HOW MUCH PAPER DO YOU NEED IN 2015?

We all know that going paperless will help the environment and save trees. We have all seen the “Going Green” advertisements and social push to protect the planet. But do you know exactly how much paper we really waste?
The average office worker uses approximately 10,000 sheets of paper per year according to the US EPA. That’s 20 reams of paper per office worker in the US.

So, what steps can we take to reduce our paper use?

1. Use email instead of fax – This one seems simple, but many of us are culprits. Instead of faxing, create it electronically and electronically send it. If you must fax, use an electronic fax provider – This will save you time and money.
2. Organize and store your documents in a central Electronic Content Management System – Documents will be organized and easy to retrieve and use. You can send documents directly from the system and allow users to retrieve documents. This eliminates the need to print and send documents internally and even externally.
3. Create E-Forms – Most companies, whether you’re a financial institution, Academic, medical provider, insurance company, etc., require some form of physical documentation to be filled out from your customers. By making these forms electronic, you will reduce the use of thousands of sheets of paper.
Source: http://www.tronitech.com

Whether you’re interested in reducing paper waste or just want to save money in the 2015, TECRES Consult can help with effective and efficient document imaging solutions in Nigeria Give us a call or visit our website to learn more

EARN UP TO N50K/MONTH

TECRES Consult is an IT Consulting company. TECRES Consult is recruiting Project Contract Staff for:
Job Title: Computer Data Entry Officer
Job Location: Lagos Mainland
Job Duration: 4 months
Job Duties: – You will carry out data verification and validation
Job Requirement: Minimum of Diploma in Computer Studies
Deadline: December 17, 2014

Method of Application: Send CV to jmacaulay@tecres.com.ng

CHEAP ARCHIVE REORGANIZATION

Information Asset is any organized documentation, data or body of information incorporated into a communication structure and managed in such a way that it can be understood, shared, protected and exploited effectively.
In preserving information assets value, risk, content and lifecycles, deploying a document management solution is the way to go however cost of digitizing can sometimes outweigh the value of such documents.
The essence and benefits of information management is to have access to documents as at when needed. The first point of call is to provide physical archive reorganization to free up space and have a better estimate of your paper volume.

The reorganization is done by moving old documents more than 10 years into indexed archival boxes for retention storage and reorganizing newer and current documents in a chronological order with proper index labels. An index tracking list is created using spreadsheet for easy access and retrieval thereby eliminating time wastage and improved efficiency.

Tecres Consult is a document management company that specializes in archive reorganization, digitization (document scanning/conversion) and document management services. We help organizations evaluate their document management needs and analysis to ensure that each one realize the maximum level of business benefits.

Contact us today

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• by email: info@tecres.com.ng
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SIMPLIFY CONTENT AND DESIGN

In software design, we use terms like “intuitive” and “user-friendly” but are these terms truly signifying simplicity? Most computer systems work best if they are kept simple and avoid unnecessary complexity. It is easy to get carried away programming complex code, yet it is important to note that increases to a system’s intricacy amplifies difficulty in maintaining it.
Over-complicating software design could turn consumers away through unneeded features and over-engineering. It generally is harder to debug programs than it is to write them, so use thoughtful reduction to simplify functionality. Impress consumers, don’t overwhelm them with confusing complexity. By keeping a system simple, you are capitalizing on its ease of use.

Laserfiche ECM provides the ability to establish and deploy information management standards throughout the enterprise while giving individual business units tools to customize the system to meet their specific needs

Using Laserfiche extends well beyond its technical capabilities. With more than 34,000 customers worldwide, we have an active community, including more than 80 software development firms that have developed supporting applications through the Laserfiche Professional Developer Partnership (PDP) Program; more than 1,000 customers who share their expertise as Laserfiche Luminaries; and more than 2,000 individuals who have enrolled in certification courses to further their skills through the Laserfiche Certified Professional Program (CPP).

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ECM AND DMS

Enterprise Content Management is much more than just a means for storing and managing an organization’s documents. ECM also includes the tools, strategies, and processes used to capture, store, retain, and manage content. ECM appeals to those looking to manage and configure large volumes of structured and unstructured data, including:
- Images - Web content - Email - Video - Electronic documents - Other media
With its superior security features, ECM systems tend to appeal towards risk-driven consumers – such as healthcare professionals, universities, lawyers, etc.

Common ECM Features: - Digital asset management - Indexing - Document collaboration - Workflows - Audit trails - Business process management - Email management - Imaging In order to visualize ECM – image it as an Office Assistant, able to automatically recognize the content within a document and know who, where, and when to send it.

Document Management Systems are designed to control the life cycle of documents. This includes document creation, retention, and accessibility. Whereas an ECM system is your “Office Assistant”, a DMS is your digital “filing cabinet”. A DMS is at its core a simplified ECM system as it focuses on managing entities as a whole rather than the extensive functionality of content management.
Document management systems are technically a sub-category of ECM – as ECM could not exist without its ability to manage documents (the core function of a DMS).
Common DMS Features: - Workflows - Audit trails - Indexing - Versioning

STOP!

Stop ...

1. Wasting time and staff resources on endless “document quests”
2. Struggling to make one team member’s documents available to another
3. Recreating important content because you can’t find it
4. Fixing problems caused by overlooking crucial information in files or email messages
5. Opening documents simply to understand what they contain
6. Struggling to interpret obscure file names or to understand which client a document is associated with
7. Losing documents because they’re not labeled consistently or physically stored together
8. Misplacing important email correspondence
9. Navigating multiple applications, drives, and folders simply to view all the content associated with a project, client, or matter
10. Deploying unnecessary software to client desktops – or performing time-consuming conversions – simply to permit document viewing
11. Struggling to control who can see or edit your documents
12. Spending hours trying to track who viewed or edited a document
13. Wasting money and time backing up obsolete files
14. Reconciling inconsistent concurrent changes made by document reviewers
15. Using Windows’ slow and ineffective document search tools
16. Trying to figure out which version of a document is authoritative, or who owns it

With document management system in place, you can get more done, more effectively, at lower cost, in less time. You can stop wasting time or money on manually finding and managing your documents, and reinvest those resources in becoming more profitable!

