From the AIIM Strategic Plan, 1993.
A few more predictions of interest HERE.
Interested in the future rather than the past? Don't miss #AIIM14, April 1-3 in Orlando. Sign up before it sells out.
January 12, 2014
June 25, 2013
Defining the Future of Content Management – Part 2 – Emergence of the Extreme Buyer
In our first post on the future of content management -- Defining the Future of Content Management – Part 1 – Evolution of an Industry we talked about the changes that have swept through the content "space" (going all the way back to microfilm), the acceleration of those changes over the past few years, and voiced the opinion that the "ECM" term is started to feel a bit tired.
In this second post, we'll talk abut how the buyer has changed. Driven both by the mainstreaming of content technologies and the entry of consumer technologies into the enterprise, there has been a dramatic evolution in who buys content management and how they approach the content management buy decision.
If you think about the typical buyer profile of the past, he/she usually would fall somewhere into this hierarchy (click on the diagram to enlarge it):
In this world, much of the following was/is true...
- The focus of IT was on cost reduction.
- Senior executives were largely technology oblivious (one CEO recently told me, "I viewed IT as a big hairball I just hoped would go away.")
- Job security was found in system complexity.
- As mobile and social entered the world of systems of record, initially just their sheer existence was a source of competitive differentiation.
- System implementations were long and paid for by capital expenditures (CAPEX).
- Technical skills in and of themselves had value.
As a result of the consumerization of IT in the enterprise, there is now a buyer migration in progress, largely reflected in the "other" side of the above pyramid (again, click to enlarge the image):
In this new world, much of the following is/will be true:
- The central mission of IT is value creation.
- Senior executives are now technology aware. (Note this is different from technologically-competent, but that's another story.)
- The coin of the realm is now simplicity rather than complexity.
- We have quickly moved into an environment in which mobile and social are becoming table stakes rather than differentiators in an enterprise IT strategy.
- The desired purchase mode is by the drink rather than by the gallon -- OPEX instead of CAPEX. Oh, and also don't talk to me about implementation cycles longer than a quarter.
- The really desireable technology players are those with domain/technical skills, but in a business context. Technology staff who can think more like engineers ("How can I fit the pieces together for systems that we didn't necessarily invent here?") have increasing value.
Often I talk about the above migration in this chart:
Now the challenge is that when I talk to people -- both on the buy side AND the sell side -- and ask them where the world is headed, they inevitably point to some version of the right side of the above chart. But when I ask them where all the action and money and effort is NOW, they point to the left side. When I ask them how they will make this migration and how long it will take and what they need to get there, the answer is almost always uncertainty.
And therein lies the central challenge of the next 2-3 years. Our mission at AIIM is to help organizations understand how they build content and governance strategies to navigate the transition. How can we help?
------
You might also be interested in...
January 02, 2013
Top 20 AIIM Expert Blog Posts for 2012
And the tallies are in. Here they are -- the top Expert Blog posts for 2012.
Top Ten 2012 Expert Blog Posts -- Everything But SharePoint
- Building a Collaborative Culture
- SharePoint Alternative?
- Excuse Me -- I am Serious About ECM
- After Flash, Why PDF Must Die
- The Need for Change Management
- Which is better: TIFF or PDF? - Revised
- Hard Disk Not Exist! What Happens Next?
- Industry Predictions for 2012
- BitCasa & The Future Of The Cloud
- ECM Vendors Go to War
Top Ten 2012 Expert Blog Posts -- SharePoint Related
- SharePoint Consulting Best Practices for a SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Deployment
- SharePoint 2013 Preview Summary - Managing Your Current SharePoint 2010 Initiative with 2013 in Mind
- 5 Myths About SharePoint Records Management
- My Site Implementation in SharePoint 2010 – A Best Practices Strategy
- User Profile List in SharePoint 2010
- SharePoint 2010 - A Learning Management System (LMS) for Government\DoD, Private Sector\Fortune 1000, and Educational Institutions | (SP vs. Blackboard)
- The Role of the Business Analyst in SharePoint
- High Level Best Practices: SharePoint Source Code Management and the Related Deployment Process
- Best Practices for SharePoint Cultural Change Management - From the SharePoint Consulting Trenches
- Is Your Search Database Bloated?
