I've been
both reading and listening (I know, very nerdy) to Tom Peters' new Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence.
Lots of thought-provoking ideas, and the audio is a hoot because a) Tom does it
himself; and b) a book with lots and lots of repetition and big giant letters comes
across interesting as an audio book, particularly when one is running around and around and around a 1/16 mile track.
One of the
items I especially like is his discussion of "Guru Focus" vs.
"Real World." I touched on this in My Commencement Speech post from last week,
but the more I thought about it the world relevant it seems to the world of
content and information management.
His point is
that there is a difference between what goes on in thetheoretical world of gurus and pundits and analysts and what
goes on in the real world
of actually trying to get things done.
Guru Focus
tends to be on Fortune 100 companies in cool businesses with presences around
the world. Real World tends to be the land of small and mid-sized
organizations, in not terribly sexy businesses, doing what it takes to get
things done.
Two of his
examples serve to illustrate some of the challenges that we have in our
industry.
Guru Focus: An encompassing IS-IT strategy,
with everything wired to everything else.
Real World: While integrating IS is
very important, most of us muddle through, trying to ensure that the IT-enhanced bits (the front line
subsytems) are marvels of simplicity that deliver the goods for those front
line folks and their internal-external customers.
Guru Focus: Imposing word-phrases like "business models,"
"scalable," "strategic talent management," "customer
retention management," and "knowledge management paradigm."
Real World: Most of use try to use everyday language such as "the way
we make a buck" (instead of "business models"), "let's grow
this sucker" (not, is it "scalable?"), "hire good people
and treat 'em well and give them a chance to shine and thank 'em for the
stuff they do" ( rather than "strategic talent management"),
"bust our asses to keep our customers happy and keep em coming back"
(instead of customer retention management) and "share the stuff you learn
with everybody ASAP, don't hoard it" (rather than "executing a
knowlege management paradigm").
With these
observations in mind, I took a look at the top results that come back when you
Google "define Enterprise Content Management."
- Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the strategies,
methods and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver
content and documents related to organizational processes (OK, I'll own
that one.)
- Enterprise content management (ECM) is a set of tools and
methods that allows a corporation, agency or organization to obtain,
organize, store and deliver information crucial to its operation.
- Abbreviated as ECM, Enterprise Content Management is the
document management term which describes the technologies used by
organizations to capture, manage, store, and control enterprise-wide
content, including documents, images, e-mail messages, instant messages,
video, and more. ECM software is used to assist in content control
associated with business process, and can be used to assure compliance
(Sarbanes-Oxley , HIPPA, [sic] etc.).
- Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is an “umbrella term”
and represents a vision and framework for integrating a broad range of
content management technologies and content formats.
- Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is strategies and
technologies employed to manage documents and content across the
enterprise.
I also took a look
at some definitions on some leading vendor web sites...
- Enterprise Content Management helps companies make better
decisions faster by managing content, optimizing processes, and enabling
compliance through agile ECM solutions and advanced case management.
- A content management system is designed to fill in gaps
between your related processes, applications and departments. If you are
losing critical documents, have little to no visibility into your everyday
business processes or can’t easily find information when you need it, a
content management solution can help.
- Enterprise content management enables organizations to
leverage enterprise knowledge assets for competitive advantage.
- Content Management reduces costs by delivering these
benefits: 1) Streamlined processes—Improve paper-based processes
while reducing document storage and shipping costs; 2) Increased
productivity—Increase productivity across users and throughout workgroups;
3) Unified infrastructure—Unify content creation points of documents,
files, web content and digital assets.
Well...
Thinking about Peters' comments
(and a warning -- I am making a commitment to write in his style for most of
the rest of this post) two things strike me: 1) we are way too guru focused; and 2) we need
more passion.
...it all sounds a
bit boring, frankly. And I acknowledge we are all culpable.
YAWN!
I raise this
because what organizations are doing with content management is ANYTHING BUT
BORING.
When I talk to users -- and this isn't just at big Fortune 500 customers, in fact, even more so at mid-sized organizations, I usually don't hear boredom, I hear excitement.
Lots and lots and lots and lots of excitement.
So I decided to
test this a bit for a recent keynote I did. Prior to the keynote, I did a
survey of the users of the vendor. Here are some of the results. I am convinced
these data points are NOT atypical...
60% agree = “XXXX has much improved our response to customers,
suppliers and colleagues.”
63% agree = “We wouldn't now want to manage the business without our
XXXX system.”
81% = “The ROI for XXXX was equal to or better than expected.”
...and the pièce
de résistance...
“How important is XXXX to your organization’s business goals and success?”
- 68% = “imperative” or “significant”
- 26% = “average”
- 6% = “minimal” or “none”
Well, heck. That ain't boring!
If we were talking
like real people rather than gurus and experts and poobahs, what might we say
about content and document management?
"We
couldn't live without it!"
"It has
totally changed the way we do business!"
"Our
customers love us!"
"It has
saved us big bucks!"
Ahhh ... That feels better.
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