Document Management Talk

Apologies for the lack of blog content last week. I was working onsite for a few days with one of our long standing customers (involving 2.5 hours drive each way on top of a full day’s work!), so didn’t get much time for the big picture or for blogging.

I spent a few days working with one of our most experienced and knowledgeable customers. They are in the Insurance industry. We were reviewing their use of our document management software with a view to identifying and addressing possible process improvements and suggesting where new features in the DM system could be of benefit to their business. They also wanted to standardise the use of the DM system among their various departments and across their multiple business sites. 

Despite their excellent team knowing our product absolutely inside and out, it is still really surprising what a fresh pair of eyes can see. One very small change to their existing working processes, which was implemented while I was there, has reduced the time taken to allocate their incoming post by about 50%. It will also reduce the chances of errors occurring during that process. 

Despite all the driving it was an enjoyable week. It is so important in this type of role to take the time every now and then to work at the front lines, remind yourself of the real world challenges being addressed by the DM software, and also share some of the very latest product information with the people in the field.

Tim

Happy New Year to all my reader(s).  Well, here we are, already up to our armpits in 2010. Some of us used the holiday period to catch up on all the lovely things we wanted to do in 2009 but for which we didn’t have the free time. Some of our customers however didn’t realise it was a holiday and we actually took a support query at 8pm on new year’s eve! That is dedication that I find both inspiring and depressing in equal measure.

Anyway, my team and I did spend some of the quiet time optimising the code in our 2.6 product, in particular for remote / WAN access and we managed to achieve some staggering performance improvements. We reduced the login time by about 50% and we more than halved the time to open a document. The system user can now open a 1000 page document in just a few seconds. So it was a productive holiday!!

The Silverlight Document Manager product is pretty much there, our new Tech Author has just completed the 2.6 documentation so he now knows all there is to know about document management software (I hope) and can get started on the Silverlight documentation. The installer is nearing completion so we can deploy some more Silverlight Beta sites in January so everything is looking promising for a good 2010.

My very exciting new year’s resolution, or at least the one I can tell you about on here, is to keep this blog up to date. I know a growing number of you rely on it as a reference point for Document Manager development progress and milestones. So watch this space. And hound me if I haven’t said anything interesting to you for a few days.

 Tim