Getting Control Of All The Paper

Nation's Business, Nov 1, 1998 by Tim McCollum

Document-management software and other tools can help small companies manage and use information effectively.

Countless small businesses everywhere are drowning in information. By phone, mail, fax, and electronic mail, it washes over them every day-customer orders and invoices, financial and legal documents, personnel files, memos, and reports.

Finding a way to manage that information and put it to productive use when it's needed might make the difference between staying afloat and going under.

Information overload is a sinking feeling that Craig Miller, CEO of MM&A Group, remembers all too well. Six years ago, the fast-growing software consulting and personnel-placement firm in Atlanta was struggling to fill contract software-engineering positions for corporate clients and its own consulting projects.

Miller's problem wasn't a lack of qualified engineers. They were available, but his 35 employees at the time (he has 50 now) didn't know about the potential job candidates they had on file.

At the same time, communication between MM&A's recruiters and salespeople was rudimentary and inefficient. Because members of each group were frequently out of the office, they exchanged messages primarily through voice mail and paper notes. "We would find a good candidate for a position, and our recruiters would have to get up and walk over to tell a salesperson that we had someone," Miller says.

As a result, business was being lost because salespeople didn't know in time that engineers were available, and recruiters didn't find out that engineers were needed.

Miller set out to solve his company's problem by automating the flow of information in the office. His first step was to set up a system for sharing information across the firm's computer network, using Lotus Notes software from IBM. The software enables MM&A's employees to exchange messages via e-mail and online "discussions," lets them schedule meetings, and helps them manage consulting projects collectively

To automate things further, MM&A implemented a database of clients and recruits, which employees can search quickly. Miller says the system allows people to concentrate less on internal processes and more on gaining and fulfilling contracts. "It's easier for us to keep track of people now," Miller says. "We're not trading voice mail. We're trading e-mail. We have records of whom employees are talking to and whom they are hiring."

Miller has discovered that information is valuable only if it can be accessed efficiently by those who need it. But often that's easier said than done.

Computers have increased the amount of information--data and paper-that companies have to handle. But despite the emergence of technologies such as e-mail, databases, and intranets, many small firms still have trouble disseminating data.

"When you just have a few people, it's not that hard to share information because people know what everyone is working on and can just ask about things," says Frank Pagel, senior systems analyst for World Wide Technology Inc., a St. Louis computer-integration and consulting firm.

"But when you grow to 10 or more people, you no longer have that ability," he adds. "What you need to do is start centralizing your information assets and making them available to everyone.

Tools For The Task

Getting control over that information and devising a way to share it is critical. Fortunately, small businesses can turn to document-management software and other tools that can help them get the job done, says Gerry Murray, director of knowledge technologies for International Data Corp. (IDC), a technology-research firm in Framingham, Mass.

Murray says document-management software such as eRoom from Instinctive Technology Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., and InfoMagnet from Compass Ware Development in New York City helps companies improve their methods of organizing and sharing information. "These technologies are ideal as an incremental investment on top of a plain old e-mail or intranet environment," he says.

Murray says document management must fit a company s line of business, its organizational culture, and the computer literacy of its employees.

A good place to begin is by looking at how work gets done in the office-how employees communicate with one another, for example, and what happens to information that arrives in the office from the outside. The answers go a long way toward revealing weaknesses in the way a firm manages information.

Such questions and answers led Craig Miller to create an information-management system for MM&A. The firm had solved similar problems for many of its clients, so Miller was familiar with how Lotus Notes could improve the flow of information.

With Notes as a foundation, Miller began to search for better ways to manage the unique information the firm had. Unlike companies that need to track products, parts, and supplies in stock, MM&A's "inventory" consists of software engineers.

To keep track of them, Miller chose to install specialized recruitment software called C-PAS from VCG Inc. in Norcross, Ga. C-PAS, which works in conjunction with Lotus Notes, enables MM&A to quickly match software engineers with contract positions or projects when they become available.