One of the biggest sources of frustration for lawyers today is finding the information they need. Whether it is the time required to locate it, the inability to find it, or having to comb through tedious folder structures, getting at the right information in short order is a challenge.

The right IT strategy has a significant bearing on the productivity of a law firm so it’s no surprise that firms are now focusing on making their existing systems work more effectively together to ensure that they can deliver maximum business value to the practice. Regardless of repository, content needs to be managed in a consistent way across the firm.

As law firms continue to take advantage of the tangible benefits generated by Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 — and attorneys and legal staff increase its use for collaborative, content-related activities — the demand for tighter coupling of those powerful capabilities with those of tailored Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions, such as Legal Information Management by Open Text, has increased.

In August, Open Text and Microsoft announced plans to deliver solutions to law firms, combining Office SharePoint Server 2007 with Open Text’s specialized legal industry solutions. Read the press release.

In a podcast I recorded with Andy Jurczyk, CIO of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, Andy discussed how he has been able to extend his investment in SharePoint and Open Text legal solutions to offer strategic access to information that the firm has never before been able to aggregate and make available for their lawyers.

Jurczyk notes: “…we’re at the point now where we can actually provide the information and content rapidly for our lawyers. I think it’s that Holy Grail that we’ve been searching for, for years.”

You can find out more about the collaborative relationship with Microsoft and Open Text from a joint white paper that the companies just released titled: The Next Generation in Legal Matter Centricity which discusses ECM issues for law firms. The white paper is available here: http://www.opentext.com/2/sol-industry/sol-ind-legal.htm.

For more information about Open Text Legal Solutions, visit: http://www.opentext.com/2/sol-industry/sol-ind-legal.htm

One of the most daunting challenges of the information age – one that just won’t seem to go away – is the need to integrate those pervasive silos of information. Ever since companies have gone beyond one guy doing everything – hey I just put shoes on your horse, now pay up – there have been islands of information.

Even in a small company, say just two partners, information about a customer collected by one partner is not necessarily in the other partner’s domain. Maybe they talk, maybe they don’t. Now magnify the same phenomenon across hundreds or even thousands of employees and many databases and files.

Fact is there will always be islands of information starting from a single individual to workgroups to departments to divisions. Employees have important emails in personal storages – on their BlackBerrys. Workgroups have shared files and SharePoint portals. Departments have SAP, Oracle or legacy applications to deal with. Despite all the talk about integration of information, the amount of content in silos or more importantly the number of silos isn’t decreasing – it’s increasing with the steady advance of technology.

In this milieu, the challenge for IT isn’t eliminating or reducing the number of islands – an impossible task – it’s building flexible bridges. That’s why we continue to make a major investment in Genio -- our content and data integration product. We’ll be introducing a new version next month, and Genio will also figure prominently into our plans to strengthen content and data integration technologies in our broader ECM offering.

In a recent post about Genio’s expanded role, Barb Mosher over at CMS Wire put it well:

“Information Management is about what? Well, information, obviously. Information stored not only in content management systems but also in a wide range of corporate applications and decision support systems.

It’s the ability to integrate all this content and data that is necessary for a company to fully realize the ability to improve business processes and make good decisions.”

So what’s in the new version of Genio? Details will be forthcoming, but suffice it say that we’re staying true to our key principles of openness, flexibility, ease of use, and reusability. More than ever companies need pontoon bridges – and we’re here to help.

The next DLM-Forum Members Meeting is taking place this week in Lisbon, Portugal, on the 22nd and 23rd of November. Initiated by The European Commission, the DLM-Forum was established to encourage wider cooperation in the field of electronic archives both between the Member States and at the EU level. One of the main findings that came out of the first DLM-Forum held in 1996 was the call to establish functional requirements for electronic documents and records management in public administration and the private sector. This led to one of the major accomplishments of the DLM-Forum – the development of the model requirements for the management of electronic records, also known as MoReq.

