SharePoint and ECM

Christine Herbert of the IT Knowledge Exchange has any interesting post on Bill Gates' keynote at last week's SharePoint conference that's worth reviewing.

She notes...

Most interesting to me personally was Gates’ discussion of the various levels of sophistication companies have when it comes to SharePoint deployment and usage. Ascending in complexity, they are:

Personal Sites (My Sites)
Collaboration Team Sites (unstructured content)
Departmental Solutions (structured and unstructured)
Enterprise Data Repositories (highly structured)
Web Portals (corporate intranets and websites)

Part of the reason that I find the post so interesting is that it dovetails with the results we found a few weeks ago during our "State of the ECM Industry" survey (free downloads available by going HERE).

Our survey says a couple of things that reinforce the themes in the keynote:

1. In a remarkably short time, SharePoint has established a very large footprint.  33% say they have current MOSS implementations and another 20% are on the way in the next 12-18 months.  For large organizations, the numbers are even higher.
2. As noted in the keynote, users are still looking at SharePoint in terms of personal sites, team sites, and intranets (see chart below).
3. At the same time, though, a strong 60% are looking to it for document management functionality.

A theme not touched upon in the keynote or the post is that many organizations are just winging it when it comes to SharePoint and ECM integration.  When asked whether there are specific plans for such integration, only 15% of those surveyed responded positively.  Almost 50% say they have no plan and  have no starting point for developing one.

Given the fact that the digital landfills that engulf most organizations were the result of deploying powerful content creation tools in the first place without thinking through the end destination, that's a scary thought.

AIIM will be focusing on this theme of content control vs. content access -- and more specifically "the SharePoint Effect" -- in our upcoming seminar series.  Click HERE for details.

April 2    Houston, TX (Renaissance Houston)
April 9    Denver, CO (Marriott Denver City Center)
April 16  Los Angeles, CA (Sheraton Anaheim)
April 23  San Francisco, CA (Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport)
April 30  Bellevue, WA (Meydenbauer Center)
May 7    Dallas, TX (InterContinental Dallas)

Comments

[vwiekenkamp]

The "Sharepoint Effect" is very interesting and challenging at the same time. Two weeks ago I attended the E2.0 Summit in Hannover and Jenny Ambrozek gave an inspiring presentation on “Structural Holes & the Space between the Tools”.

The title, in my opinion, says it all. Collaboration, E2.0 tools, and the underlying mechanisms could fill important “holes” between the current (ECM) tool(set). BUT, that doesn’t mean the current toolset doesn’t suffice anymore. On the contrary.

Organizations could be using SharePoint to facilitate the Unstructured Processes. Chances are, they forget to take the first hurdle: getting a solid digital working environment in the first place. By implementing SharePoint without addressing the current digital chaos, the disorder only gets bigger. Which holes are you going to fill if you don’t know where the structure lies? Only when a digital fundament is in place, can the E2.0 tools, and the collaborative aspects of SharePoint take to full effect, within well established boundaries.

Does this mean that you can’t use SharePoint without taking the first hurdle? Well you can, but you’re just addressing the Unstructured Processes, Not fixing you’re Information problem.

[Dark Blue Duck]

One of the major limitation of SharePoint is that it does not support paper. Many unstructured or loosely structured business processes are dominated by paper.

To address this issue our company developed the Scanning Enabler Add-in to SharePoint.

http://www.darkblueduck.com/Products/ScanningEnablerWSS.aspx

Now Legal professionals, health professionals, public servants and others are benefiting from the combination of Microsoft’s SharePoint products and Dark Blue Duck’s Scanning Enabler™.
Large organizations are using the Scanning Enabler™ with MOSS to extend their Enterprise Content Management and search capabilities.

Small companies are using the Scanning Enabler™ to address challenges they face when swamped by incoming paperwork (especially when the business is geographically distributed).

We would appreciate your feedback on our product. How could we make it better?

Kind regards

Dark Blue Duck