Call today us today and give it a trial for document management feasibility study and consultancy

CHOOSING THE WRONG VENDOR TO DEPLOY DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SOLUTION

Why do document management implementations go wrong? Ever asked yourself as a CTO, CIO, CMO, C-Suite. As almost everyone would want to believe it or not, document management has come to stay. Either you adopt it now or you end up paying the huge cost of having to do a catch-up. From the big names to the small and unknown (SharePoint, Alfresco, Documentum, Filenet, Hyland, Laserfiche, OpenText, Pinpoint, Paperport, gDoc, etc), these solutions have come to stay.

My story goes…
A client hires a (wrong) vendor (padi padi or for kick backs) and says, “We want a like-to-like migration from paper document to electronic document management solution (EDMS) or enterprise content management (ECM).” The vendor says “Okay” and does it.
Now, I don’t know about you, but when I hear “like-for-like” I think I am not adding functionality, but just following the charade. It may just be taking advantage of new out-of-the-box features, available to make information governance and management easier. This is a no no.
The wrong vendor interprets “like-for-like” literally, and end up creating a mess from paper document into EDMS/ECM making the deployment a failure..

...the back-story goes like this ...

1. An organization decides to convert from paper to electronic document management solution (good start).
   
2. They take the decision to implement any of the above listed EDMS or ECM (reasonable decision).
   
3. The vendor deploys the solution and copies (not moved) some content from the network drives into DMS solution (making progress, except…)
   
4. They did not …
   
   • Take a content inventory.
     
   • Develop a taxonomy or metadata model.
     
   • Account for other stakeholders that may need access to the content.
     
   • Provide context / role specific views to the users.
     
   • Put any rules around site provisioning and what to do with them when no longer needed.
     
   • Do ANY of the things needing to be done prior to implementing an ECM solution and migrating content, regardless of what the platform is. In short, they moved whatever was in those network folders right into the EDMS, effectively creating two messes instead of one.
5. So the advocated solution starts to collapse under its own weight (because they miss the parts about capacity planning, scaling, and disposing of content).
   
6. Nobody uses the solution even after millions of naira have been spent making the software a failure.

>>> and fast forward.
The right vendor should spend some days talking with stakeholders to figure out what’s needed and the end users of their expectations. Get into people’s heads about their thoughts, fears, and attitudes around how they view information management as an enabler for them to do their jobs.

1. Define the Scope – The scope shouldn’t be limited to a specific group, bother anyone and everyone concerned from stakeholders to end users. Most vendors cut out this stage and talk mainly with IT staff. Although they own the business unit, the content applies to a business process that involves all and non-technical units in the organization.
   
2. Fundamentals – By fundamentals I am referring to items such as file plans, retention & disposition schedules, archiving strategies, metadata model, user profiles (personas), security, etc.
   
3. Content Migration – Content migration is not just simply forklifting content from one repository to another. There has to be some serious thought put into it. Decisions about what content goes, where does it go, what gets archived, day forward or legacy, all have to be asked and answered.
   
4. Search – Absent of metadata and taxonomy makes search difficult and concise result a fantasy.
5. Other considerations – Infrastructure planning or architecture, capacity planning, business continuity planning, backup/restore planning, storage management, integration, enterprise search, etc. There is a long list of things that should be done.

Any one of the above could cause the best EDMS or ECM implementation to be a spectacular failure. One small mistake can spell doom and this has nothing to do with technology selection. The mistake is even more critical when the wrong vendor is picked. It’s really that simple.

Regardless of what solutions you’re deploying, selecting the right partner is critical. Go back to square one and do the right things in the right order. Involve the right stakeholders in the discussions, stop the client from making quick decisions and get them to make correct decisions.
The point of my little story is that you need to do your homework before you choose a partner no matter what you need them for. The wrong partner can kill a project; the right partner will help you succeed.
At TECRES Consult, we help organizations select the right partners and ideal solution.

Julius Macaulay is the Principal Consultant at TECRES Consult (www.tecres.com.ng) providing ICT training and document management consultancy services for organizations. He holds a Masters degree in Information Technology with special interest in "the paperless office".

SHOULD AN ORGANIZATION DECLINE ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

While most organizations are considering Electronic Document Management System, some decisions makers still reject the need to convert their paper documents to digital copies. Consider the following fact in the UK.

Up to £15 billion wasted every year in the UK looking for 'lost' documents at work.
A survey of over 1,000 office workers in the UK has found that over two thirds of desk-based employees spend up to an hour a day looking for 'lost' documents. This wasted time is costing British businesses up to a staggering £15 billion (£15,388,652,760) every year, according to research from infoMENTUM, carried out by independent research agency Censuswide. The research found that employees are getting increasingly frustrated at not being able to locate the documents they need; nearly 20% of respondents had to waste additional time recreating documents from scratch, as a result.

Over 93% of UK office workers believe that access to the files and documentation they need is important and helps them to do their job more efficiently and effectively.

ISO GUIDELINES AND DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

Integral to an organization’s content environment, document management involves the acquisition, storage and recovery of information pertinent to operations.
A well-functioning document management system (DMS) generates agile document-modification while improving records' retention, security, auditing and summarization.
Regulations and quality standards developed by professional agencies for maintaining operational/performance criterion across a wide range of enterprise/business processes motivate DMS-integrity.

