Records Management News & Articles

Last week we saw a considerable amount of movement in the document management software industry, not the least of which was the closure of the Xerox –ACS deal. The wheeling-and-dealing continues this week with the acquisition of AmberPoint by Oracle while AIIM and Gartner get back into gear with some research published recently.

Another acquisition in the electronic medical records (EMR) market, with the buy-out of document imaging and management services Bowman Enterprises by document life cycle solutions provider Diversified Information Technologies.

The financial details of the deal weren't released but last year Diversified's revenue was in the region of US$ 40 million, while Bowman's was close to US$ 6.5.The Bowman management team will be joining Diversified although how it will affect the rest of the company was not explained.

This is the second such acquisition by Diversified in the recent times. In October last year it acquired Active Data Services, a document imaging, print and electronic presentment provider headquartered in Raleigh, NC.

Diversified CEO Scott Byers said that the buy-out was part of the company’s plans to extend its footprint in the EMR market where he sees considerable potential for expansion. This indicates that we might be seeing similar moves from the Pennsylvania-based company.

Founded in 1982, Diversified provides document management software for complete document and information lifecycle, including records management solutions for physical and electronic records storage.

Currently targeting Fortune 1000 companies in the financial, insurance, health care and government sectors it has grown to 18 U.S. and three international locations.

The latest version of Active Innovation’s document management software comes with a number of upgrades most of which are focused on improving the workflow module and related tasks. These improvements make it more responsive than previous versions (v7.2 and v7.5) and optimize it for higher traffic volumes.

Open source Enterprise CMS and Document Management vendor Nuxeo (news, site) is extending the value of its Nuxeo Connect support and maintenance service with a new product named Nuxeo Studio.

Wasn’t it just last week that we were pondering the sustainability of GRC as an acronym? Have no fear; the world of GRC still spins. This week: financial advisers tackle social media, how to comply with multiple regulations and security compliance predictions for 2010.

With the growing importance of compliance and eDiscovery issues for many companies, it might be time to consider deploying a records management system. Chances are that your company already uses some kind of document management system. The question is, will your document management system also support records management?

At the core of this question is what is the differences between document management and records management. Let's examine six differences.

With the release of Guidance Software (news, site) version 4 of EnCase eDiscovery, you can now perform analysis and first-pass review capabilities at any stage of the eDiscovery process, such as during collection, post collection, or during and after processing.

Last week, we pondered the fate of acronyms -- namely GRC. Continuing the conversation, we sat down with CA’s (news, site) Marc Camm, senior vice president and general manager of GRC Products, and Peter Stapleton, senior principal product manager for CA GRC Manager, to discuss their thoughts about what Governance, Risk and Compliance will look like in 2010 and beyond.

Open Text (news, site) released version 4.0 of Open Text Capture Center that offers improved data capture, document classification and better integration with the Open Text ECM Suite.

This product is based on Captaris DOKuStar Capture Suite that came to the OT family through the Captaris acquisition in late 2008.

For those in desperate need of definition when it comes to Records Management, we’ve got some advice from Jonathan Powers, a Tech Writer at Laserfiche (news, site). At this year’s Empower 2010, Powers took us back to the basics and promised martinis as a reward for lending him our ears.

Back in December we remarked about the trouble with generic acronyms and what they contribute (if anything) to web content management.

This year the same argument unfolds around another acronym, GRC. On the Gartner Blog Network, French Caldwell recently wrote about the war on governance, risk and compliance.

Ohio-based Rescentris has just announced that it is releasing its Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) for the life sciences and pharmaceutical research industries as a SaaS following a six month trial across 25 organizations.

Only just into the New Year and already the scramble for the biggest piece of the eDiscovery pie continues, this time with the opening of a European office by eDiscovery management specialists Planet Data.

With 2010 a mere two weeks away, Laserfiche (news, site) is already setting the bar in records management by announcing that it has renewed its DoD 5015.2 V3 certification, and added certification for physical records management.

The physical records certification comes with the integration with Infolinx a provider of both custom and commercial-off-the-shelf records and information management system software, and a Professional Developer Program partner of Laserfiche.

On its own, Laserfiche Records Management Edition (RME) is a version of Laserfiche's enterprise content management system is that enables users track the life cycle of records in Laserfiche repositories and ensures compliance with the regulatory criteria for DoD 5015.2 V3 certification.

DoD 5015.2 V3 certification also means that Laserfiche has developed an information management system that complies with Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, USA PATRIOT Act, SEC and FINRA, amongst others.

For its part, Infolinx brings to the table barcode and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology which enables physical file and electronic record tracking as well as retention schedule management, color-coded label printing and document imaging into RME.

By extending RME to include physical records management, Laserfiche now has more certified components than any other vendor, Tom Wayman Product Strategy VP says, although there will undoubtedly some vendors who disagree.

With a large base of federal, state and local government organizations in its client portfolio, the commercial value of achieving DoD 5015.2 V3 cannot be overestimated and with mounting compliance and transparency pressures across the industry it is only a matter of time before vendors in the records management space are going to have to go the same route.

Content is everywhere, and it is not cheap to manage it. Open Text (news, site) says it wants to lower the costs by connecting transactional data with business content behind each transaction through one app.

The new Open Text Content Access for Oracle application provides a single point of access to data for Oracle E-Business Suite users. Oracle E-Business Suite is a set of enterprise applications dealing mainly with ERP, lifecycle management and CRM.

The content access app works with both Oracle and non-Oracle content and allows users to link structured data in Oracle transactions with business content (electronic and paper assets, such as e-mail and contracts) managed in Open Text Enterprise CMS suite of products, while also covering the GRC angle.

Usually, content needs to be re-used across multiple applications, even though some of it is tied to a specific one (ERP, CRM, etc.). This is when Open Text’s new app gives a way of sharing business content across different applications, while managing access, retention, audit history, compliance, risk and other document and records management related activities.

As a side note: Oracle and Open Text’s relationship goes as far back as 10 years, and OTEX says it plans to continue its ECM technologies development using Oracle Fusion middleware.