New technologies mean that business never stands still. With a sweep of the old, new technologies often mean that business can get done faster, leaner and more economically than in the past. No industry is immune to this change. As the year draws to a close, Corporate Report Wisconsin spotlights three technologies and their impact on 21st century business.

CLOUD COMPUTING

Cloud computing is a way to increase IT capacity without investing in new infrastructure, training new personnel, or licensing new software.

It encompasses any subscription-based or pay-per-use service that, in real time over the Internet, extends an IT department’s current capabilities, says Chris Ivens, a solutions and alliances manager at Tushaus Computer in Milwaukee.

Cloud computing is a blanket term for delivering software and computing services including software as a service (SaaS), utility computing, Web-based services, platform as a service, managed services, and Internet integration.

With Microsoft and Amazon and other large-scale providers building massive data centers, it allows your business to rent processing power on an as-needed basis.

Researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) have developed a cloud computing model that makes the expensive process of protein research more affordable to fellow scientists around the world.

One of the major challenges in running a proteomics research program has been setting up the computing infrastructure required for the vast amount of data generated by mass spectrometry.

Researchers can build an image of one of these computers and the data that is on its hard drive, and Amazon stores the information on the cloud. When researchers want to use one, they can sign up for an Amazon account with a credit card and make it exist and run their analysis. The costs are relatively small in that each one of these computer nodes costs about 20 cents an hour per node to run, and researchers can have as many nodes as they want.

“The nice thing about a cloud is, if you are going with a reputable provider, they have more redundancies,” Ivens says. “You can go from your backup software straight up to a cloud in multiple data centers, and you couldn’t afford that as a small business. You get the benefit of scale that you really couldn’t afford, otherwise.”

Tushaus has a number of clients that are doing cloud-based backups, so that they have their critical data stored in another data center offsite on the cloud. This is an affordable way to keep their business safe, Ivens adds.

“It’s somebody else’s problem – that’s the nice thing about the cloud,” Ivens says. “If you move it onto the cloud, all of the patches upgrades are done by whoever is hosting. They are doing the care and the feedings and the upgrades, and you as a business owner don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

Ivens says that interest in SaaS has increased during the past three to four years. “If you can offload a task like maintaining your e-mail onto the experts, that is the way to go,” he says. “The cloud is about letting your company do what you do best, and letting someone else do what they do best. What you get is up time —you don’t go down.”

DATA MANAGEMENT & RETRIEVAL

While the practice of keeping paper records will never go away completely, imaging and scanning the records for faster and cheaper storage and retrieval has grown over the last decade. The cost of storage capability and computer servers has come down, and has made it less expensive to store hard copies to digital format, says Eric Haas, president and CEO of Automated Records Management Systems in De Pere.

On the front end, while it costs more to image the paper documents, it can cost you more on the back end if you don’t, Haas says. The bottom line is that a business may be able to reduce the number of people required to maintain the records, which results in greater efficiencies and cost savings.

“Business owners need to ask themselves, ‘How much space am I taking up that I can utilize that gives me a better return?’” Haas says. “Most companies are not as close to as efficient as we are. For lawyers, what is their cost basis compared to an outsourced solution?”

Paper documentation and outsourcing can solve a lot of businesses problems. If you are in an office in downtown Milwaukee, you might go downstairs and find a lot of records that aren’t being managed and you can’t find them.

“They may be spending a lot of time and labor looking for documents that they can’t find,” Haas says. “They may be keeping stuff too long. Let’s say you haven’t managed your records, and you have financial records in your basement that you haven’t managed. If you get audited, you are liable for 18 years, even though the law says you only have to keep them for seven years. Companies don’t want to keep records for longer than their record policy mandates.”

For a business that wants to image everything, Haas’ company can sell them the software, hardware and all the licenses and the business can start imaging its own documents. Or, a records management company can offer a hybrid solution by taking paper records when they need to be pulled, imaging them, and then sending them back, digitally, to the company.

“Maybe they have done a poor job of managing them, so we help them with that,” Haas says. “I can set up a server in-house, or do I utilize someone else’s repository, digital FTP sites on a cloud? It may be cheaper for them to pay a monthly fee. It really depends on the business and what their specific needs are.”

Bar coding technology streamlines storage and retrieval by allowing a business to maintain a long-term database of stored hard copy files via a software package. They can go to a records storage facility to see their inventory and okay destruction schedules. In a secure commercial records storage setting, boxes are marked with individualized bar codes. The bar code system scans the box, scans the racking and updates the software system indicating where this box is, and the customer has a tracking trail of where the document is. For businesses that have some type of audit trail to live up to, bar coding boxes provides the ability to see who checked it out and back in, what the destruction dates are.

BUILDING INFORMATION MODELING

Building Information Modeling (BIM) — a process that uses three-dimensional, real-time, dynamic building modeling software to increase productivity in building design and construction — is playing an increasingly vital role in the way buildings are constructed and managed during their life cycle.

Appleton-based Boldt Construction has realized some significant advantages from applying BIM – from building design to the quality of architectural drawings used in construction, says Juanita Frankfurth, manager of continuous improvement for Boldt.

“From a construction standpoint, we have seen costs avoidances on projects and scheduling impacts,”

Frankfurth says. “We have seen production and quality at the source of protection improve. From an operations standpoint, building owners have been leveraging this information to manage the life cycle of that facility.”

At EnCircle Health in Appleton, a ThedaCare medical facility that Boldt recently finished, the project was completed with a cost savings that was provided back to the customer, as well as completing the project ahead of schedule. Both of those outcomes were the result of using BIM, Frankfurth says.

“It was leveraged early on during the design process, and how it would be utilized throughout construction process,” she says.

“We used it to resolve mechanical, electrical, fire protection and plumbing systems. This conflict resolution was used through BIM, and was used much earlier than it would have been in the traditional process. It was also used for planning site logistics around the job site for production planning.”

Facility owners can apply the information that exists in BIM to better manage and enhance the life cycle of the facility, Frankfurth says. Building owners and managers can query the BIM model as they are doing routine facility maintenance, reallocating space, as well as maintenance of plumbing and electrical systems.

“We have found it to be useful in logistical planning, building coordination and layout, and for more traditional applications such as recording different building systems and applying it for its modeling capabilities, says John Hunzinger, president of Hunzinger Construction in Brookfield.

“It is a real effective communication tool,” adds Hunzinger, whose firm has been using BIM for the last four years. “I think it has become a very important tool with the economy and the recession and less available opportunities. We’re seeing application of it more and more. It still has a lot of potential in our industry.”

BIM goes beyond building modeling and information that is exchanged about CAD drawings and estimates, Frankfurth says.

“The tools and the technology is not enough — it’s how people coordinate and collaborate with one another,” Frankfurth says.

“It’s about the people, the process and the technology all working together in a collaborative environment. It’s not enough to say that it’s just technology.”

Frankfurth predicts BIM will have a great impact on ths industry for years to come. “I believe that BIM lends itself to a whole world of possibilities that we, as an industry, haven’t explored yet,” she says.

By John Rondy

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