ISO Guidelines
The International Organization for Standardization generates ISO-guidelines to provide best-practice principles/procedures for quality assurance, environmental management and information security. Several ISO pertinent standards are:

• ISO-9001 Quality Standard regulates workflows producing goods and services. The benchmark for quality enterprise management, it fulfills the rigours of independent, external audits. ISO9001 applies to similar products/services of the same relative class/function, globally controlling these processes to guarantee consumer needs and expectations are satisfied.

• ISO-14001 offers worldwide standards for appropriate and safe control of enterprise processes that may negatively affect the environment through wasteful/dangerous acquisition of natural resources or excessive energy consumption. Internal audits maintain 14001-certification, ensuring these standards are upheld.

• ISO-27001 standardizes practices for security of organizational information. Systematic evaluation of security risks identifies administrative priorities for managing threats to information security. The objective is assure confidentiality, integrity, and safe-access to information. The three guidelines generate enterprise cost savings through improved efficiency, productivity, and market-expansion, caused by reliable measures of quality-assurance, environmental-protection and data-security.

Julius Macaulay is the Principal Consultant at TECRES Consult (www.tecres.com.ng) providing ICT training and document management consultancy services for organizations. He holds a masters degree in Information Technology with special interest in "the paperless office".
Contact us today

• by email: info@tecres.com.ng
• follow us on twitter.com: @TECRES_CONSULT
• like us on facebook: facebook.com/tecresconsult
• visit our website: www.tecres.com.ng

THE TOP 10 MISTAKES COMPANIES MAKE WHEN DEPLOYING A DOCUMENT SCANNING SOLUTION

Recent studies have shown that document scanning remains one of the top technology priorities of organizations, regardless of their size or their vertical market. Little wonder: when properly deployed, document scanning solutions deliver a tremendous payback – in terms of cost savings, faster turnaround, better quality, streamlined compliance and more. But mistakes during system implementation can undermine even the strongest business case for a document scanning solution. To help keep your document scanning project on the right track, here are the 10 most common mistakes that organizations make when deploying the technology – and how to avoid them.

1. Not buying enough scanning capacity
Too often, organizations use their average document processing volumes when determining scanning capacity. But organizations must also consider variables such as peak daily volume, required or contracted deadlines for completing work, and the effective throughput (not the advertised speeds) of the scanners that they are considering buying.

2. Not including all stakeholders both business and IT in the requirements definition
In some cases, the IT department will unilaterally choose the organization’s scanners, in turn, saddling operations with scanners that don’t meet their requirements or are not easy for operators to use. In other cases, an operations team will select scanners without the IT department’s involvement only to discover that the organization’s legacy systems and/or infrastructure can’t support the scanners.

3. Buying a solution without conducting a proof of concept
Organizations should never purchase a scanner without first seeing how it processes their documents. Too many organizations buy document scanning technology based on what they read in a brochure or see on a trade show. They need to test whether the scanner fits their business requirements and processing environment. Organizations also want to have some of their operators run the scanner to test usability.

4. Making decisions on front-end and back-end systems separately
An organization’s front-end scanning and capture solution must work in concert with its back-end workflow technology. For instance, organizations must ensure that their document scanning and capture solution can output images and data in the format required for back-end systems, whether it’s flat files, XML files, Excel spreadsheets or database output. In one case, a BPO purchased a scanning and capture solution that could only output images and data in one format. This resulted in the BPO spending a lot of time and money reconfiguring the output to the various formats that its customers required. Organizations also need to ensure that their back-end systems are fast enough to keep up with their front-end solutions otherwise they will experience bottlenecks in the “hand-off” of images and data. We’ve seen delays as much as 35 to 40 percent between front-end and back-end systems.

5. Not coordinating software and hardware vendors during system deployment
No one wins in this scenario. A lack of coordination typically results in wasted effort, finger pointing and delayed implementations. We have seen many cases where front-end and back-end solutions providers get their systems up and running at a customer site, but there is no integration because the vendors and the customer never discussed critical issues such as: what data needs to be passed from one system to another, the image formats required for back-end systems, and how data should be routed.

6. Not using a phased implementation approach
In their drive for fast results, too many organizations bite off more than they can chew when implementing a scanning solution. Trying to deploy an entire system at once can overwhelm internal resources, and draw out the deployment, in turn, putting the entire project at risk of getting shut down. Instead, organizations should determine where they can have the biggest impact on their operations with the least amount of change; they shouldn’t break a process that isn’t broken. With an initial success under their belts, users should similarly prioritize the next phases of their implementation based on their potential benefits.

7. Letting fear of change take over
Too many organizations are close minded when it comes to re-engineering their processes, falling back on the way they’ve done things for the past five or 10 years. For instance, some organizations manually count every document that they scan, and write a number on the first page of each batch. This process was necessitated by older technology that was prone to double-feeds or didn’t have automatic document counters. However, there is no need to do this with today’s scanning technology, and continuing to do so, creates needless, not to mention costly, work. The best strategy for helping your staff overcome their fear of change is to let them see the technology run firsthand. Once they see that the scanner detects double-feeds and counts documents, as examples, they’ll recognize the impact it will have on document preparation.

8. Not thinking LEAN
Organizations should always be looking for ways to do more with less. For instance, organizations shouldn’t automatically purchase more of their legacy scanners as their volume grows; there may be other scanners available that enable them to consolidate hardware. Similarly, most organizations can do a more efficient job of document preparation; there’s no need to tape small documents to 8 ½ x 11-inch paper, or to use multiple separator sheets for scanning.

9. Not cutting the paper cord
Many organizations use unique transaction separator sheets for each type of work that they process, creating an enormous breadth and volume of paper. Today’s document scanning solutions are an opportunity for organizations to rid themselves of this paper, automatically separating transactions based on documents (e.g. checks or envelopes) within a batch. The technology also allows organizations to insert generic separator sheets that can be re-used; one company has re-used its generic separator sheets for the past five years, saving significant money.

