Digital Landfill

20 Years Ago Today in Content Management/#ECM

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.

 

8 New #AIIM Reports on #Content - And All Free - #ECM #SharePoint

Please enjoy these recent reports and new infographics from AIIM Market Intelligence which are free to download:

The Elephant in the Room is Compliance. Secure collaboration for financial services content via mobile and cloud

Research has shown that 33% of organizations expect to see “half or more” of their employees using iPads, tablets or digital clipboards for filling in forms in 5 years. Is your business ready to handle this shift in a responsible and secure way? Download here.

Mobile Content Security and Productivity

Organizations want their employees to have access to corporate information from mobile devices, but security and compliance are major areas of concern. This white paper measures the concerns over BYOD security, the issues with directly accessing on-premise content, and the collaboration functionality users expect on their mobile devices. Download here.

Jump-start your paper-free journey

The business case for kicking paper out of the organization is overwhelming – it takes up space, slows things down, creates costs and limits flexibility. This white paper looks at why organizations hold back from taking the paper-free step, and discuss the pros and cons of outsourcing document-oriented processes. Download here.

AIIM Trendscape: Content and the Cloud

Recently, AIIM convened a select group of content and information management professionals in London and Chicago, to deliberate the central question of the role that cloud-based technologies will play in the future. We are pleased to present the findings from those deliberations in this executive report. Download here.

SharePoint 2013 – clouding the issues

SharePoint 2013 brings new capabilities but also a number of new challenges. In this report, we look at the ongoing issues of user adoption as an ECM/DM system. We study the impact of the new 2013 features, particularly on third party add-on products. We look at the issues that cloud presents for SharePoint users. Finally, we measure spending plans for licenses, services and add-on products. Download here.

Intelligent Information Management - improving the customer experience

Improving the customer experience is critical to business success and competitive status. This white paper reviews the issues for improving customer experience across multiple input channels and the potential to automate response processes based on capturing and analyzing content. Download here.

AIIM Infographics

A picture is worth a thousand words. These Infographics illustrate the challenges and solutions faced by today's Information Professional. From Social Collaboration to Enterprise Content Management (ECM), everything you need to convey key Information Management concepts is below. Download here.

ECM Maturity: is your ECM system maximized for business value?

Are you new to enterprise content management (ECM) or have you been developing your system for a number of years? Are you making progress fast enough to get the benefits of universal content access across the enterprise and between your core systems - or are you still struggling to get over that initial hurdle of user acceptance? Take this questionnaire.

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Other AIIM research is available at aiim.org/research

Good Free Stuff. On #content.

These recent reports and new infographics from AIIM Market Intelligence are free to download.

Winning the Paper Wars – capture the content and mobilize the process troops

The amount of paper flowing through businesses is increasing in 41% of organizations. But for 19% it is actually decreasing. Is your business among those winning the paper wars? Download here.

The Compliance Conundrum: providing secure collaboration for financial services content via mobile and cloud

Research has shown that 33% of organizations expect to see “half or more” of their employees using iPads, tablets or digital clipboards for filling in forms in 5 years. Is your business ready to handle this shift in a responsible and secure way? Download here.

Defending the Authenticity and Integrity of SharePoint Records

This short paper takes a close look at two of the main ways for organizations to maintain competitive advantage - keeping a close rein on intellectual property (IP), and ensuring that they don't fall foul of compliance and regulatory issues. Download here.

Cloud Access to Public Sector Content – securing sensitive content through hybrid ECM

With only 4% of organizations using cloud services experiencing any security or reliability issues, where does the perceived lack of security come from? Don't let suspicion dictate what's best for your content management. Download here.

Document Output Management – so much more than print

Two thirds of respondents to this survey stated they do not have an integrated output system, leading to data not being readily accessible and bottlenecks. What is the other third of organizations doing right? Download here.

Forms Processing – text and handwriting recognition (OCR/ICR)

Do you re-key data from scanned forms? A lot of organizations do. This infographic highlights the importance of OCR, ICR and improving your business processes. Results are from a recent AIIM survey are available for download here.

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?

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You might also be interested in...

How is Big Content Different From Big Data? from John Mancini

Is IT Really the Villain? - Future of Technology in the Enterprise from John Mancini

New AIIM Training for Sales Professionals and #Channel Partners

According to Sirius Decicions, ECM buyers now gather, on average, 70% of the information they need to make a purchasing decision BEFORE even talking to possible solution providers.  This dramatically changes the role of ECM sales professionals today. You now need to get AHEAD of the RFP to win the deal or challenge existing requirements. How?

