access the content, image files, documents and reports easily and quickly from anywhere across the organization, you will most likely have people keeping ghost files.  This means stop the flow by capturing documents at their originating point within your organization and conquering the backfile as well.  A scanning service is a good way to get that done.  It is usually easy though for the bank themselves to go back and scan in all the old signature cards.  This is a good way to be successful right off the bat.  It has a good impact on the customer and the staff.

I recently did a survey and analysis at a multi-billion financial institution and I expressly advised them they would never catch up with their backfile if they didn’t capture their documents at the source (branch) or in the field and utilize e-signature and auto-indexing methods whenever possible.  Centralized capture is out!  Distributed capture is in!  Managing social business content lags far behind, but we are storing more content from more and more channels of communication.

Can some docs be destroyed immediately after imaging? Any docs that can NOT be destroyed?

This list is extensive and requires the advice from the financial institutions legal counsel.  As a general rule, keep everything seven years. Keep the Mortgage, Release of Mortgage and Note permanently.

For more information or an ROI analysis of your needs to go paperless contact sales@identifi.net or visit our website www.franprocess.wpengine.com

by Alan J. Wiessner

The Wallenda factor is just a normal fear of falling or failing?

"Just in case you haven't heard, the Wallenda factor refers to the fear of falling or failing. Shortly after Karl Wallenda fell to his death in 1978 (traversing a 75-foot high wire in downtown San Juan, Puerto Rico), his wife, also an aerialist, discussed that fateful San Juan walk, “perhaps his most dangerous.”  She recalled: “All Karl thought about for three straight months prior to it was falling. It was the first time he’d ever thought about that, and it seemed to me that he put all his energies into not falling rather than walking the tightrope.”

Life is like traversing a tight rope.  If you think you need a safety net, it won’t be long before you fall.   Live your life without a safety net, or be prepared to live your life close to the ground.  

Certainly as a business we have operated with a safety net, as dictated by the standards by which we must comply, SSAE16 and PCI compliance, but over the years, we have always sought to be a technology leader.  We strive to offer "insanely great" software, to coin the phrase used by Steve Jobs.

Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist says, “Pessimism is complacency."   I think I would have to say at times I have exercised pessimism in certain situations.  I can relate it to looking in the mirror each morning and thinking, “I’m not getting any younger or thinner,  for that matter.” 
To see the video - just click on the picture

Last year I spoke of challenges.  This year, our 24th year in business, I believe anything's possible!  Last year I spoke of good fortunes, we were fortunate enough to have earned another year in business.  I said I was proud of the intellectual property (IP) and talent we had.  This year I am confident our talent pool here is second to none.    Everyone has bought into The Rational Optimist theme, “Everybody is working for everybody else.”  Whereas last year I said opportunities present challenges.

We have faced those challenges.  We have conquered many and we are prepared to conquer the future.   While politicians in Washington scrum over the economy and jobs,  free market goes out and creates 100 mpg cars, even driverless cars. We need to tell our politicians…anything’s possible.  This year we will focus again on making our products easier to use, easier to install and cloud ready.   Inside Integra, we will continue to concentrate on developing and acquiring better tools to do our jobs in a more productive environment.  Last year’s message was, “Attitude is everything.”   

Celebrating twenty-four (24) years in business March 7th, 2012, we will continue  to encourage a positive attitude in the workplace, with our customers, partners and suppliers.  Everybody is working for everybody else (click on the picture to the left for the video) because again.... anything’s possible.  Finally, last year I predicted growth would be our next greatest challenge and we grew significantly.  We remain well positioned to take advantage of those significant gains in 2012 and beyond.     Alan J. Wiessner, President and CEO, Integra Business Systems, Inc.

To see an awesome video - just click on the picture

I’ll leave you with a great although somewhat unsettling video (click on the photo) and when you feel that wave of pessimism coming on, remember anything’s possible, well almost anything...

"We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, then is not an act but a habit." -- Aristotle

Klondike Bluffs, Arches National Park and the snow-capped LaSal Mtns.

At Integra, when our A-Team meets to discuss past, present and future challenges for iDentifi.net the “compelling cloud” is the most incendiary, exciting and persistent topic of discussion on our agenda. 

What we have learned is to keep our noses to the grindstone and keep our heads in the clouds, I call it “practically innovative.”

This is a real challenge for a software company, a.k.a. also known as "propeller heads," but it's necessary for us to ensure our customers are well served.