10. Not sharing as in shared services
With the economy still struggling, and capital budgets tight, organizations should look to consolidate multiple scanning functions on a single platform.

Properly deployed, document scanning solutions deliver tremendous results. But mistakes during implementation can undermine even the strongest business case for the technology. Avoiding the 10 mistakes described above will help ensure the success of your organization’s scanning project.

Excerpt from www.ibml.com

THE TOP TEN STRATEGIC TECHNOLOGY TRENDS FOR 2014. Vol IV

9. Smart Machines Through 2020, the smart machine era will blossom with a proliferation of contextually aware, intelligent personal assistants, smart advisors (such as IBM Watson), advanced global industrial systems and public availability of early examples of autonomous vehicles. The smart machine era will be the most disruptive in the history of IT. New systems that begin to fulfill some of the earliest visions for what information technologies might accomplish — doing what we thought only people could do and machines could not —are now finally emerging. Gartner expects individuals will invest in, control and use their own smart machines to become more successful. Enterprises will similarly invest in smart machines. Consumerization versus central control tensions will not abate in the era of smart-machine-driven disruption. If anything, smart machines will strengthen the forces of consumerization after the first surge of enterprise buying commences.

10. 3-D Printing Worldwide shipments of 3D printers are expected to grow 75 percent in 2014 followed by a near doubling of unit shipments in 2015. While very expensive “additive manufacturing” devices have been around for 20 years, the market for devices ranging from $50,000 to $500, and with commensurate material and build capabilities, is nascent yet growing rapidly. The consumer market hype has made organizations aware of the fact 3D printing is a real, viable and cost-effective means to reduce costs through improved designs, streamlined prototyping and short-run manufacturing.

About Gartner Symposium/ITxpo
Gartner Symposium/ITxpo is the world's most important gathering of CIOs and senior IT executives. This event delivers independent and objective content with the authority and weight of the world's leading IT research and advisory organization, and provides access to the latest solutions from key technology providers.

Julius Macaulay is the Principal Consultant at TECRES Consult - www.tecres.com.ng providing ICT Training and document management consultancy services for schools and organizations. He holds a Masters degree in Information Technology with special interest in the paperless office.

THE TOP TEN STRATEGIC TECHNOLOGY TRENDS FOR 2014. Vol III

5. Cloud/Client Architecture
Cloud/client computing models are shifting. In the cloud/client architecture, the client is a rich application running on an Internet-connected device, and the server is a set of application services hosted in an increasingly elastically scalable cloud computing platform. The cloud is the control point and system or record and applications can span multiple client devices. The client environment may be a native application or browser-based; the increasing power of the browser is available to many client devices, mobile and desktop alike. Robust capabilities in many mobile devices, the increased demand on networks, the cost of networks and the need to manage bandwidth use creates incentives, in some cases, to minimize the cloud application computing and storage footprint, and to exploit the intelligence and storage of the client device. However, the increasingly complex demands of mobile users will drive apps to demand increasing amounts of server-side computing and storage capacity.

6. The Era of Personal Cloud
The personal cloud era will mark a power shift away from devices toward services. In this new world, the specifics of devices will become less important for the organization to worry about, although the devices will still be necessary. Users will use a collection of devices, with the PC remaining one of many options, but no one device will be the primary hub. Rather, the personal cloud will take on that role. Access to the cloud and the content stored or shared from the cloud will be managed and secured, rather than solely focusing on the device itself.

7. Software Defined Anything
Software-defined anything (SDx) is a collective term that encapsulates the growing market momentum for improved standards for infrastructure programmability and data center inter-operability driven by automation inherent to cloud computing, DevOps and fast infrastructure provisioning. As a collective, SDx also incorporates various initiatives like OpenStack, OpenFlow, the Open Compute Project and Open Rack, which share similar visions. As individual SDx technology silos evolve and consortiums arise, look for emerging standards and bridging capabilities to benefit portfolios, but challenge individual technology suppliers to demonstrate their commitment to true inter-operability standards within their specific domains. While openness will always be a claimed vendor objective, different interpretations of SDx definitions may be anything but open. Vendors of SDN (network), SDDC (data center), SDS (storage), and SDI (infrastructure) technologies are all trying to maintain leadership in their respective domains, while deploying SDx initiatives to aid market adjacency plays. So vendors who dominate a sector of the infrastructure may only reluctantly want to abide by standards that have the potential to lower margins and open broader competitive opportunities, even when the consumer will benefit by simplicity, cost reduction and consolidation efficiency.

THE TOP TEN STRATEGIC TECHNOLOGY TRENDS FOR 2014. Vol II

3. The Internet of Everything The Internet is expanding beyond PCs and mobile devices into enterprise assets such as field equipment, and consumer items such as cars and televisions. The problem is that most enterprises and technology vendors have yet to explore the possibilities of an expanded internet and are not operationally or organizationally ready. Imagine digitizing the most important products, services and assets. The combination of data streams and services created by digitizing everything creates four basic usage models – Manage; Monetize; Operate; Extend. These four basic models can be applied to any of the four "internets” (people, things, information and places). Enterprises should not limit themselves to thinking that only the Internet of Things (i.e., assets and machines) has the potential to leverage these four models. Enterprises from all industries (heavy, mixed, and weightless) can leverage these four models.