Exclusively for document management solution sales professionals and channel partners, AIIM’s one-day sales enablement training course does exactly that, by drawing on our intimate knowledge of the business needs of our 100,000 members to vastly improve the way you:

• engage your prospects before their requirements have even been set;
• educate your customers about their business needs;
• tailor your messages and conversations with valuable perspectives;
• take control over the buying cycle  

How to Sell ECM from AIIM

Find out more about this winning methodology and move from reactive to proactive selling today.

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

1. Building a Collaborative Culture
2. SharePoint Alternative?
3. Excuse Me -- I am Serious About ECM
4. After Flash, Why PDF Must Die
5. The Need for Change Management
6. Which is better: TIFF or PDF? - Revised
7. Hard Disk Not Exist! What Happens Next?
8. Industry Predictions for 2012
9. BitCasa & The Future Of The Cloud
10. ECM Vendors Go to War

Top Ten 2012 Expert Blog Posts -- SharePoint Related

1. SharePoint Consulting Best Practices for a SharePoint 2010 Enterprise Deployment
2. SharePoint 2013 Preview Summary - Managing Your Current SharePoint 2010 Initiative with 2013 in Mind
3. 5 Myths About SharePoint Records Management
4. My Site Implementation in SharePoint 2010 – A Best Practices Strategy
5. User Profile List in SharePoint 2010
6. SharePoint 2010 - A Learning Management System (LMS) for Government\DoD, Private Sector\Fortune 1000, and Educational Institutions | (SP vs. Blackboard)
7. The Role of the Business Analyst in SharePoint
8. High Level Best Practices: SharePoint Source Code Management and the Related Deployment Process
9. Best Practices for SharePoint Cultural Change Management - From the SharePoint Consulting Trenches
10. 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.]

 

2013 Predictions -- Systems of Record and Systems of Engagement -- What Comes Next?

[Note:  We will be doing a webinar on this topic, primarily for NA and SA audiences given the time of day, on Wednesday, December 12 at 2 pm Eastern time.  We'll be doing a second webinar, at a time more convenient for European audiences at 2 pm British time on Thursday the 13th.]

As many readers know, about two years ago a Task Force of AIIM members worked with Geoffrey Moore (author of Crossing the Chasm, among many titles) to build out a "future history" of the content industry.  The intention was to think about how enterprise information technology was changing in the wake of the influx of consumer technologies.  (See Systems of Engagement and the Future of Enterprise IT: A Sea Change in Enterprise IT.)

The core "story" went something like this...

Organizations spent much of the past 3 decades building out "Systems of Record."

Technologies evolved a great deal during this first phase -- from mainframes to minis to PCs to the internet -- as did the core objects being managed -- from financials to department processes to documents to web pages.  However, at the core of this migration was a continuing focus on building Systems of Record to document who did what to whom, when, and in what context. The transitions looked something like this:

In this world, IT was at the center of deploying enterprise systems, and innovation tended to flow down from large organizations, eventually reaching consumers.

Using another Geoff Moore diagram from Escape Velocity, during this period the Content Management business was very much a "complex systems business," operating on the left "hump" of the diagram below, focused on relatively few customers, dealing with complicated and mission-critical business processes.

Enter Microsoft Office SharePoint Services (MOSS) in 2007, and the industry began to change.  The left "hump" started to shift to the right.  Price points began to change as "content management" became an increasing part of the core infrastructure of the organization.  Large vendors from the world of complex content management systems initially dismissed SharePoint as "not really ECM" and then struggled to find their role relative to SharePoint as the SharePoint wave intensified. In addition, a host of new enterprise players emerged, built upon a pay-as-you-go SaaS model, led most notably by Salesforce.com.  

Meanwhile, back in the bigger IT market, another revolution was brewing.  

Over the past 5 years, consumer technologies have taken center stage relative to innovation and migrated into the enterprise, with far-reaching implications for how organizations use and deploy technology. These new technologies focus on interactions and conversations rather documents and records and on Systems of Engagement rather than Systems of Record. 

So after a long period in which there really was no "consumer" play in the document/content space (the right volume operations "hump" in Geoff's business architecture model), suddenly one appeared. The focus was not traditional transactionally focused content management, but rather the provision of previously unavailable information management tools for the individual, built upon social and mobile technologies and optimized for the cloud. These were companies with freemium to premium models like Box, Google, Evernote, DropBox, FilesAnywhere, and Yammer.  

These new volume operations players had a very different financial model than those from the complex systems world.  Per Michael Moon from gistics.com, complex systems players focus on making their money on capital expenditures and professional services, with most of the money captured in the early stages of a project -- it is not unusual for 70% of the total revenues for a project to the captured before implementation even occurs.  On the flip side, Systems of Engagement (and the mobile devices that go with them) are brought into the enterprise by the business rather than IT, and with far simpler pricing and deployment models.  The models typically focus on operating expenditures and capturing the majority of revenues after implementation via an annuity stream.

