On Aug.  3, a member of the marketing team will attend the Annual Reverse Trade Show, sponsored by the Tallahassee Chapter of the National Institute of Governmental Purchasing. The show is being held in the Tallahassee –Leon County Civic Center (TLCCC), in conjunction with the group’s 18^th Annual Purchasing Conference.  

Representatives from upwards of 200 state and local agencies, including schools and universities, will staff booths and be available to talk with potential vendors interested in making new contacts and renewing existing relationships.

On Oct. 19-20, Image API will take part in a more traditional trade show, the annual Florida Government Technology Conference.  The popular, well-attended event allows vendors to set up shop to meet and market to potential government customers, and Image API has been a perennial attendee.

The FGTC is being held in a new venue this year, the Turnbull Conference Center across the street from the  TLCCC.

The litany of closed, bought out, or just defunct U.S. companies is long and replete with once proud and popular names. Some were victims of changing tastes and times, others may have morphed because of failure – or success – into other, unrecognizable entities.

For many, the record of their existence is the memories of customers who moved on, but still recall the names. Yellowing advertisements buried in library collections and hard to find may be the only solid evidence left that any of these companies existed at all.

Memories fail, too, and paper dries and crumbles to dust. That’s why more and more companies and agencies are investing in content management, business process improvement and simple electronic archive systems. The immediacy and permanency of the digital record, easily transferable to other formats as technology evolves, guarantees the records will always be there, through all the changes.

The more things change, the saying goes, the more they stay the same. Thanks to evolving technology, that’s   truer than ever.

 If you’ve already given this information once, why should you have to do it again?

Having to repeat account information is a redundant input task, which is contrary to good processes. It suggests a lack of system and data cohesion in the organization. Good, reliable access to information creates efficiency and customer satisfaction. Without that access, you get delays, uncertainty, and mistakes. In other words, process failure, delays, customer disappointment.

Information is at the heart of every business and government process workflow. Organizations with systems that don’t talk to each other or share data don’t make much sense these days.

What’s the hold up?

We’ve been making this same point for years about document management projects. We’ve watched a good many purchasers buy granddaddy content management systems for all the bells and whistles when what their users really needed (and wanted) was more basic and far less expensive.

The truth is, most users don’t use the “shiny, sparkly” features that only add cost to those big old document management systems. Mostly, they just want to capture, store, retrieve, and share documents. The tragedy is that after the bloated purchase price and overlong, expensive implementation, the customer runs out of money for the content conversion of all the paper documents needed to populate the system!

Image API’s “Start Specific, Scale Specific” approach, backed by the most advanced .NET iCenter content management system available, lets government and business clients get what they need, when they need it. Sure, we have “bells and whistles.” But these are optional modules. Our customers can address their specific requirements in a cost effective way without restricting future growth.

Oh, and there’s plenty of money left over in the budget for scanning and indexing backfile and day-forward paper documents. Afterall, content is king.

“Buyers understand the benefits of moving to a digital platform for capturing, storing, sharing, and protecting information assets. But ECM systems need thoughtful planning and precision deployment in order to generate positive returns, especially during the current economic situation,” says Griffith, President and CEO of Image API. “One thing we absolutely know, it’s that ‘work done right the first time’ delivers both immediate and long-term value.”

Griffith and company developed a process to ensure that both the system and its implementation meet the organization’s goals and operational routines predictably and efficiently. Image API’s ECMplement Process(sm) is designed to consistently deliver projects on schedule and to ensure the cost savings and satisfaction customers expect from their purchase. It’s specifically designed to eliminate scope creep and project fatigue.

Image API’s ECMplement Process works through a series of orderly steps honed from 15 years of extensive ECM and process engineering experience. It virtually eliminates change orders, cost overruns, delays, and the career suicide that plague failed transitions from paper to digital content.

The ECMplement Process proactively applies the principles of open-dialogue communications and partnering. It utilizes solid project management methodologies to create a well-reasoned path from start to finish, marking key steps, deliverables, and measurements along the way.

Griffith offers a few more suggestions for buyers:

• Understand and agree with the implementation process.
• Buy only the features you really need now to avoid overspending on things you don’t yet need.
• Make sure you can easily and affordably add those extra features when you do need them.
• Ask yourself: does my organization have to change to fit the system, or is the system designed to fit how we operate?
• What’s the company’s track record? Check references.