And don't forget my post on 100 technology predictions (plus 10 of my own) for 2013
[Image from http://ethicalchamp.com/increasing-website-traffic.]
May 31, 2012
November 21, 2011
Geoff Moore (@geoffreyamoore) and the #ECM coolness factor
I recently blogged on the theme The Cool is Back in ECM, reflecting on my attendance at two widely varying industry events, the Box.Net BoxWorks conference, and IBM's Information on Demand. My conclusion, based on my data point of whether my kids had heard of the entertainment (ECM passed the test this year!) is that the Cool is Back in ECM.
I did find myself after writing that post wondering, "How could both statements -- 'BoxWorks was Cool, IBM IOD was Cool' -- be true within the same content management space?"
I came across this diagram by Geoff Moore in his new book Escape Velocity that started me thinking, as Geoff's stuff often does. Good book; get it. (Some of you may remember that Geoff did some work for AIIM last year on Systems of Engagement and the Future of Enterprise IT.)
Here's the diagram...
So per this diagram, there are two flavors of content solutions, one focused on a sweet spot that is rich in complexity and depth and focused on a finite customer set with enough scale to take advantage of information complexity and deep analytics (e.g., IBM, Oracle, Open Text, EMC). The second is a set of solutions that have been built from the assumption of simplicity and scale and focus on a very broad customer set (e.g., Box, DropBox, SkyDox, Yammer, Google Docs).
And yet even within the dichotomy of this model, there seems to be some nuances and complexities to think about relative to our industry.
- The kind of scale represented by volume operations and often introduced via a freemium to premium deployment model offers all sorts of value to small and mid-sized organizations that used to be shut out of the content management solutions space. SharePoint started here, working its way into the enterprise initially as a freebie through IT types. Google Docs did as well, starting with individual consumers. Companies like Box and Yammer started here as well, often with customers in organizations frustrated by the limits of their own IT departments.
- But at the same time, the longer term dynamic has gotten progressively more complex. The volume game initially plays out through the prism of the number of customers, and that lends itself well to the freemium-premium model. But the game in our industry ultimately plays out through the number of seats that someone is willing to actually pay for, and the place for that volume to ultimately be found is among the companies who are often customers on the complex systems side of the house. Thus it creates a need for the volume players to connect themselves to the complex systems game.
- And if that wasn't complicated enough, the expectations for simplicity and ease of use and ease of implemention in the volume game ultimately carry over into the complex systems game. Driving prices down for users and creating a demand for simplicity.
Gets me a bit dizzy. I guess I should take some comfort in the F. Scott Fitzgerald quote, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." [Note: My wife would likely question both the intelligence part and the ability to function part.]
November 20, 2011
Get that Christmas shopping done early; yes Virginia, I do have a life outside AIIM
Looking for that perfect holiday gift? Look no further than Will's Christmas List.
Imagine if you will, the following reviews. If they had actually occurred, would you be likely to actually buy this book?
"I laughed until I stopped." (New York Times Book Review)
"This book could help bridge the gap between liberals and conservatives." (Barack Obama)
"The pages as well as the chapters are numbered sequentially. Amazing." (Kirkus Book Reviews)
"If there was a movie made of this book, the father would be played by Colin Firth and the mother would be played by Amy Adams." (Mary G. Mancini and John F. Mancini, in order to satisfy our respective fantasies)
This is a labor of love that I wrote over a number of years for my kids. It has literally sold tens of copies over the years, assuring that the massive royalties I receive (in some years, well into double digits) will not be a threat to AIIM's continued claim upon my services.
I do like to do a bit of experimenting each year with the Long Tail Phenomenon and watch how modest numbers of units affect my ranking within the long tail on the best seller list.