Initially, IT organizations responded to this dichtonomy by either: 1) denying the problem existed (kind of an IT policy re the Dropboxes of the world of "Don't ask, Don't tell); 2) mounting massive resistance and opposition to these tools; 3) allowing adoption, but assuming they would someday get around to the question of integration with existing Systems of Record; and/or 4) some combination of the above.

So the question for this blog post is:  What comes next? What are the next chapters in the story of Systems of Record and Systems of Engagement.

We spent some time at the AIIM Board meeting last week exploring this topic, and I'd like to offer some initial thoughts.  

The complete story of the next phase in our future isn't written yet, but I would offer that it will center around the "controlled collision" between Systems of Record and Systems of Engagement and will include some version of the following 10 elements:

1. CIOs are beginning to adopt mobile-first and cloud-first strategies for new applications, especially for customer-facing applications, changing the traditional development process.
2. The key to understanding the future role of social technologies in the enterprise is that they will increasingly: 1) be a feature of Systems of Record, not a separate system; 2) either become integrated into core business processes (i.e., the honeymoon period of "social for social's sake" is over) or decline in importance; and 3) ultimately converge with email into a single system.
3. Via migrations from the "right hump," core document and collaboration technologies are now becoming available via the cloud to a host of organizations that heretofore relied on a chaotic mess of file shares.  The trick will be to avoid simply taking c drive and file share digital landfills and moving them to the cloud.
4. True document collaboration (vs. either the poor Word "Track Changes" approach or the chaotic, little editorial control Google Docs approach) will become increasingly important.
5. Effective adoption of social technologies is not just a function of turning them on. Defining use cases, outlining expected behaviors within these use cases, and effectively managing change have just as much to do with success as the technology (check Social in the Flow for details).
6. The "we will never put important information in the cloud" and "we must choose between the cloud and on-prem" militancy is evolving into an awareness that the future lies in a hybrid environment in which information is managed across a continuum of platforms and devices.
7. The concept of synching from the early days of email (remember when we needed to actively manage what we did in email when "connected" and when we were not?) will become increasingly important in thinking about the cloud.  As organizations think about strategies that integrate Systems of Record with Systems of Engagement, that link Saas enterprise applications like Salesforce.com to behind the firewall information repositories, and that allow for responsible deployment of social and BYOD technologies, the cloud will increasingly become the "place" in which synching occurs, with ultimate control by the System of Record.
8. In our desire to reassert control, we need to remember than the needs of the business to get things done will always trump our corporate need for control.
9. The Chief Marketing Officer will own more and more elements of the "controlled collision" and will be increasingly important in the intersection between Systems of Record and Systems of Engagement.
10. The SoR and SoE "collision" places an increasing premium on those who have skills to help manage this collision and understand the full picture, namely Information Professionals.

What do you think?  What comes next in the "story?" Post a comment and let me know.

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Might be of interest...

1. How to Achieve Best Practices: Records Management
2. How to Conduct a Social Business Assessment
3. How to Unclog Your Business by Automating Content-Intensive Process
4. How to Assess Scanning and Capture Requirements
5. Automating ERM with SharePoint
6. How to Develop Taxonomies to Support Navigation, Information Discovery, and Findability
7. Enterprise Content Management: Impact on Collaboration and Social Business
8. How to Use SharePoint as a Self-Help Knowledge Center

 [Note:  We will be doing a webinar on this topic, primarily for NA and SA audiences given the time of day, on Wednesday, December 12 at 2 pm Eastern time.  We'll be doing a second webinar, at a time more convenient for European audiences at 2 pm British time on Thursday the 13th.] 

It's Not too Early to Make Plans for the "Real" AIIM Conference - #AIIM13

Here in the Washington, DC area, it's the second day of summer and the temperature is 100 degrees.  I don't know about the rest of you, but we haven't even closed Q2 of 2012. So it may seem like a strange time to be thinking about plans for 2013.  But it's not too early.

The REAL AIIM Conference will be March 20-22, 2013 in New Orleans (#AIIM13).  The awesome keynotes already confirmed include Seth Godin, David Pogue, David Weinberger, Connie Moore, John Underkoffler, and Thornton May.  The theme? Extreme Information: Volume, Variety, Devices.

The reason I say the "real" AIIM Conference is that a lot of people still confuse the AIIM Conference with the Info360 event.  This past year -- for the first time in a decade -- we launched a brand new AIIM Conference in San Francisco.  The intention was to create a new kind of event -- decidedly NOT a trade show, but an intimate event designed around networking, world class content, the best keynotes we could find, the edges of technology, and most importantly -- drumroll, please -- it was designed around the needs of the actual paying attendees of the event.  The event was an overwhelming success -- we sold out both the sponsorships and registration weeks before the event.  My favorite comment summarizing everything we were trying to do in our launch was a post-event tweet from an attendee who said he had been to both South by Southwest and the AIIM Conference, and AIIM was way cooler.