4. Hybrid Cloud and IT as Service Broker Bringing together personal clouds and external private cloud services is an imperative. Enterprises should design private cloud services with a hybrid future in mind and make sure future integration/interoperability is possible. Hybrid cloud services can be composed in many ways, varying from relatively static to very dynamic. Managing this composition will often be the responsibility of something filling the role of cloud service broker (CSB), which handles aggregation, integration and customization of services. Enterprises that are expanding into hybrid cloud computing from private cloud services are taking on the CSB role. Terms like "overdrafting" and "cloudbursting" are often used to describe what hybrid cloud computing will make possible. However, the vast majority of hybrid cloud services will initially be much less dynamic than that. Early hybrid cloud services will likely be more static, engineered compositions (such as integration between an internal private cloud and a public cloud service for certain functionality or data). More deployment compositions will emerge as CSBs evolve (for example, private infrastructure as a service [IaaS] offerings that can leverage external service providers based on policy and utilization).

THE TOP TEN STRATEGIC TECHNOLOGY TRENDS FOR 2014. Vol I

Gartner, Inc. highlighted the top ten technologies and trends that will be strategic for most organizations in 2014 and companies should factor into their strategic planning processes,” said David Cearley.
Mr. Cearley said that the Nexus of Forces, the convergence of four powerful forces: social, mobile, cloud and information, continues to drive change and create new opportunities, creating demand for advanced programmable infrastructure that can execute at web-scale.

On this blog, we will highlight these trends.

1. Mobile Device Diversity and Management Through 2018, the growing variety of devices, computing styles, user contexts and interaction paradigms will make "everything everywhere" strategies unachievable. The unexpected consequence of bring your own device (BYOD) programs is a doubling or even tripling of the size of the mobile workforce. This is placing tremendous strain on IT and Finance organizations. Enterprise policies on employee-owned hardware usage need to be thoroughly reviewed and, where necessary, updated and extended. Most companies only have policies for employees accessing their networks through devices that the enterprise owns and manages. Set policies to define clear expectations around what they can and can't do. Balance flexibility with confidentiality and privacy requirements

2. Mobile Apps and Applications Gartner predicts that through 2014, improved JavaScript performance will begin to push HTML5 and the browser as a mainstream enterprise application development environment. Gartner recommends that developers focus on creating expanded user interface models including richer voice and video that can connect people in new and different ways. Apps will continue to grow while applications will begin to shrink. Apps are smaller, and more targeted, while a larger application is more comprehensive. Devlopers should look for ways to snap together apps to create larger applications. Building application user interfaces that span a variety of devices require an understanding of fragmented building blocks and an adaptable programming structure that assembles them into optimized content for each device. The market for tools to create consumer and enterprise facing apps is complex with well over 100 potential tools vendors. For the next few years no single tool will be optimal for all types of mobile application so expect to employ several. The next evolution in user experience will be to leverage intent, inferred from emotion and actions, to motivate changes in end-user behavior.

TIPS FOR TAKING JAMB UTME COMPUTER BASED TESTING (CBT) PART IV

As JAMB CBT examinations draws closer, TECRES Consult wishes all students the best in their academic pursuit. Below is the concluding part of the jamb cbt steps series.

JAMB CBT EXAMINATION STEPS
When you enter the CBT exam center, you see a Welcome page on the allocated computer.

1. Please type your jamb registration number and click submit to Login in to your exam area.
2. Please read the following instructions carefully.
3. Click the start button to retrieve questions.
4. The timer will start immediately.
5. Your UTME registered subjects are provided for you on the top of the screen.
6. Select any of them and take your exam
7. You can move from one subject to the other on the same page
8. Choose your answer by clicking a, b, c, d and click next
9. You have three buttons - back button, omit button, next button
• Back button - to go back to the previous question
• Omit button - to take you to the next question if you don't want to answer
• Next button - move you to the next question after you have answered
• You can go back to previous subject and start where you stopped
10. You can click the page shortcut to move from question 1, 2 ,3 up to the last question and each question you answer will be highlighted to show that it has been answered
11. Click logout upon completion
12. Congratulations, you have finished your exam.

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Concluding the series on IMPLEMENTING DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT FOR A LAW FIRM.

Integration with Other Products
Make sure that the proposed document management program will integrate not only with Microsoft Office but Acrobat, various scanning products, or other specialized programs. If the program does not natively integrate, can integration be easily added?

Integration with E-mail
Client-related e-mails sent or received by various people in the firm should be integrated into the document management system so that they are available to everyone working on a case. You need to establish policies for how emails are stored in the document management system. You want to make it possible for people to exclude personal email, RSS feeds, or spam, etc. You also need to decide how to deal with existing email stores.

Working Off-line; Web Access
What provisions will you make for lawyers to take copies of files home with them or access the document management system remotely from home? Most document management programs provide for some sort of Web access, usually as an add-on module. Since copies of files will be taken away from the firm, you also need to establish policies governing web access to your document store.
In many cases, it is also possible to set up remote access to restricted areas of your document repository so that specified clients can access those documents (and only those documents) that the firm makes available to them.

Training
Most document management systems are sufficiently easy to use that many firms do not feel training is necessary. However, in the process of "hand crafting" ways to keep track of documents in the past, users will inevitably have created procedures for naming and storing documents that may have been useful to specific individual users, but are either not necessary, inefficient, or even counter-productive in the context of a document management system. In addition, most users do not get the most power out of the program’s capabilities. As with any other program, adequate training can multiply the effectiveness of a document management system many times.

Conclusion
Given the fundamental problems in managing large numbers of documents, compounded by employee and lawyer turnover, adopting a document management system is increasingly a vital necessity for most firms. Once you have decided on a system, the difference between a well-thought out and implemented system can be a make or break issue determining how effective and successful it actually is.

Hopefully you've been able to grasp a few knowledge from IMPLEMENTING DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT FOR A LAW FIRM series. You may read through my previous series here Part 1 and Part 2. A document management system is meant to increase productivity at work tremendously and save you time. It is a tool that helps you to manage paper documents as well as find them easily without spending countless hours searching.

Julius Macaulay is the Principal Consultant at TECRES Consult (www.tecres.com.ng) providing document management consultancy services for organizations. He holds a Masters degree in Information Technology with special interest in "the paperless office" and a decade experience in Information Technology.

