As our industry has embraced the concept of true enterprise systems that manage imaged documents, archive storage, and content from nearly any source it raises the question, “will the ECM systems migrate to create content?”

The idea of generating content from a stand alone storage repository may not jump out at you as a good idea.  But when document centric workflow processes are used is when the use cases become prevalent.  Thus, perhaps the question should be modified, “should Business Process Management (BPM) systems create content or remain pure play BPM?”

What is the problem?

There are many legacy correspondence systems in place that are outdated, difficult to use, and expensive to maintain.  These solutions are great for high volume batch processing and control but lack many user friendly features such as viewing documents in context or the ability to edit easily.  The legacy systems were created to provide consistency and integrate into line of business (LOB) applications used for large volume customer service applications.  Many of these systems require a system administrator or developer to create and manage the letter templates.  The templates commonly have structured paragraphs that are combined to produce a complete letter.  Personalization is provided by merging name, address and other fields of information from the LOB system to the letter.  Letters are then typically batch printed for outgoing processing.  These systems still work for many organizations; however, it is clear that technology has significantly improved.

Today there are a significant number of correspondence production solutions to choose from.  Some are web based and some are modern improvements of the legacy solution.  Thus editing can be friendlier and administration is enhanced with more logical interfaces.  So what is the issue with these systems?  The answer is nothing – they fit the needs of many businesses, but they are another system to maintain, integrate with, and pay for.  They produce correspondence, but they do not manage it or simplify the user interaction in the workplace.

How does ECM and BPM fit in?

• What if you could open your letter templates from BPM with a click?
• What if you could edit using MS Word (or another editor) that is fully featured and commonly used?
• What if the documents were indexed, stored, and delivered automatically?
• What if all of this was low cost, easy to use and supported?

… all organizations that understand the significance would want it immediately.

With the advancements of BPM and ECM these features are within the realm of reality.

The construct of a work item entity in BPM provides the ability to gather and temporarily store information pertinent to the business process from a variety of business systems.  Since the workflow step is relevant to a specific business process, that step may query an ECM system and filter the results to present only the correspondence templates pertinent to that part of the process.  The user then simply selects the template from the list.  This is not a difficult process to manage if the BPM system is already closely coupled to the content repository that stores the templates.

Managing the templates themselves is a simple task for a good Content Management system.  They can not only be stored within their own document classification but also indexed in a manner that relates to their use.  These indexes may then be used to filter and expose the relevant templates during the workflow processing.  The other obvious advantage of using the Content Management system for templates is that the update and publish process may be easily managed using the core functionality of the system.  Updating templates is a straight forward document update and approval process that may be distributed to staff workers based on their skills and expertise.  By using the available ECM features a developer or system administrator is not required to maintain or even create new templates.  Select staff may have security access to update only the templates applicable to their business function.  Just because they can update a template does not mean that template is released for use – a simple Create, Review, Approve, and Publish process is followed to promote an update to be the current template.  And of course, by using ECM the current published version is always presented to the user and a version controlled audit trail is provided.  This will help with eDiscovery since you will now be able to prove exactly what template was used in production at a specific point in time.

Using BPM that is closely integrated with ECM also trivializes the automated storage of outgoing correspondence since it should be a core function.  The BPM work item entity already knows who the letter was sent to and reason the letter was sent (based on template) so the outgoing letter would be automatically stored in the repository.  Simultaneous to letter creation the BPM work item it was sent from would go into a “pending” or “resubmission” state and initiate a timer (since the best practice is to follow up should a response not be timely).  This “outgoing correspondence” is now virtually related to the BPM work step (case, claim, inquiry, etc.) and stored in the content repository.

Delivery is just as easily managed by a BPM/ECM solution since the ability to print, fax, email, and trigger external processes should be readily available functions.  We should not assume today that everyone wants a printed and mailed letter.  Most of us prefer the use of email for correspondence and for the nay-sayers; yes, there are solutions to handle security.  Customers commonly include fax numbers and email addresses in their profiles today … we should be using them.

So, what about automated correspondence that does not require human intervention?  Well, system to system process automation is common and easier to do then ever.  If the business rules are documented then they can be configured and followed by the same BPM/ECM solution without human intervention.  A side benefit will also be the detailed audit trail and records management capability that is already inherent to the BPM/ECM solution will apply to the correspondence with no additional work.

Benefits to the user community

The user community benefits in more ways then just mere technical advancements.  The expense of transition management and training can not be overlooked.  Transition management includes all of the activities related to adapting an organization to change.  Based on our enterprise deployment experience we believe that more intuitive the system is and the less cumbersome the technology the easier the transition.

Organizations will benefit from the ease with which template changes can now be made since coordination and interaction with IT is not necessary.  The business community is truly empowered by providing them with a tool that once configured, they control.  The process of updating and creating templates is user driven provided the BPM work item entity contains the information that they wish to automatically plug into the correspondence template.

We also know that training is expensive.  This expense is minimized by using a common editor such as MS-Word.  The standardization on a common tool that is so prevalent in the workplace, at educational institutions and at home helps with user adoption as well as minimizing training cost.  User adoption is the level of acceptance for the business community.  Acceptance by the user community is critical to the true measures of success since no one really wants a system that functions, but is not used to it’s full extent.  Leveraging software knowledge and familiarity eases the burden of user adoption.

Proposition for ECM/BPM based correspondence management

We propose that basic content creation, distribution and management from ECM/BPM is not only feasible, but desired and eminent.  We have been asked about these features from higher education, financial, government, insurance, and retirement systems.  In all cases the user community is looking for a solution that is easy to use and minimizes the effort to send and store outgoing correspondence.

RS Computer Associates, LLC. (RSCA) decided to explore the concept of correspondence generation in a technical and hands-on approach by conducting a Proof of Concept (POC).  RSCA has constructed a fully integrated ECM/BPM based automated correspondence generation solution based on a common customer service use case.  IBM FileNet P8 Content Manager and Business Process Manager where combined with OpenWorkdesk and Zero Installation Office Integration (ZIOI) from WeWebU to build this solution.  These products were selected because they are fully integrated out of the box and jointly provide most of the required features.

The result is a fully functional live demonstration that includes calling customer/employee/student/etc. information from an external system, pulling a template from within a work item, generating the letter, storing the letter, sending the letter, and pending the work item … all within the blink of an eye.  This is not a full production solution; however, we did prove every concept described in this document.

The OpenWorkdesk user interface in front of IBM FileNet P8 4.5 allowed the team to conduct rapid solution development with tight integration between content, process and MS Word.  The result is a user interface that is intuitive and productive from the user perspective.

The concept was also expanded to include adding advanced PDF417 2D barcodes to the letters.  The purpose of the barcode is to facilitate incoming processing consistent with ECM best practices.  FileNet Capture Professional 5.2 was configured to read the 2D barcode during the scanning process and use the information to bypass manual indexing.  The document is then stored in the P8 repository and automatically matched up with the originating work item.  The work item is also updated with a status change from “pending” to “correspondence received” within BPM.  This action alerts the sender that their correspondence has been returned with the additional information requested.

This POC for automated correspondence was fully successful.  It has been shared with a select user group and the WeWebU Product Management team.  We agree that there are many features provided by third party correspondence solutions not included in this POC; however, based on our review of customers from a variety of industries this solution is well suited to a large number of use cases.  Although these features are available now on a project basis it is inevitable that correspondence generation and management will be readily available as a plug in product offering for FileNet P8 in the foreseeable future.