Regular

posted 23 Dec 2004 in Volume 1 Issue 6

Showcase: Simon Forster profiles Diagonal’s flagship EDRM solution, Wisdom

The company

Name: Simon Forster
Company: Diagonal Solutions
Title: Sales and marketing director
E-mail: simon.forster@diagonal-solutions.co.uk
Web: www.diagonal-solutions.co.uk

Diagonal’s approach to information management

Diagonal’s approach to the information market is based around identifying opportunities where technology can be implemented based upon the integrated needs of the process and not simply by looking at the silo centric needs of individual technologies. To this end, our value added competencies are not just based around our track record of supplying Microsoft Content Management Server (MS CMS), but doing so in a way that provides both incremental opportunities for MS products such as Office 2003, Visio, MOM and Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server (SPS), and also a more holistic solution for the customer by supplementing CMS with collaborative and electronic-document and records-management (EDRM) solutions.

For example, by integrating CMS and SPS Diagonal has developed IPR that will allow documents being managed through Windows Sharepoint Services or Sharepoint Portal server to be automatically fed into the CMS authoring and publishing process, which provides a far more optimised, consistent and efficient process for the user.

Our flagship product is a National Archives approved EDRM solution, Wisdom.

A good EDRM solution provides all of the information-management functionality that local government and non-departmental bodies should now be looking for, automating the storing, retrieval and access of information.

When purchasing an EDRM solution, there are several key areas that public-sector decision makers should consider to ensure a low, ongoing cost of ownership. Ten top attributes of a good EDRM solution are:

1. A true, integrated product suite
A joined-up and holistic approach to information management embraces document creation, recording, retrieval, aggregation and publishing to multiple formats including paper, e-mail and the web.

2. Open system interfaces
Many government departments have already invested large amounts in cutting-edge technology. It makes sense to implement an EDRM solution that will complement that technology through open interfaces and ensure that an organisation can get the best out of it.

Should an EDRM solution be built on open architecture such as Microsoft .Net? Does it enable seamless interfacing, rather than offering bolted on functionality? If so, the benefits can be great.

3. Low cost, minimum re-engineering and short implementation timescales.
The technical realities of some EDRM solutions mean that major systems and processes will need to be re-engineered to incorporate them. This is a substantial headache and means that solutions are highly likely to encounter delays in the implementation time frame.

4. A hybrid paper-based/electronic solution
The right EDRM system can manage a paper registry, scan and automatically index batches of paper documents, store them in digital form, and perform searches across all your records at once.

5. Web interfacing
With the web becoming the reference tool of choice, full interfacing is essential.

6. Intuitive, user-friendly graphical interfaces
Almost everyone in a department will need to be able to use the EDRM solution, so it needs to be easy to learn, navigate and control. Features such as familiar Windows-based user screens, drag and drop, and clear interface layout and labelling will maximise the benefit for end-users.

7. Customisable front-end
An EDRM system often acts as your face to the public, employees and suppliers, so you need to be able to make it look and feel right for your organisation. Functionality that can be unpacked and integrated into intranets and public or supplier facing portals is worth its weight in gold, enabling an organisation to present one unified face, and maintain just one system and set of data over time.

8. Modular roll out
Any good integrated product suite will come in modular format so that organisations can start small and roll out to meet different requirements.

9. National Archives approval
The National Archives provides advice and guidance to records managers across government, and is committed to helping all government organisations meet targets for the handling of electronic records.

It is sensible for any EDRM solution to have National Archives approval.

10. Bi-lingual capabilities
Does the system need to operate in Welsh as well as English? Does the chosen solution offer that flexibility?

Key functionality of Wisdom

Wisdom is an integrated EDRM solution from Diagonal Solutions. A Microsoft-based offering, Wisdom can also deliver a comprehensive collaboration platform when deployed alongside Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server. Through tight integration with Microsoft products and technologies, Wisdom addresses many of the issues and concerns that occupy the agendas of compliance officers and corporate information managers.

Our focus on compliance and information legislation, combined with our long association with records-management (RM) solutions, ideally positions the company to work with UK-based organisations that are currently facing significant challenges introduced by the government’s modernisation agenda.

At the time of writing, Wisdom is one of only ten solutions that meets the revised functional requirements for electronic-records-management systems set by The National Archives (TNA), an organisation formed in April 2003 through the bringing together of the Public Record Office and the Historical Manuscripts Commission.

Diagonal’s keen focus on the UK public sector has culminated in the development of a module that will help public-sector bodies to meet their obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, the Data Protection Act, and the Environmental Information Regulations. This module is compliant with the Department of Constitutional Affairs’ specification for case-tracking systems, and is delivered through Wisdom’s workflow capabilities. In a market that is increasingly being dominated by large enterprise-content-management (ECM) vendors, Diagonal believes that the vertical application of RM and document-management (DM) functionality will ultimately differentiate vendors, and so from this perspective we are currently in a very strong position.