Remember to follow me on twitter @tecres_consult and we can get talking.

IMPLEMENTING DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT FOR A LAW FIRM. Part 2

Continued from Part 1.

Plan, Plan, Plan
Once you have a list, how exactly do you want the system to work? Do different practice areas/departments require different settings or levels of security? Generally speaking from one to three profiles (containing basic information about the document) suffice to meet the needs of most firms. This is an area where most often "less is more." You will likely want a different level of security for the Firm’s Management Committee and/or administrative, human resources or financial personnel so that only authorized personnel have access to whole categories of documents. In specific cases very sensitive areas of a practice (trusts & estates; mergers & acquisitions) might need a "walled-off" area. There is a trade-off between security and convenience. If you lock a system down too much, it can have a serious effect on usability. You need to establish your comfort level here.

Involve End Users; Set Expectations
If end users are taken by surprise when a system is rolled out, you could be in for a rocky implementation. In addition, Partners who are used to certain work habits (and don’t want to "share" their documents) may have to modify them, so it is critical for Partners to "buy in" to document management. Users will have questions such as "what about my personal documents?" "I keep the partner’s personal correspondence on my local hard drive, what will happen to that?" "I keep drafts on the hard drive and only put the final copy on the network." If these issues are not addressed before hand, you could have a revolt on your hands. The actual answer you give is less important than addressing the issue – and you may also be led to modify the structure of your system to accommodate certain concerns or requirements.

Designing the System
Document management systems create "profiles" to facilitate organization and faster searching. These typically include Client, Matter, Document Type, Author and sometimes Secretary in addition to the document description. You need to decide whether this is adequate or whether you have special needs.

Old ("Legacy") Documents
A major issue when implementing a document management system is what to do with your old documents. It is a safe bet most firms will never access up to 75-80% of the documents created before the document management system is implemented. I recommend setting up a "legacy" category for your old documents. Force users to move old files into the new system the first time they access them. This will be far less time-consuming (and hence less expensive) than trying to convert your old documents. However, if you are switching from one document management program to another, there may be conversion utilities available to convert your old information.

Integration with Other Products ... (to be continued)

Julius Macaulay is the Principal Consultant at TECRES Consult (www.tecres.com.ng) providing document management consultancy services for organizations. He holds a Masters degree in Information Technology with special interest in "the paperless office" and a decade experience in Information Technology.

HAPPY EASTER HOLIDAY

HE IS THE MORNING STAR,HE IS THE REDEEMER, HE IS THE SAVIOR. MAY HIS BLESSINGS BE UPON YOU ON EASTER AND ALWAYS.

IMPLEMENTING DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT FOR A LAW FIRM. Part 1

There are no hard and fast rules when implementing a document management system, although experience shows that some configurations tend to work better than others for most firms. Therefore I will focus on some general guidelines based on my experience as a consultant with document management systems.

What Do You Want to Accomplish?
Most vendors focus on feature lists that promise to do just about everything except have coffee ready for you in the morning. Forget the feature list and focus on your wish list. To the extent a vendor’s feature list does not match your wish list, consider a vendor that more closely matches your needs. One need that is frequently cited is to avoid losing documents (you would be surprised how often users simply drag entire directories from one place to another without even realizing it). Re-typing documents because the original file could not be found is not uncommon. Do you want better search capabilities? Both speed and the ability to do boolean searches can be important here (find a and b; a within x words of b, etc.).

By integrating email into the document management system, all the firm’s emails become searchable and you can easily locate all emails concerning a given matter, regardless of who sent or received them. Outlook cannot do this. Do you want to be able to access your documents from home over the Web? Do you want to make specific documents of selected clients available to them, again, over the Web?

A critical issue is whether you want to "lock down" the system, that is, oblige everyone to use it all the time. Practice Management programs such as Time Matters or Amicus Attorney offer "document management" modules that are optional–users are not obliged to use them. In my experience, this is a recipe for disaster. If a system is optional, then some significant portion of your users are going to opt out of it some or all the time. And of course, just at the wrong time or with the wrong document. To have to depend on the good will and discipline of users when implementing any system is not a great idea. In business, there is a principle that you never start negotiating from your fallback position. The same is true here. Start from your maximum wish list. You may not eventually want to devote the time and money to implementing all of it, some things on your wish list may not be realistic, but at least you won't be in a position of saying three months from now, "If only I had...." In short, the list of what you want it to do mirrors your existing aggravations. Plus, the process of creating a wish list helps to focus your thinking and will improve the implementation.

Plan Plan Plan...(to be continued)

Julius Macaulay is the Principal Consultant at TECRES Consult (www.tecres.com.ng) providing document management consultancy services for organizations. He holds a Masters degree in Information Technology with special interest in "the paperless office" and a decade experience in Information Technology.

TIPS FOR TAKING JAMB UTME COMPUTER BASED TESTING (CBT) PART III

TECRES Consult has developed the following strategies to help you on exam day:

1. Before beginning to solve the questions, it is a good idea to read through all instructions carefully.
2. You can determine which subject you feel most prepared to answer.
3. You can then proceed to solve the questions in a sequence that will allow you to perform your best.
4. Monitor your time appropriately on the top section to ensure that you do not spend too much time on one question that you do not have enough time to attempt all the subjects and questions.
5. For questions involving calculations, you can pull up the calculator on your computer by Clicking on Start Button, All Programs, Accessories , and Select Calculator. You can change from simple calculator to scientific calculator by clicking on view and select the desired view.
6. Marks for each section in English Language is awarded independently, so you should attempt to solve each section.

JAMB CBT EXAMINATION STEPS
When you enter the CBT exam center, you see a Welcome page on the allocated computer.

