AIIM, the global community of information professionals, announced the winners of the 2012 Carl E. Nelson Best Practices Awards last night in a gala celebration coinciding with the AIIM Conference 2012 taking place at the Grand Hyatt San Francisco.

The Carl E. Nelson Best Practices Award was established to recognize excellence in the area of information management. "Best practice" denotes a standard of excellence that has been achieved with an organization and refers to a process that can be quantified, adapted and repeated.

This year's Carl E. Nelson Best Practice Award winners by category are:

Small Company Category (1 – 100 employees)
End user: San Joaquin County California, Information Systems Division
Vendor: Oracle Corp.
Like many counties, San Joaquin County, California, was faced with huge challenges due to decreasing funds and staff, including decreased cost of building capability. It needed to streamline processes, cut costs per activity, modernize and strengthen the infrastructure, and adopt new technology and standards such as the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM). The Integrated Justice Information System (IJIS) provides a Web-based system to link more than 650,000 residents, 18 agencies countywide and other law enforcement systems nationwide. The county’s modernization initiative focused on replacing its outdated warrant system, implementing service-oriented architecture (SOA) to simplify integration between county law and justice systems, deploying Business Process Management (BPM), Case Management with content management, and Web technologies from Oracle. A critical part of their success has been the proper alignment of our Strategic Vision to the way the organization was enabled to plan and execute (and continues to execute) their modernization project.

Medium Company Category (101 – 1,000 employees)
End user: The Johnson Smith Co.
Vendor: AnyDoc Software
The Johnson Smith Co., one of the nation’s oldest mail-order catalog businesses operating since 1914, needed to streamline processing for 180,000 incoming paper order forms and accompanying payment checks each year. It wanted to eliminate or reduce the physical paper touch points for each form, which contributed to delayed or backlogged orders, high labor costs (especially during seasonal months to handle increased volume), the need to hire and train seasonal employees, slow deposits, backordered items, order returns due to errors, and split shipments due to out of stock items. While many retailers are moving toward a Web-based business model, Johnson Smith is indicative of companies whose customers are not comfortable with transmitting their financial data or credit card information online.

Johnson Smith had very specific requirements for handling the more than 40 percent of its catalog business it receives through paper mail orders. The company contracted with integration specialist CPT Intelligent Technologies, Inc. which implemented a capture solution that included an OPEX AS7200i scanner to open incoming envelopes, extract the contents, scan catalog order forms and checks, and import the images into OCR for AnyDoc®. Using OCR for AnyDoc’s Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) capability, the software recognizes the handwritten characters from up to 50 fields on the form. The accompanying checks are processed and verified by a payment service and, once verified, the customer's order is shipped.

Large Company Category (1001 + employees)
End user: Loyola University Chicago
Vendor: Optical Image Technology (DocFinity)
To address challenges of inefficiency and poor paper management that the provost and CIO recognized as costly and unsustainable, Loyola University of Chicago conducted a needs analysis that led to multiple innovations geared toward significant improvement. The enterprise solution included multiple related initiatives with goals to replace equipment, unify information access by consolidating imaging systems and deploying ECM software, simplifying system support and maintenance, enabling cross functional collaboration, and integrating existing information systems and line-of-business applications.

They deployed Optical Image Technology's DocFinity ECM software as an enterprise solution to replace diverse and siloed imaging systems then in use. Loyola also upgraded and standardized equipment by trading in old scanners and deploying modern units from Fujitsu, which were faster and more efficient and automated document indexing via direct integration with source of truth systems. Standardizing and automating the indexing process reduced errors and enabled Loyola to deliver improved service to students. Taking full advantage of process optimization at the time of implementation trimmed several days from multiple processes to offer better, faster service to students with fewer errors. Loyola created single-click access to student-related information within PeopleSoft so pertinent documents can be viewed instantly and securely.

AIIM's Carl E. Nelson Best Practice Award is presented on an annual basis. The 2013 Carl E. Nelson Best Practice Award nomination criteria will be announced in late 2012.

About AIIM
AIIM (www.aiim.org ) has been an advocate and supporter of information professionals for nearly 70 years. The association's mission is to ensure that information professionals understand the current and future challenges of managing information assets in an era of social, mobile, cloud and big data. Founded in1943, AIIM builds on a strong heritage of research and member service. Today, AIIM is a global, non-profit organization that provides independent research, education and certification programs to information professionals. AIIM represents the entire information management community, with programs and content for practitioners, technology suppliers, integrators and consultants.

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Contact:
Laurinda Hoffman
McKenzie Worldwide
laurindah@mckenzieworldwide.com
(503) 475-8815