Simplicity

My wife gets a magazine called Real Simple. Its mission? "Life made easier." 

Now I will admit that some of the "issues" this magazine highlights are not the ones at the top of my hit parade requiring "simplification."  For example, one I saw recently was Healthy Fast Food and Takeout: Yes, you do want fries with that (How to enjoy takeout without going overboard.)  

I might cast that article differently.  Something like the following -- Dollar Menu Crises: If the double cheeseburger is $1 and a regular cheeseburger is 99 cents, who in their right mind would ever order the regular one?

Can simple and document management used in the same sentence? The very words "enterprise content management" do not normally conjure up an image of simplicity. As we think about how to either sell document management systems or get justification to buy one in this current economic climate, I think the key to overcoming the all too typical objection of "It's all very interesting, but we have other things we need to focus on right now" is to make all of this much more simple.

Last year we surveyed a group of potential end users completely unconnected with AIIM and asked them this question: "Have you ever heard Of the term ECM with regards to information management?" The answer? Twenty-six percent said YES.  This tells one simple association executive that: a) lots more education is needed; and b) a key part in convincing mid-sized organizations to adopt records, content, and document technologies is to simplify things --  a lot.

One "simple" way to start is with the new AIIM Essentials training program, launched this week.

AIIM Essentials is a series of short online educational programs designed to provide you with an unbiased focus on specific topics relevant to today’s changing technological and business landscape. The technology series delivers vendor neutral perspectives on technology tools and how and what to look for when evaluating solution, while the business series addresses the many challenges of governance and management when applying these technologies to a business problem.

AIIM, in partnership with Industry Experts from around the world, have brought this series together.  Each non-certificate program is approximately 4 – 6 hours in length spread across several modules, using a narrated eLearning format, making it easy to join a session and complete the program at your leisure, from anywhere at any time using your internet connection and browser.

Current offerings include:

1. Fundamentals of Web Content Management Technologies
2. Evaluating SharePoint
3. Fundamentals of Digital Asset Management Technologies
4. Fundamentals of Electronic Discovery
5. Imaging and Recognition
6. PDF/A

Comments

[Dan Lucarini]

Hey John, here's an Information Week story titled 'How Simple is Too Simple' that looks at how WordPress et al are all going thru feature creep as they try to become full-fledged CMS.
http://tinyurl.com/d9joq9

To go from Simple to Complex seems to be our nature!