1. Please type your jamb registration number and click submit to Login in to your exam area.
2. Please read the following instructions carefully.
3. Click the start button to retrieve questions.
4. The timer will start immediately.
5. Your UTME registered subjects are provided for you on the top of the screen.
6. .... like our facebook page and drop your email address, we will send your the concluding section.

TECRES Consult provides Special Computer Based Testing CBT Tutorial Class for Jamb/SS3 Students. We guide students using JAMB-UTME Practice Software which consist of JAMB past questions from inception to date. We train and provide useful tips to help students get familiar with computer based Testing.

Don’t waste another year at home using trial and error, Contact us today!

• by email: info@tecres.com.ng
• follow us on twitter.com: @TECRES_CONSULT
• like us on facebook: facebook.com/tecresconsult
• visit our website: www.tecres.com.ng

INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTER BASED TEST (CBT)

Definition Computer based testing is the administration of an examination in fixed or adaptive formats using the power of a computer. Over the past four decades, there has been incremental growth in computer-based testing (CBT) as a viable alternative to paper-and-pencil testing.

Introduction
Today, CBT is a broad-based industry that encompasses a large variety of assessment types, purposes, test delivery designs, and item types appropriated for educational accountability and achievement testing, college and graduate admission testing, professional certification and licensure testing, psychological testing, intelligence testing, language testing, employment testing, adult education, military use. The delivery of CBT has also undergone many changes from the early days of “dumb” terminals connected to a mainframe or minicomputer. Testing locations or sites include dedicated CBT centers, classrooms or computer labs in schools, colleges, and universities; temporary CBT testing facilities set up at auditoriums, hotels, or other large meeting sites; and even personalized testing in the privacy of one’s home, using a PC with an Internet connection and an online proctoring service.

Modern CBT can be implemented in any of five ways: (a) on a stand-alone personal computer (PC); (b) in dedicated CBT centers; (c) at temporary test centers; (d) in multipurpose computer labs; or (e) using a PC, laptop, netbook, tablet, or hand-held device connected to the Internet, possibly remotely proctored. One of the first large-scale computerized-adaptive testing programs to go operational was the College Board’s ACCUPLACER® testing program, which in 1985 consisted of four tests: Reading Comprehension, Sentence Skills, Arithmetic, and Elementary Algebra. These examinations were introduced to assist in placing entering college students in English and mathematics courses.

Navigation
Navigation relates to how the examinee moves around in a test. There are two aspects to navigation: (1) visual style of the navigation control and (2) blocking review and/or changing answers to previously seen items. The design and visual style of navigation software controls differs across test delivery drivers (and sometimes across test delivery system platforms). Every test has some navigation mechanisms. Some CBT test delivery drivers merely use “forward/next” and “back” keys or mouse-clickable buttons to move item by item. Some CBT test delivery drivers provide a full-page “review screen” to display all of the items, the examinee’s item response (if any), and any flags left by the examinee indicating that he or she wants to possibly review the item later. Many of the recent genres of CBT graphical user interfaces now provide an “explorer” or “helm” style of navigation control that continuously shows an ordered list of the test items in a narrow scrollable window within some segment of the display screen. This ordered list format is particularly helpful to examinees who want to skip items and go back to them later, if time permits.

Security Risks
One of the most important CBT implementation issues for high stakes examinations is item pool exposure (Haynie & Way, 1994; Stocking, 1993). The inherent flexibility of offering CBT on-demand or over a wide range of test dates potentially exposes the item pools to both small-scale and large-scale efforts aimed at cheating. That is, realizing that item pools may remain active over an extended period of time, examinees can conspire to memorize items, their intent being to reconstruct as much of the pool as possible to advantage re-takers or to share with future first-taker examinees.

“Extracts from a Research Report 2011-12 "A Review of Models for Computer-Based Testing" By Richard M. Luecht and Stephen G. Sireci.”

Julius Macaulay is the Principal Consultant at TECRES Consult (www.tecres.com.ng) providing ICT Training for Schools and Computer Based Testing Tutorials for Senior Secondary School, JAMB and Post-JAMB UTME students. He holds a Masters degree in Information Technology with Distinction and over a decade experience in Information Technology consultancy.

TIPS FOR TAKING JAMB UTME COMPUTER BASED TESTS (CBT) IN CENTERS

Starting in 2013, If you plan to apply for undergraduate school, you now need to take JAMB UTME in a commercial testing and assessment center. These centers provide the facilities for students to take exams in conditions that comply with the guidelines of JAMB that will evaluate the results. Depending on your feelings about tests, taking an exam in one of these facilities can be nerve-wracking to terrifying, especially if your previous experience with exams was with pencil and paper, rather than the computer-based tests that now dominate the industry. If it is the first time you've been to a testing center, those feelings can be even more intense. Since 2013, We have provided testing assistance to individuals in professional testing simulations. Below are some useful tips about how any kind of test candidate can not only survive, but thrive on exam day.

1. Preview the facility. Check with your testing center if you can tour the test center before your exam day.
2. Know the rules of the center. In addition to learning about the facility, it can be extremely valuable to know the basic requirements and restrictions of the testing center before exam day.
3. Bring exactly what you need. Most test centers will not provide you with a locker so that you don’t need to lose any items that are not allowed into the exam room.
4. Arrive early. Leave earlier for the test center than you think you need to, even if you're certain you know how to get there.
5. Prepare physically. Even if you have trouble sleeping the night before an exam, engaging in relaxing, enjoyable activities before bed can help to soothe your nerves.
6. Dress for comfort. Exam day is definitely not the time to dress to impress. Wear comfortable clothing that allows you to move freely.
7. Bring high-energy snacks. You may wish to bring a few healthy foods to nibble while waiting for your exam time.
8. Be ready for security measures. Professional testing facilities are serious about ensuring that your exam is completed in compliance with the guidelines of the governing testing organization.
9. Take your time getting settled. In most cases, once the clock is running, you will need to stay focused on your exam until its conclusion.

