---

The Latest Morsels

Millennia at Realcomm

Millennia Group participated in Realcomm 2015, a tradeshow dedicated to the advancement of technology in the commercial real estate industry. This marks the 17th year in a row for our participation and we are grateful to Jim Young and the entire Realcomm team for creating such a great venue for collaboration and advancement. If your company is in the commercial real estate industry, you should check out Realcomm.com to find the next event where you can connect with peers on technology issues.

FileStar 4.5 Released

Several existing customers as well as some new customers are experiencing the great new features in the latest release of FileStar, our document imaging and workflow application. Version 4.5 of FileStar allows documents to be added via digital copier, scan to web, email in and drag and drop. This new version also rolls out our expanded and battle tested workflow module that can be customized to meet your specific process requirements.

New Hire

Millennia Group welcomes Elena LiCavoli to our programming and development team. Elena graduated from DeVry University with a degree in Computer Science with an emphasis on security and eDiscovery. We are excited to have Elena’s energetic personality and interest in data security on our team.

New Website

On our new website, we’ve streamlined access to information that we hope you can use like our blog posts (document management; checklists as a business tool) and case studies. We’ve also updated the content to match the growth of our capabilities over the past 19 years. If you find something that you would like to learn more about, this new site will allow you to quickly reach out to us. Thank you.

---

Disruptive Technology News

Millennia Group’s offices are located about 20 miles west of Chicago, a metropolitan area blessed with mass transit in the form of trains, buses, subways and of course highways. There are also two airports to help get people to other parts of the country and the world. All of these options are great, but on any given day, using any of these transportation methods can be a frustrating and time consuming adventure. So to help you get around Chicago or any major metropolitan area for that matter, here are some apps that can really help. You will need to spend a little time getting them set up, but the payoff can be huge in terms of time and in many cases, money.

Driving Direction Apps

Use any of these apps and others like them to show you the way around traffic jams or just to see the shortest route to get to your meetings on time: Google Maps, Apple Maps and Waze.

Parking Apps

Before you get in the car to drive to your meeting make sure you get a good and inexpensive parking spot. Try out these two: SpotHero and ParkWhiz. Not sure how long the discounts will last, but you can usually get a good deal on parking.

Train & Bus Apps

If you are taking the train, bus or subway, these apps will track your train to let you know if it is on time or when the next train or bus will come to your stop. Try out either of these or look up your local rail or bus system for other options: OnTime and GoPass.

Airline Apps

Travel by plane is probably the most complicated and at times unpredictable form of transportation. Any tool that is available to smooth out the bumps and eliminate some of the nightmares, is well worth getting and using. All airlines and most travel sites have their own app to help alert you to issues like a late or cancelled flight. Download the app, turn your notifications on and hope for the best.

Happy travels.

---

Enterprise-Wide or Best of Breed?

The concept of using a single, enterprise-wide application that is part accounting system, part production system, part customer relationship management, part document management and part reporting system is very enticing. This type of enterprise-wide application would seem to provide improved data visibility, tracking and planning. In addition, system upgrades would be streamlined and user training might be easier. There may be many benefits to such an approach. But there are some downsides too.

If the system goes down, will that bring all departments to a halt? Once your company is fully invested in the application, the vendor probably has a pretty good sense that migrating to a new application is out of the question – and hence customer negotiating power is limited. And of course there is the question of a one size fits all approach, it rarely provides the optimal result in all functional areas.

So how should a company decide which approach is the right one for it? According to Dan Feely, Founder and Managing Director of Transforming Solutions, Inc. (TSI), “The company needs to do a thorough evaluation of its needs and then look at alternative approaches including a variety of enterprise wide solutions as well as best of breed applications.” Many companies will use a consultant, such as TSI to perform this type of evaluation.

When looking at enterprise wide applications, it is very important to find applications that have been successfully implemented in a similar industry and across similar functional areas. In evaluating best of breed applications, the two most important criteria would be integration capabilities and specific expertise within the functional area. It is that expertise that needs to be weighed in comparing the two approaches because the added complexities of managing multiple applications needs to be out-weighed.

The general direction of most of our clients has been to use best of breed, but to minimize the number of separate applications in use.

Contact us to learn more about document scanning and workflow automation