Blogs

Craig Shogren is a 2011 recipient of AIIM's DSA.

AIIM:  While I’m sure the psychology minor has come in handy on your projects; how did you get started with your first ECM system, which was focused on imaging/capture? What got you interested?

CS: As far as what got me interested, it goes way back. I’ve been interested in process and quality improvement literally my whole life. My dad was a machinist and I’d visit his work fascinated in how the processes had gotten better year after year. So, even at an early age, I was really interested in process improvement and became extremely interested in what the Japanese were doing with kaizen and lean manufacturing in my teens. I was so interested that I studied Japanese formally through high school and tutored through college, with the hopes of the culture rubbing off on me. I started my first factory job right after high school and was lucky to become a manager at a time when they were implementing a lot of these things. What I quickly found out was that factory work was hot, dirty and dangerous. Factories were quickly becoming well versed in lean manufacturing as well, so there wasn’t much trailblazing lure anymore (I missed my boat). About the time I graduated college, these principals just started moving into the office arena, so I started looking there.

After a quick stint with the U.S. Census before graduating (a forms processing beast to say the least), I landed what I consider my first job in my ECM career at the Iowa Department of Transportation. There, I worked with modernizing the storage of road plans, digitizing the bridge inspection processes and things of that sort. If I ever doubted the worth of my studies in psychology, it proved to pay off as I tried to deal with ripping the paper out of the hands of old-school engineers and construction folk. As far as my continued interest, my team leader at the time, Sara Flanagan, was really to blame for getting me excited with ECM and is still a close mentor and friend to this day.

AIIM:  You’ve just completed a 2-year ECM migration project; what do you wish you knew now that you didn’t know when you started?

CS: I had always thought of consultants and contractors as the do-no-wrong, always spot-on technical superstars of our industry. Turns out they are very human.

AIIM:  Biggest lesson learned?

CS: On a project this large, people skills go as far, if not further, than technical skills any day. I have always considered my users as customers, and my peers and managers as teammates and have valued them as such, but this project more than others cemented those values. In a tie with that, good project managers are worth their weight in gold. I definitely have a different impression of that profession than before this project.

AIIM:  You’ve got an extensive background in imaging projects. We keep talking about the paperless office, is that possible and what’s going to get us there?

CS: There are a lot of forces driving ECM initiatives; green movements, improvements in efficiency, disaster recovery, compliance and reducing storage and creation costs to name a few. Paper obviously has very little room in those efforts, so it is absolutely inevitable to remove paper from the picture for a company to survive long-term. For most verticals though, we still have a ways to go from bridging the gap from high-dollar corporate technology and culture to that found in the household. Time will eventually narrow that gap and bring this into reality. There’s no way my daughters are going to put up with filling out 100-page paper forms to buy a product or service when there’s an electronic option that they’ve grown up integrated with. In the mean time, paperless incentives and baby steps will help get us there with those that grew up analog and work faster that way. Sticky notes and print outs will probably live for generations, but that’s not what I think about when I talk paperless.

AIIM:  What technology challenge is next on your plate?

CS: We’ve migrated from a file-cabinet replacement system built solely to efficiently store and retrieve documents to something that can start to solve real business productivity problems. It’s time to start doing what I grew up wanting to do and it’s going to be a blast.

AIIM:  Why be involved in chapters? And AIIM in general?

CS: AIIM is the oil that keeps the gears going in the industry. The more involvement I have with AIIM, the more oil I have on my gears, and I’ve been lucky to work with organizations that recognize that, in fact I learned about my last two jobs through contacts at AIIM chapter meetings. I strongly believe that companies and individuals that are involved with AIIM have a competitive leg up on those that don’t. It’s the ultimate ECM career cheat and it’s extremely cheap to be involved. If you can do this by yourself without organizations like AIIM, you are kidding yourself or being selfish with all that knowledge; if that’s the case call me because we have a place for you on the AIIM Midwest Chapter board.

AIIM: Favorite part of being involved in the ECM industry?

CS: By far, the people. ECM has been around for decades in the form of a dozen dead acronyms, so there is a diverse mix of people that are passionate about the same things I am and many a friendship has grown from that. Things are starting to become a commodity product-wise, but the spirit of innovation and trailblazing are still very much alive in this industry, and there is a lot of character surrounding that.

Just for fun:

AIIM:  What are your three favorite websites?

CS: I’m a Google news junkie so it’s definitely my most frequently visited site. I have a strong curiosity on how stuff works so I like to poke around the appropriately named howstuffworks.com from time to time.  Although technically a service and not a website, I am crippled without Evernote. It’s my personal ECM system, if you will, and allows me to be productive doing real work while offloading my brain cycles that I previously used towards remembering little details.

Pretty much anything I used to do on websites for fun have been replaced to apps on my phone and tablet, but that’s a whole other interview question.

AIIM:  What are the three greatest books ever written—and what’s on your  nightstand today?

CS: I have a 3, 5 and 7 year old so my reading has been ranging from “Everyone Poops” to “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” for the greater part of the last decade. I am obsessive with reading in a bad way, I just can’t put a book down once I start. As far as industry stuff, Randy Kahn has some great thrillers, they scare me at least.

AIIM:  What are the three greatest movies of all time—and what’s the last one you’ve seen?

CS: Again because of the kids, I haven’t watched a non-animated movie to speak of in a long time. When I do watch movies, I use them to escape thinking since I feel like my brain is always “on”. I’m more prone to watch intellectual classics like Office Space, Super Troopers and Dumb and Dumber.

AIIM:  What was your first concert—and what are the three greatest songs on your iPod?

CS: I never got into concerts, I probably owe that to an overprotective mother when I was young, college frugality, and I’ll blame the kids on my adulthood, although my wife has managed to get me to a few country concerts. As far as my iPod, I think I went a whole year without having one song on my iPhone. I’m more of a fan of variety and I switch between a couple channels on Pandora, Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers and something along the lines of Metallica when I work out. I’ve recently became a new fan of the Beatles thanks to Cirque du Soleil’s Love show I saw with my wife on our ten year anniversary, and finally appreciate what generations have been talking about. That soundtrack has dominated my playlist since I bought it.