TECRES Consult provide CBT Training to Senior Secondary School students. We guide students using JAMB past questions in a simulated environment to help students get familiar with computer based Testing. Be prepared and ready to excel.

Contact us today

• by email: info@tecres.com.ng
• follow us on twitter.com: @TECRES_CONSULT
• like us on facebook: facebook.com/tecresconsult
• visit our website: www.tecres.com.ng

DIGITIZATION PROJECT FOR ORGANIZATIONS

With increased flows of information, document management has become a major challenge for companies. As they generate and receive an increasing number of paper documents, companies are drowning under large volumes of documents (customer files, patient files, legal documents, transaction invoices and receipts, memo, emails, etc.) that they need to preserve, often for legal and administrative reasons. Storage, searching and communication of these documents have thus become major concerns.

Digitization is, today, one of the best solutions for dealing with these problems. On the one hand, it allows storage areas to be externalized. On the other hand, digitization facilitates searching, sharing and distribution of documents and thus makes it possible to increase productivity and improve customer service.

TECRES Consult offers bulk document scanning/digitization and conversion at a flexible and affordable cost. Contact us today

• by email: info@tecres.com.ng
• follow us on twitter.com: @TECRES_CONSULT
• like us on facebook: facebook.com/tecresconsult
• visit our website: www.tecres.com.ng

CBT TIPS FOR JAMB UMTE STUDENTS

1. There are fifty questions in each subject with the exception of the Use of English, and you are expected to attempt all.
2. The maximum time allowed for this test is 45 minutes meaning you have 54 seconds to spend on each question; in the case of the Use of English, the time allowed is 90 minutes.
3. If you do not have instant idea of a question, you can skip it by scrolling to the next question; you can re-attempt the skipped question when you have attempted others. All the fifty questions are on one page, so you can scroll up and down as it pleases you to attempt your question.
4. Upon answering your perceived simple questions, you can scroll up or down to answer the once you left behind, you can also move round all the question by clicking on the questions on the navigation box and it will take you direct to the question, after answering all question you can click finish attempt and it will take you to summary of all you have answerd and unanswerd at that point you can click on return to attempt and make correction or answer the unanswerd once and final click on finish and submite and move to the next subject.
5. Repeat Step 4 above for every subject.
6. In the event of exhausting the allowed time, the system will end the test for you automatically and present your raw score which may later be subjected to standardization, standardization is for true live examination, for practice CBT test no standerdization, rather, your score and reasons for right answer will be given to you.

• Note
• Questions are supplied upon clicking on the start button below. As soon as the questions are supplied, the timer will start reading immediately in descending order.
• For purpose of practice test candidates are expected to choose any year of their choice.

Contact us today for professional CBT tutoring for your school jamb students.

• by email: info@tecres.com.ng
• follow us on twitter.com: @TECRES_CONSULT
• like us on facebook: facebook.com/tecresconsult
• visit our website: www.tecres.com.ng

DOCUMENT ARCHIVE REORGANIZATION

Different department have different filing requirements and as a result different filing cabinets for different purposes - Open, Closed, Wooden, Metal filled with arch lever files. Sometimes the arch lever files are stacked in sacks (Ghana-must-go) and in cartons, lying loose on-top and under office desks.

• Locating information from such stacks and different silos may be herculean and chaotic
• Documents may have been moved without prior notices
• Documents may have been destroyed by rodents and other pest or weather effect

The outlined challenges result in staff inefficiency and customers’ dissatisfaction. What you need is not to digitize immediately. The reason is that documents are duplicated by different department needs and the cost of conversion to digital copy without reorganization – filtering is expensive. TECRES Consult provides physical documents archive management at affordable cost to ascertain the value and state of your documents. Our approach is based on multiple experiences with clients with such document storage challenges and our methodology is practical and cost effective.

Contact us today

• by email: info@tecres.com.ng
• follow us on twitter.com: @TECRES_CONSULT
• like us on facebook: facebook.com/tecresconsult
• visit our website: www.tecres.com.ng

WHY YOU SHOULD CONSIDER DIGITIZATION/SCANNING BACKFILE DOCUMENTS

1. Preservation and conservation of originals through an electronic substitute for consultation (online library),
2. Instant and simultaneous access of a document in multiple location,
3. E-consultation giving a better reading than the originals, possibility to zoom, to go into the heart of a document, to obtain the finesse of details, to make comparisons between multiple documents simultaneously…
4. Communicating the document outside the library through an online library or networks, like a remote access to documents between libraries.

TECRES Consult offers bulk document scanning/digitization and conversion at a flexible and affordable cost.
Contact us today!

• by email: info@tecres.com.ng
• follow us on twitter.com: @TECRES_CONSULT
• like us on facebook: facebook.com/tecresconsult
• visit our website: www.tecres.com.ng

DIGITIZATION PROJECT FOR ORGANIZATIONS

With increased flows of information, document management has become a major challenge for companies. As they generate and receive an increasing number of paper documents, companies are drowning under large volumes of documents (customer files, patient files, legal documents, etc.) that they need to preserve, often for legal and administrative reasons.
Storage, searching and communication of these documents have thus become major concerns. Digitization is, today, one of the best solutions for dealing with these problems. On the one hand, it allows storage areas to be externalized. On the other hand, digitization facilitates searching, sharing and distribution of documents and thus makes it possible to increase productivity and improve customer service.

TECRES Consult offers bulk document scanning/digitization and conversion at a flexible and affordable cost.
Contact us today!

• by email: info@tecres.com.ng
• follow us on twitter.com: @TECRES_CONSULT
• like us on facebook: facebook.com/tecresconsult
• visit our website: www.tecres.com.ng