It recently struck me that I have now been creating Common Data Environments (CDEs) for over 20 years! Although I must say it has got a whole lot easier over the last few years with the many improvements in technology and the introduction of cloud solutions.

For me a CDE is a central database of documents* and email correspondence that is created as near ‘real time’ as possible. It can be provided to the business user when they need it to do their job, regardless of whether they are in sales, project management, customer service, finance, HR or any other operational business area. 

Of course there are many challenges in creating and maintaining a CDE. It’s imperative to get the technology architecture right and it’s key to elect the right system solutions. You need to ensure the documents and emails can be used by your operation systems ie Salesforce, SharePoint, Open Text, M-files, SAP, and your operational systems/customer support systems. At the same time, the central database of documents, emails and the loosely coupled integration needs to be maintained

Recently, one area I have been finding our customers having to deal with (more and more) is how to maintain a CDE while respecting data residency requirements, i.e. the need to create a hybrid CDE (partly on premise and partly in the cloud). Knowing where your data is, is important. This is particularly critical if the local data laws/data regulation say the data must be retained locally. Many of the large vendors are now making this increasingly more difficult because they want to move everything to cloud to improve the value/share price of their organisations.

At Knowledgemill we have been working with many organisations to create a CDE. If you would like support in creating your hybrid CDE click on the link www.knowledgemill.com to find out more.  I would be pleased to demonstrate/discuss how Knowledgemill can help your business, explain the system in more detail and show how Knowledgemill could help your organisation to create and maintain a CDE in combinations with your existing systems. 

Kevin been successfully delivering technology solutions to companies for over 30 years both on the buying and selling side of a number of blue chip organisations, e.g. with Deloitte or as a CIO/COO.

Working as I did for many years as a CIO, one area I always struggled to get budget support for was helping users and the business manage email correspondence. It’s just not a very sexy area. There are always higher priority areas for a business to spend money on and It is not easy for managers to see how it directly supports a business’s revenue generation, customer support and reduce risk – but of course it does!

Email is intended to streamline communication, but it can become a counter-productive tool when the inbox requires so much time and effort to manage and/or when you need to collaborate with other colleagues to support customers and sales activity. Email can be extremely unwieldy and detrimental to our productivity if we (or the company we are working for) let it. 

In general, there are two key areas to support email management for me as a user; personal email discipline and business email discipline required to support sales, customers and business operations.

Much is written about personal email discipline and how to become more productive. I always find setting aside specific times during the day to read and send emails is a big help to my productivity. However, not so much is written about a company’s email discipline, which is probably more important for your staff.

For me, I can stay calm when facing the daily deluge of emails, because of the central database of emails we maintain. The central database is up-to-date in real time and is organised by customer, supplier, project, etc. making it extremely quick and easy to file and find email information  – much of the filing is automatically done for me.

To create and maintain this central database of emails we use an email management tool called Knowledgemill, this can be plugged into my Outlook or available on a mobile device. It means I am copied in on less emails as they are always available centrally and I can find any information stored in an email very quickly and easily, regardless of the age of the email. 

For the business, it means all staff spend much less time searching and finding emails and find it easy to answer customer questions which is particularly useful when the conversation has been with another member of staff.

If you would like everything relating to your email to be calm and controlled click on the link www.knowledgemill.com to find out more.  I would be pleased to demonstrate/discuss how Knowledgemill can help your business, explain the system in more detail and show how Knowledgemill could help your organisation. 

Working as a CIO, one of the challenges I frequently experienced was implementing document management systems (ie Opentext, SharePoint, M-Files, etc.). While such systems are good at managing documents they are weak when it comes to email management. 

To support each area of a business, documents and email correspondence need to be stored in a central data area (or Common Data Environment). However, relying on business users to maintain good email filing discipline can be problematical.  A lack of user consistency when filing, can compromise project management; customer service, increase the risk of losing money during litigation or un-invoiced revenue, or simply just waste lots of valuable user time filing emails or searching for email content.   

What was needed to solve such challenges was to combine an intelligent email filing capability, with the existing document management system. I found this in Knowledgemill.  It has reinforced my view of the importance of having an automated/intelligent email management capability to support business. 

At Knowledgemill I have been working with many professional services companies from construction, legal and accounting to unlock the value of email and document content. Knowledgemill supports the business to bridge content silos and drive insights, efficiencies, automation and governance.

A good example of this is with a global accounting firm who are using Knowledgemill and their selected document management system to create a Common Data Area for emails and documents, kept up-to-date in real time. With seamless ‘out of the box’ integration, these documents and emails can be seen and used in their Sales system, their accounting system and their legal system to provide support for all their business processes.

I would be pleased to demonstrate/discuss how Knowledgemill can help your business, explain the system in more detail and show how Knowledgemill could help your organisation.  Click on the link www.knowledgemill.com for further details.