So here's the starting point. Right now, per Amazon, Will's Christmas List is #4,210,041 in Books. Let's see where it winds up; I'll report back.
Have fun.
November 17, 2011
November 03, 2011
The Cool is Back in ECM
What has happened to the old stodgy content management space?
One way that I think you can measure the coolness of an industry is to look at who is doing the entertainment at industry functions (I know, frivolous, but stick with me).
Let's be honest for a minute about the kinds of bands one would see at ECM user conferences in recent years. Gladys Knight and the Pip (yes, there is sadly only one Pip left). Earth, Wind, and Fire. Fortunately for everyone concerned, at least no one booked Bachman Turner Overdrive despite the potential attractiveness of a "Taking Care of Business with ECM" theme.
Well, judging by 2 recent user conferences I attended last month, the times they are a changin' (OK, I realize this is a dated reference).
I was lucky enough to go to Box's Boxworks conference and IBM's Information on Demand event. The bands? Third Eye Blind and train. Bands my kids like. Bands my kids have heard in concert. Clearly an inflection point. This ain't your Father's content management; content is cool again.
I can't think of two more different companies on the content spectrum than Box and IBM, and yet the coolness factor not only applied to the bands, but to the value proposition being articulated.
Box's focus on content management in the cloud is clearly striking a chord with those looking for file share replacements and document centric collaboration and simplicity of implementation. The 18,000 seat P&G implementation they announced represents something of a tipping point for me in terms of the viability and relevance of cloud-based content management. So too did the investment by Salesforce.com in the company. At the other end of the spectrum, IBM's extension of the Watson technology set into real applications and the broader case studies focused on the power of analytics and big data were, frankly, way cool.
All of this is not to say that Box and IBM are better or worse than any other solutions, because that's not my job.
But I am excited about what these events say about the coolness factor of content technologies as an industry and what these two user conferences indicate about the future -- in wildly varying content spaces. I'm doubly excited that a centerpiece of BOTH of these events was the work that AIIM did with Geoffrey Moore on Systems of Record and Systems of Engagement (http://www.aiim.org/futurehistory).
Social. Mobile. Cloud. Big Data. They are all reenergizing and redefining content management. Here are some of the themes we're teeing up for next year...
- Process Revolution: Moving Your Business from Paper to PCs to Tablets
- Big Data: Extracting Value from Digital Landfills
- Solving the SharePoint Puzzle: Adding the Right Missing Pieces
- Faster, Simpler, Smarter: Collaborating and Processing in the Cloud
- Social in the Flow: Transforming Processes
So get rid of those bell bottomed jeans. Download some of your kid's tracks from iTunes (they probably charged them to your account anyway) and get ready for the future of content management.
----
Speaking of cool, I'm keynoting OpenText's Content World November 16 (My peeps save $300 w/ code CW2011KEY - http://bit.ly/unc4le) and also running an Executive Social Business Seminar with Oracle in NY on November 10.
Have you signed up for the new AIIM Conference March 2012 in San Francisco? For solution providers, almost all the premium slots are sold - get moving! For attendees, mark your calendars!
October 20, 2011
Thank you to all the sponsors and participants in our recently completed #AIIM Content Management Bootcamp - #ECM
Just a quick word of thanks to the record breaking number of attendees for coming to our recently completed ECM Boot Camp and to the sponsors of the event.
I spoke at two of the events -- in Atlanta and in Toronto.
Attached are some pictures from the Toronto event to give you an idea of the crowd. It even includes pictures of attendees who were listening to me speak who were actually awake. I can't even get that degree of attention from my kids.
I was asked by a number of people how a non-profit can afford to put on a free event like this for users -- and give them breakfast and lunch to boot. The answer is through the contributions of our sponsors. Thank you especially to our speaking sponsors and for their commitment to early stage user education.
Thanks also to the full list of demo sponsors. Click HERE for the details.
John Mancini
I am president of AIIM, a non-profit that helps organizations find, control and optimize their information
Recent Comments