Written entirely in managed code (C#), Wisdom is the first TNA-approved system to exploit the Microsoft .NET architecture, and as a result this solution promises to deliver increased levels of performance and reliability.

Document management

The first thing of note to mention about Wisdom is the solution’s ability to store documents in either a Microsoft SQL Server database or within the Windows files system (NTFS). This is somewhat unique within the EDRM market, as most solutions tend to favour one approach or the other, not both. The benefit of this architectural approach permits organisations to consider the pros and cons associated with each option, and to then implement the solution based upon their preferred option. On the server side, Wisdom implements a number of essential and useful services. First and foremost the Wisdom Document Service ensures that documents and records remain secure when stored with the server file system. Next, the Wisdom PDF Service allows documents submitted to the Wisdom Document Store to be rendered as PDF files, thereby ensuring access to documents from any terminal that has Adobe Acrobat Reader installed. The Wisdom Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Service provides document-image-processing (DIP) capabilities, which enables the searching of scanned paper documents.

Wisdom is well suited to geographically dispersed organisations or those with sites connected by relatively low bandwidth. By supporting a flexible, distributed architecture, repositories and the documents contained within them can be located ‘closer’ to the business units that access them.

Wisdom can manage electronic documents, electronic records and physical assets. When deployed alongside Microsoft Content Management Server, Wisdom is also capable of managing web content.

Wisdom can be integrated within non-Microsoft environments through the use of either COM+ or SOAP (simple object access protocol) programming interfaces.

It has already been stated that the Wisdom document repository is seamlessly integrated with the record repository and therefore acts as a direct feed to the record repository. Declaring a document as a record is achieved through a simple menu option that is presented alongside each document.

Records management

As an integrated EDRM solution, users of Wisdom can store documents in the repository and declare them as records directly. Retention periods for individual folders and records may be defined by allocating a retention policy as determined by the organisation’s records manager, while users with the appropriate privileges may create as many disposition schedules as required to manage the company’s records.

As noted earlier, Wisdom has been approved for use by The National Archives and meets their 2002 functional requirements specification for the management of electronic records. Wisdom holds a single copy of each record within the repository even though it may appear in multiple folders; this is achieved by establishing a link to the record from each folder. Records managed by Wisdom cannot be deleted any earlier than that specified by the retention policy applied to it, and when a record has been destroyed through a retention policy it is impossible to recreate that record without resorting to a backup.

Where a record is made up of multiple documents or multiple parts, it is possible to allocate different security policies to each of these documents or parts. It is also possible to allocate retention policies to categories of records so that when a record of that category is added to the system it is automatically assigned that retention policy.

Record metadata is automatically garnered from the network environment and, in many cases, from the document itself. Whenever a record is of a type that requires a specific set of metadata attributes, Wisdom attempts to automatically collect this metadata. If mandatory metadata cannot be generated automatically, then Wisdom displays a form into which the user enters the required metadata manually.

Access to all documents and records stored within the repository is controlled and mediated by the Wisdom business logic layer, and in the case of a record, Wisdom does not allow any modification to that document or collection of documents.

Product operation

The flexibility afforded by our solution is immediately evident on the client side, with support for Web browsers, ‘rich’ clients, and Microsoft Windows desktop integration through Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV). The Web-based Wisdom Client not only provides users with a customisable front-end to the Wisdom software, but it can also be integrated with existing corporate portals – thereby providing EDRM functionality alongside, or even within, line-of-business applications.

The Wisdom Advanced Client has all of the functionality of the Web interface but is delivered through a familiar Microsoft Outlook-style user interface. Wisdom supports the use of Microsoft Office document templates – a facility designed to automate much of the document profiling effort usually required of DM systems. Each document stored in the Wisdom repository picks up a certain amount of ‘system’ metadata such as author, date, time and application. The system is also able to support custom metadata fields as required by the organisation.

The ability to view, download and upload files through Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 and above is provided through WebDAV – an extension to HTTP that was originally designed for website creation. Because WebDAV resources can be mounted within the Windows 2000/XP file system (and Mac OS X), any WebDAV-enabled application (such as Microsoft Office 2000 for example) can access files stored in Wisdom directly.

Figure two presents a user’s view of the Wisdom fileplan, the general look-and-feel of which can be tailored or branded to suit. In this ‘Folder’ view a list of ‘Divisions’ are shown; opening a Division displays its nested ‘Classes’ until the lowest level is reached – a ‘Folder’. Selecting a ‘Folder’ displays its electronic content (if any) in the right hand pane. Folder properties provide folder metadata, life history, retention policy and security access restrictions. Access to documents and files within a folder can be restricted by the security options chosen for the folder. The granular control provided by Wisdom permits selected users to be able to set these details, specific to one or several users or other security constraints. Security restriction may also be inherited from parent classes.