As for the “Cloud,” I needn’t remind you?  We’re already there.  The future is now and we want you there, too.  The reasons you may not be there are many and diverse. But I’ll go out on a limb here and say it hasn’t been practical or “compelling” enough for you to consider the “cloud”?

The self-proclaimed “King of Cloud”, Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce would like you to believe “software is dead.”  Mr. Benioff is a highly successful visionary, but as the CEO of a wildly successful business, I would risk saying he has lost the vision of a practitioner. 

Practically speaking, having been there, moving from a legacy contact management software product to Salesforce or any cloud like product is costly, challenging and time-intensive.  In any case, I think it is a stretch whether “software,” other than nominally, will ever be dead.

If you want a great read on what defines cloud computing and how it might apply to your organization, I would be happy to point you in the right direction.  Just email me at sales@identifi.net.

So there, I’ve said it.  If you’re mired in a legacy client-server application or worse, it’s may not be practical at this time for you to move to a web-server based application like iDentifi.net.  I’m sure I have mentioned, at least twice, once you are on iDentifi.net you can move to the cloud.

What I do find objectionable is for your organization to take a giant step backward, when you can take a giant step forward with iDentifi.net.  If your “core” vendor of choice whether it be Fiserv, who offer several different flavors of Hyland Onbase’s legacy laden client-server based technology, a.k.a. Director, Nautilus, etc… or Jack Henry’s Synergy don’t go there. Before you go there, ask them when they can offer you cloud based computing for Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and more importantly what it will cost you, practically speaking. 

When I say practically speaking, go back to what I said earlier about being a practitioner.  Remember I said earlier and you probably agreed, moving from a legacy software product to a cloud like product is costly, challenging and time-intensive. 

So ask your core or ECM provider, what it will cost you to move to the cloud and then be the practitioner and add all the pain associated with the conversion.

To avoid some or all of the above, you can choose iDentifi.net.  We know what it’s like to be practical and we can ease the pain moving from Legacy to the Cloud.

To serve our customers best, we have our nose to the grindstone and our head in the clouds.

 

 

There’s a great series on the History Channel, called “Life After People”.  The series explores what happens to our cities, buildings and bridges without people to maintain them.  In just days, our very infrastructure we take for granted, our tunnels and subways will become flooded.  Transportation will cease.  Power will be cut.  Our planet begins to look like this (click on thumbnails).

Here is a trailer to the series.  Living After People.

Most of our competitor’s Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions, a.k.a., document imaging or COLD, are considered ancillary (secondary) products.  What happens when your provider’s resources are pulled from ECM product development to concentrate their resources on their core competency?

There's a series is in the works, it’s called “Living without Legacy”.  It’s about living with an erosion in talent; living with meager or no updates; living with Band-Aid fixes (patches).

Without people maintaining the Golden Gate Bridge would be underwater in just a few short years.

Moore’s Law, named after the founder of Intel is about the trends in technology and innovation.  While Moore’s Law (click on thumbnail view) addresses transistors, processors and memory devices face similar growth.  These devices impact the software development business in a very big way.

Software development is our business and we know software is never done.  You have to update constantly to keep up with the latest technology.  Otherwise it will end up like the Golden Gate Bridge.  Underwater.

If you are living with legacy, you won’t be able to take advantage of the latest web technology.  And just like hair extensions, don’t be fooled by web extensions.  Like the world's underground of tunnels and subways, the underlying technology behind web extensions is client-server - (legacy) based.  If and when available, what will it cost you to upgrade to the latest web-server technology of your ECM product?  It just may be time to find out.

Technology is not slowing down, it’s speeding up.  The faster technology changes the faster software applications must change to keep you competitive in your industry.

Integra Business Systems, Inc. develops ECM products for financial institutions and the financial services industry.  We own our technology.    We develop in ASP.Net and .Net.  Our iDentifi.net (follow link) product line is web-based.

To learn more about the products you need and best practices, go to the post, Imaging Horsepower, a post on this Blog which has appeared in both ICBA Magazine and online at Credit Union Magazine.

iDentifi.net customers live without legacy.  To us ECM is not our ancillary, it’s our occupation.

Note:  Please help us get the good word out.  Share us on your favorite social media site and Stumble Upon.  Thanks. 

Imaging Horsepower is now available on Credit Union Magazine's website.

Imaging

http://www.creditunionmagazine.com/articles/imaging-horsepower?

A successful ECM implementation means credit union staff must find the software easy to use. An ECM application using the ubiquitous browser is a good choice for searching for documents. Who isn’t familiar with the Internet browser? This reduces the cost and time to train employees, especially in positions with high turnover.

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