History Written by Process. FileNet
Author: Krzysztof Rozwadowski
Not knowing a solution from Costa Mesa, California and dealing with business processes is like being interested in history and not knowing who Napoleon was. The first actually successful and disseminated workflow tool. The forefather of “paperless,” the messiah of the process world. The system-legend. FileNet…
Ted Smith’s American dream
Since I started delving into the world of processes, a dozen years ago, its name was spoken with great reverence, a whisper almost, although most of us had never seen it with our eyes… FileNet was not just an IT tool – it was a founding myth, a philosophy, a turning point. Until it came along, everything was grayish-brown, until FileNet came across the great water, and dreams of digitized document images circulating through organizations became a reality….
Here is the history of the tool that started the era of DMS and workflow systems…
When martial law was about to begin in Poland, a certain Ted Smith was fired from his position as CEO of Basic 4. He was not the first, nor the last, to say goodbye to the comfortable CEO chair due to a difference of opinion. As is often the case after a forced landing on the pavement, Ted gave himself some time to think, rejecting the job offers that came his way. With his twenty years of experience in IT, enriched by several years of work in the US Air Force, he probably didn’t despair too much. However, instead of taking the helm of one of the many organizations that tried to win his favor, he decided to build something himself. Something, as he put it years later in an interview for Forbes, that would reach far beyond the horizon of that time…
In the early 1980s, mass storage on computers was the undisputed kingdom for manufacturers of magnetic disks. Although several laboratories in the land of the rising sun and in the USA were testing the possibilities of optical disks, despite their ten times higher capacity, they had no chance of competing with magnets. This was for one simple reason – you could only write something with a laser once. Can you imagine a computer whose memory you couldn’t modify? Heh, exactly, I can’t imagine it either.
Per aspera…
As is often the case in the American dream, what was a disadvantage for many was an opportunity for very few. When in the early 1980s you worked in some American institution or organization producing a lot of paper, such as a bank or insurance company, you were lucky if the company could afford to archive documents using microfilm. Most couldn’t, so the papers flew and flew until they ended up in a box and could be archived. Of course, there was already scanning as such, but the document images were too large to be stored in computer memory. Thousands of archivists had work. And who cared? Smith, be damned…
You can probably guess what happens next… Exactly… Smith thought that combining something that can no longer be edited with the emerging technology of optical discs is as good as combining eggs and bacon, grilled sausage and mustard, and weddings and disco polo… All these signed agreements, bills of exchange, policies, etc., etc. can be scanned and laser-burned onto an optical disc, and if you add software to this, it will also be easy to search for and integrate them with other IT solutions in companies.
In 1982, Smith easily acquired two important links of each startup – a savvy technical geek from Xerox and a modest four million greenback from high-risk investors, i.e. those who could just as easily throw them into the oven or drink them away in Vegas. However, it took several years before the first victims of the digital revolution began to seek happiness outside organizations.
The next chapter can be skipped by those of you who think that a startup is all honey and raspberry, a pile of cash and work-life balance with an emphasis on life…
At first, nothing went right. Optical technology was in its infancy, the hardware had to be designed and manufactured, and the software had to be written. It took almost two years for FileNet to launch anything on the market. But it must be admitted that when they did enter, they did so with a bang. Improved technology, a scanner made to order in distant Japan, a “jukebox”, i.e. a robotic hand that could juggle 200 optical discs, and a Hitachi laser printer – that was already a mega starter pack.
… ad astra
And as it happens with startups – you have a good product (not an idea, just a product!), investors themselves will pour you some money… An additional thirty million and we have the first client for FileNet WorkFlo (yes, I didn’t eat the “w” at the end :))
The lucky buyer turned out to be Security Pacific Bank (1985). Back then, you bought IT solutions – not like today, software in some cloud!
Dear Sir, you could touch everything because the implementation of WorkFlo was a real bargain – from cabling, through scanners, printers, robotic hands (jukebox) to servers and software.
A year later, FileNet already earned the aforementioned 30 million, and by the end of 1987 it could boast 120 implementations, from banks to the US Air Force. Knowing the price range per implementation (from 500 thousand groszy to one and a half million), it is easy to calculate that there was no poverty.
The first WorkFlo only allowed for a simple search for digitized documents, but Smith and company did not stop there. The entire success of this organization was possible thanks to the constant search for what lurks beyond the horizon.
And just as Copernicus moved the Earth, so Smith moved the digital document. It did not take long before digitized images began to circulate in this form in organizations, beginning the era of workflow tools.
Epilogue
The company has changed many times to survive in the face of rapid technological changes. The further fate of FileNet is a gradual departure from hardware in favor of increasingly perfect software. But FileNet is not only a success story – it is also a story of declines, years ending in a loss, scandals and failed ideas. Today, having been in the IBM stable for years (2008), they are increasingly directing workflow systems towards intelligent process automation. Perhaps in a few years they will once again make some workflow revolution, and we will wonder how it was possible that we previously worked with documents in such an outdated way… It is surprising that there are still companies, even quite large ones, that have yet to implement workflow.