Unique features

Our general competitive advantage lies mainly in the following areas:

Track record of supplying integrated-information-management (IIM) solutions;
Experience of staff in doing so, especially in the area of hybrid records management to incorporate electronic, paper, e-mail and structured information bases;
Retention and disposal of records can be automated, ensuring adherence to legislation and best practice guidelines;
Skills transfer is a key part of the Diagonal Solutions approach;
Project management skills provide a disciplined framework for delivering solutions to time and within budget;
The capability for Diagonal Solutions to deliver a full suite of information-management solutions reduces risk of an unsuccessful implementation;
Cost effective for the client, both in the short and longer term.

As discussed earlier, product features that make Wisdom unique, apart from it being one of a relatively few TNA approved products for EDRM in government, revolve largely around its underlying design architecture and product operation.

The competition

The competition in our market can be broken down into three primary areas:

Other suppliers of EDRM, CMS and collaborative systems.
Other suppliers of the full IIM solution.
Other Microsoft suppliers of the same product(s).

The key competition in the EDRM public sector marketplace is driven primarily through The National Archives approved EDRM products list. The suppliers are Meridio, Tower Software (TRIM), Valid, Hummingbird, Objective and Open Text. Although we can compete with any of the above listed organisations our most direct competition is Meridio as they currently also align themselves to Microsoft. From this list, only Open Text has the product suite to compete with us in the IIM space.

Through our Collaborative Information Worker program, we have Gold Partner status with Microsoft. This gives us considerable differentiation over and above non-gold partners.

Competitive advantages

Our advantages in each case are:

We offer a much more cost-effective solution that is built in a far more contemporary Microsoft technology (ie, .Net) than any of our competitors. We also have one of the biggest bases of successful customer references in the EDRM space as well as a product suite that is naturally extensible into other technological areas, specifically content-management systems and collaborative portals;
We have a fully, pre-integrated suite of products that fulfil all key functional requirements, including EDRM, CMS, collaboration and workflow. The same suite is therefore very cost effective in terms of acquisition, which acknowledges the need for our customers to be able to invest in services for implementation as well as the product. In turn, this reflects very well on the total cost of ownership (TCO) and minimises potential risk;
Most of our competitors in this space are skilled in Microsoft products but do not own any IPR, as we do with Wisdom. Therefore, our solution is more extensive and adds incremental value over and above those proposed by our competitors listed earlier.

Return on investment

In our experience, a return on investment based upon a total cost of ownership of a project costing between £300 and £500k in the first 12 months can normally be achieved over 18 to 30 months from the date of implementation.

But it is also important to remember that the driver for implementing an EDRM system is not always financial.

Other reasons include:

Enabler project for general e-business programmes
The underpinning technology for legislative compliance support;
To manage information captured through other disparate systems to support a common file plan;
EDRM can be the platform on which all other e-business initiatives rest.

Business-case based

The business case is not always dependent on cash savings;
It delivers an expectation to reduce growth in paper records;
It delivers an expectation to save time through the access of electronic records;
Consequential cost avoidance of storage.

Target sectors

EDRM has been almost the exclusive domain of government to date. This is largely because of the modernising government agenda and funding that has been available. However, Wisdom is also aimed at the financial-services market, the pharmaceutical market and general commercial markets. Specifically, the target markets for Diagonal Solutions are: central government; local government; education; the NHS; police and criminal justice; pharmaceutical; financial services; not for profit – housing and chartered associations, and general commercial.

Technical requirements and training

Because our product leverages the Microsoft technology stack, Wisdom requires only modest technical skills to install. However, our trained Wisdom consultants also possess the necessary Microsoft systems skills to perform the implementation, which results in an optimum system configuration. As a precursor to installation we would also advise organisations to invest in the services of an independent records-management consultant, as we believe this is where EDRM projects are best defined and offers a natural precursor to system deployment.

Although largely dependent on the size of implementation, the software deployment phase of a Wisdom project is typically completed in a couple of days; however, the preparatory work – in terms of information audits and configuration workshops – coupled with data migration and training is more likely to last four to six months for a small to medium installation.

The underlying technical requirements for the deployment of Wisdom are straightforward (see figure four). In practice, because of the standard nature of the platform, we find that organisations opting for this solution spend less time than they might otherwise do on IT infrastructure issues.

The Wisdom EDRM solution accommodates a modular approach to deployment as the case tracking and workflow modules can be deployed separately. For organisations considering Microsoft SharePoint, portal server integration is a feature of many Wisdom projects. Out-of-the-box Wisdom utilises the Microsoft search engine; however, the architecture of the Wisdom solution permits search technologies from other vendors (such as Mondosoft, APR Smartlogik and Convera) if required.

Costing, regional availability and support, and scheduled updates

The pricing model for Wisdom is (though of course open to negotiation): Wisdom server licence £20k per processor; user licence £100 per seat; case tracking module £50k; and workflow server £50k. An enterprise licence is also available for around £300k. Support is charged at 22 per cent of the product retail licence price, and includes help-desk cover and a limited amount of onsite support. There are a total of 26 additional service levels that can be purchased at an additional cost. Our current release strategy is to release an incremental version of Wisdom once every six months, with a full release to be produced every two to three years.