Since its introduction in 2000, the MoReq has proven to be a highly regarded model specification for the management of electronic records for European organizations in both the public and private sector. It has gained widespread international recognition as the de facto standard for electronic records management systems (ERMS). The specification describes model requirements with a primary focus on the functional requirements for the management of electronic records by an ERMS. ERMS users can use it as a basis for preparing an invitation to tender or as a basis for auditing or checking an existing ERMS. In addition, academic institutions can use it as a teaching resource.

However, due to the continuous development and evolution of information technology and the increasing sophistication of electronic records, MoReq needed to be revised and updated if it was to maintain its standing as a highly valued European reference model. As a result, a MoReq Working Group was established by the executive committee of the DLM-Forum to consider revisions for MoReq. Plans for MoReq2 were presented at the DLM-Forum in 2005 and the European Commission agreed at that time to begin discussions for the future development of MoReq and to publish a definitive update of MoReq in 2007.

Draft versions of MoReq2 are available for review by several "panels" of reviewers from many European countries. Panels include software companies with an interest in electronic records management; professional and industry organizations; users and potential users of ERM software from a wide variety of organizations in many countries; and National Archives. The drafts are also reviewed on behalf of the European Commission by a group brought together by the DLM-Forum.

At this week’s DLM-Forum, Open Text will be participating on the MoReq2 Panel Debate that promises to cover pivotal issues in the road to developing updated standards. Panelists will debate the best ways of implementing MoReq2 and possible testing regime including translation, localization and adding local requirements in Chapter 0. The panel will also address lessons learned when translating and localizing MoReq. Vendors can begin testing and certification for MoReq2 in June of 2008.

Open Text is a leader in RM and committed to the adoption of international RM/compliance standards around the world. Open Text’s records management solutions are certified as compliant with the U.S. Department of Defense 5015.2-STD, a key standard for records management software used in corporations and governments. Open Text’s solutions are also certified under the United Kingdom’s TNA regulations and Australia’s VERS regulations.

Stayed tuned. In the weeks ahead, we will provide further updates on this developing standard, and our commentary on this important issue.

Just when you think you have all the rules and regulations for your industry under control, another one pops up – and along with it – a looming deadline. Such is the case right now for the Life Sciences industry.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), companies filing electronic submissions must use the new electronic common technical document (eCTD) format as of Jan. 1, 2008. The eCTD message specification was developed by the M2 Expert Working Group of the International Conference on Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Registration of Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH) to be a common format for company-to-regulatory agency transfer of information prepared in accordance with the ICH CTD standard. The objective of eCTD is to harmonize both the content and the way it is delivered for the new drug approval process.

eCTD promises to help companies improve the submissions process, shorten time-to-market and minimize costs. In the past, companies would take their submission documents, print several copies, bind them and ship them to regulatory agencies such as the FDA. With the eCTD format, they’ll only need to submit the piece that has changed from the previous application to the revised application. This saves regulators time since they’ll only need to review the piece that has changed; and saves the company time and money, while potentially shortening the time for approval.

Unfortunately, as noted in a press release issued today by Open Text, many life sciences companies aren’t prepared for the FDA deadline. In order to comply with the eCTD submission requirements, pharmaceutical and life sciences organizations will need to find the necessary software support tools to be able to support the lifecycle of every submission component to help them manage the complex process of assembling, approving, releasing and archiving new drug and medical device applications.

To learn more about how companies can get ready for the eCTD, you can listen to a podcast I recorded with Harv Martens who has served for over 12 years on the ICH M2 Expert Working Group. In the podcast, we discuss the eCTD format, its impact on the life sciences industry, and what companies can do to comply with the FDA’s requirements. You can also tune into a Webinar recorded recently by Steven Pogrebivsky, president of Vital Path, an Open Text strategic partner in Life Sciences. Steven discusses the technology and regulatory challenges for electronic submissions, the benefits of the eCTD standard, and the product history of the Livelink ECM – Collaborative Submissions offering. Steve also presents a brief case study about Jazz Pharmaceuticals, who has successfully completed its pilot submission to the FDA using Open Text’s Collaborative Submissions module.