Circumnavigating the Circumlocution Office | OpenText Fax ...

In Charles Dickens?s?Little Dorrit, Arthur Clennam is inquiring about the debt of William Dorrit, who has been in debtor?s prison for so long that his three children have grown up there to adulthood.? To investigate Dorrit?s creditors, with the end of having him released from prison, Clennam must visit the Circumlocution Office, which Dickens describes facetiously as ?the most important Department under Government,? and so bound up in bureaucracy that it saw its chief purpose as promoting the ?not doing? of things.

To get the information he wants?specifically, what contract Dorrit defaulted on? Clennam must engage in what business people call a ?workflow.?? The bureaucrat in the Circumlocution Office, Mr. Barnacle, explains that Clennam must find out what Department the contract was in, and then he should ask about the matter ?till they tell you.? Then you?ll memorialise that Department (according to regular forms which you?ll find out) for leave to memorialise this Department. If you get it (which you may after a time), that memorial must be entered in that Department, sent to be registered in this Department, sent back to be signed by that Department, sent back to be countersigned by this Department, and then it will begin to be regularly before that Department. You?ll find out when the business passes through each of these stages by asking at both Departments till they tell you.?

This is a clear?if mind-torturing?example of the second ?use case? for sharing information: moving along a workflow.? In the post last week, I mentioned that the first use for sharing information is a simple one: not necessarily toward any end other than to share life electronically: a photo, a link, a song, an article? anything that can be captured or created by one person and then transmitted to another.

The second use case for information exchange is the workflow: I or my organization needs something, a result, and so I transmit information to you or your organization to execute the next step in the process of obtaining that result.? A workflow can be applying for a loan, purchasing a plane trip, referring a patient to another physician, anything that involves steps that follow one another toward an end.? Almost always, these steps involve the exchange of information, an exchange for which Dickens uses the word ?memorialise.?? Fortunately, workflows typically move much more smoothly than those of the Circumlocution Office.

The result or goal for OpenText?s information exchange solutions is essentially to circumnavigate today?s ?offices of circumlocution? to facilitate simple, secure, direct communication between peers and partners in the marketplace.

It may be love that makes the world go round, but it?s workflow that allows the world to labor, sell, purchase, serve and, in short, how to do things and get things done.

To learn how OpenText information exchange solutions can help you streamline workflow and maximize the value of your business-critical communications, visit us at?http://faxsolutions.opentext.com/.

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5. Press Release: OpenText RightFax 10.5 Helps Businesses Boost Productivity, Performance and Profitability

Source: http://faxsolutionsblog.opentext.com/2012/08/08/circumnavigating-the-circumlocution-office/

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