Spread the Good Word – Colleague Collaboration for All Within every organization are silos of info. If two or more staffers co-exist, there’s crucial information the other isn’t aware of. A way to share what each knows saves everyone time and frustration. And the organization benefits fiscally. Information management industry trade association AIIM notes that collaboration is a practice whereby individuals work together with common purpose to achieve business benefit. Two types are enablers: synchronous collaboration offering online meetings and instant messaging, and asynchronous collaboration providing shared workspaces and annotations. Document content management software programs today focus on the latter, utilizing browser-based, Web 2.0 programs featuring secure, permission-based access to documents amongst staffers involved with a project, allowing them to provide content revisions with update tracking capability. AIIM indicates users benefit from collaboration ability by manifesting • Awareness - participants become part of a working entity with a shared purpose • Motivation – members drive to gain consensus in problem solving or development • Self-synchronization - users decide when things need to happen • Participation – people participate in collaboration and expect others to participate • Mediation – staff negotiate and collaborate together and find a middle point • Reciprocity – project team members share and expect sharing in return through reciprocity • Reflection - users think and consider alternatives • Engagement - participants proactively engage rather than wait and see. The benefit is a project management tool that enables members through engagement, rapid response and ultimately completion, saving organizations time, money, and frustration. Collaboration starts with scanning—capture of documents containing project information. MFPs, desktop/production/wide format scanners and facsimile units are all useful points of entry, in tandem with scanning software that provides full text OCR of each document for ease of search and retrieval. Content management systems upload these scanned documents in their native formats for staff to revise, based on the information each is able to provide. Once this documentation is finalized, the document collection can be converted to PDF for distribution outside the project group and archival for future access. Speaking of asynchronous collaboration benefits, Ernst & Young indicates this electronic document management can: • Triple document processing capacity • Reduce staff time/resources by 50% • Provide immediate access to decision-critical data • Provide fail-safe, secure document management in accordance with regulatory compliance. PricewaterhouseCoopers note that companies make 9 copies of each electronically saved document (the consumables biz is as profitable as ever…). Collaboration assembles staff and enables them to share their knowledge for personal and organizational benefit. Document content management software makes it happen. Tim Nissen is Marketing Director of Winter Haven, Florida-based content management software developer DocuLex. Reach him at issen@doculex.com.