I was recently a participant at Tower Software 's TRIM User forum (www.towersoft.com) held in Mesa, Arizona where I found an extremely high level of commitment and partnership between consumer and supplier. My level of participation was one of delivering an AIIM Practitioner class to a mix of Tower Software customers and staff. When finished, I had the opportunity to talk with Krista Curtiss. Here is an excerpt of our conversation.
Question: Krista, I want to thank you for allowing me to interview you and for the record, can you provide me with a description of your role at Tower Software.
Krista: I’m the Marketing Director for TOWER Software. My role is to spread the word about our successful customers into the market and provide tools for our customers to stay current with their TRIM Context implementation and the changes in our industry. We keep our customer informed through our customer Extranet, our online User Forum, SDK wiki, the TOWER Software blog and our annual TRIM User Forum (TUF).
Question: The whole concept of providing training of this type as part of an annual User Forum is looked at by some as being on the leading edge. When did you get the idea to make this part of your event and what were the drivers for the decision?
Krista: Many of our long time customers originally purchased their TRIM solution for a physical records management system over a decade ago. Our product has grown from a robust records management system to a full Enterprise Content Management solution. The first AIIM class was offered to help our customers who wanted to start the ECM journey to learn the vocabulary and some structure to the process. We have about a 60/40 split of customers to staff in the classes. We think it is important for our expert services team members to have the AIIM certifications and the industry vocabulary instead of just our own internal terminology. The ECM session was so well received the first year that we decided to do the ERM version this year.
The eMail Management course looks like strong contender for next year but we’ll survey the customers and see what their driving need is before we decide.
Question: As part of the class, I ask the attendees what they expect to gain from attending and the response is often varied with some common themes like better insight and understanding of industry trends and best practices related to the ERM environment. What do you see as a benefit for the attendees and Tower Software?
Client Mike – “The AIIM training is a great idea, as it will help me advance in both the industry and my job.”
Client Emilie – “This course solidified what I already knew. It was easy to connect the dots because we use TRIM and it fits AIIM’s model”.
Staff Brenda - “It provides a good introduction to the main pressure points surrounding ERM. A great way for the new IM professional to get a handle on what could be facing them in their foray into ERM products and how to organize themselves in order to be properly prepared to automate. It is particularly solid in presenting the latest standards in the field of RIM.”
Staff Peter - “There are many benefits to come from my attendance at the course, and they are from differing perspectives. Firstly, as a consultant that believes in delivering the best solution to his customers, it avails me with information from the industry on “best practices” around the subject matter, in this case, Electronic Records Management (ERM).
From a personal perspective, it helps solidify, or in some cases, highlight inadequacies in the approach that I take when developing and delivering a solution. The most valuable outcome for me though is the ability to sit in an open learning environment with our customer base, who in a lot of cases have never worked with me, or even with TOWER for deployment and configuration tasks, and learn what their understanding is of the subject matter, what issues they are facing, and what avenues they intend to undertake to address those issues.
In some cases, it involves TOWER getting involved, but to a large degree, the opportunity for them to discuss the situation and gain input from our staff as course attendees rather than paid consultants is all that is required, and I believe, highly valuable. This is the second such course I have attended as part of our TUF program, and I look forward to attending again in the future.”
Staff James – “From my view it was great to get a complete understanding of ECM on the whole as a sales person it really helps me understand what my clients business is about and the challenges they face.”
Question: For the future, how do you see the role of education evolving in relation to Tower Software?
Krista: TOWER Software has always supported using best practices in our industry. Why struggle and try to reinvent the wheel? When best practices align as well as TOWER Software’s do with AIIM’s we all benefit from leveraging these classes. It provides a third party validation that we have a process that works. When a AIIM students hear about the TOWER approach they recognize it is based on the same principles.
An AIIM educated prospect makes the sales process move along a lot easier.
Thank you Krista.
Bob Larrivee - AIIM
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