Hence the comment about the "real" AIIM conference, and also the need to make advance planning. We don't want to leave anyone out.

A couple of links that may be useful in your planning...

The AIIM Conference 2013 web page is now live – www.aiimconference.com

There is a call for Papers - http://www.aiimconference.com/Call-For-Papers/Call-for-Papers-Guidelines (There’s a link to the form on this page)

A PDF outlining sponsoring opportunities is available - http://pages2.aiim.org/AIIM_2013_Sponsor_Inquiry.html

If you'd like to get notified when the program information is ready and online registration is available, you can get on the list here - http://pages2.aiim.org/AIIM_2013_Get_Notified.html

See you in Nawlins!

Gartner -- The number of Information Professionals needed will grow by 50% per year -- #CIP

A new Gartner report by Deb Logan and Mark Raskino -- Prepare to be an Information Leader -- notes that the first half of the Information Age was all about building plumbing and making processes more efficient, and that the second value is all about creating value from the information these processes produce.  They further note that organizations "must acquire new skills to meet these challenges."

A key data point in the report is their contention that the demand for information professionals will increase by 50% year over year through 2015.  OK, let me repeat that, the demand for information professionals will increase by 50% year over year through 2015.

We couldn't agree more.  Last year, you may recall, we built the body of knowledge that these information professionals need and created a standardized 100 question proctored test of competency.  The Certified Information Professional, or CIP. A brand new concept for a brand new profession.

A lot has been going on in our Certified Information Professional program since we launched earlier this year.

I published a white paper -- A Career Path for the Digital Economy -- making the case for the need for Information Professionals.  

We released, inspired by Khan Academy, a set of 110+ FREE 3-5 minute videos to help organizations increase their information management effectiveness.

We created a practice exam for those who want to see where their information gaps lie and whether they are ready for the exam.  The practice exam provides a roadmap to the videos and helps individuals figure out where to prioritize their preparation time.  It even gives you a score!  Check it out and see how smart you REALLY are.

We've added our first 2 training partners -- Strait & Associates and the Holly Group -- for those who would like to schedule training for your staffs.

The ball is rolling. The train is leaving the station. The horse is out of the barn. [Insert your own favorite cliche.]

The point is, it's time to get moving.  Let us know how we can help.

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Download my white paper today if you want more information.  Take the CIP practice exam and find out how much you really know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

16 things you need to know about processes, the cloud, and mobile

The latest AIIM Industry Watch survey - Process Revolution: Moving Your Business From Paper to PCs to Tablets - is hot off the presses and available for download.  Just as a reminder, the downloads are FREE.

The report is the latest in AIIM's ongoing Industry Watch series, prepared by our in-house analyst Doug Miles.  Some of the other recent titles you may have missed...

• The Paper Free Office - Dream or Reality?
• Records Management Strategies - Plotting the Changes
• Social Business Systems - Success factors for Enterprise 2.0 applications
• Using SharePoint for ECM - How well is it meeting expectations?
• State of the ECM Industry 2011- How well is it meeting business needs?
• Capture and Business Process: drivers and experiences of content-driven processes
• E-Discovery and ERM - How is records management performing in the new spotlight
• Content Analytics - research tools for unstructured content and rich media?

Some of the highights of the Process Revolution survey:

1. 52% of respondents report that administrative staff in their organization would be a third or more productive if their processes were work-flowed using scanned forms and documents, with automated data capture.
2. 70% consider that the use of scanning and capture improves the speed of response to customers, suppliers, citizens or staff by three-times or more. Nearly 30% put the factor as ten times or more.
3. Despite the acknowledged benefits, a third of small and mid-sized companies and 22% of the largest have yet to adopt any paper-free processes. Over half report that 10% or less of the processes that could be paper-free have so far been addressed.
4. Only 20% of organizations surveyed actively evaluate all processes for driving out paper.
5. Lack of management initiatives or mandates is the most likely reason for the prevalence of paper in so many business processes. Staff are also to blame, preferring to handle and file paper - feeling it’s more reliable - and also driven by the perceived need to physically sign signatures.
6. 67% of respondents consider mobile technologies to be important or extremely important to improving their business processes. 31% consider tablets to be more important than smartphones, with 24% seeing smartphones as more important.
7. Whilst two-thirds acknowledge the importance, over three-quarters have made no progress towards mobile-enabling their business processes. 20% have sound security reasons, 32% have evaluated but not made a move, and 24% haven’t even thought about it.
8. A third of organizations have not optimized their public-facing websites for mobile. Of those that have, only 8% specifically test access to all pages and forms.
9. 76% have no mobile access to their DM/ECM system. 5% rely on non-optimized browser pages. Only 7% have dedicated apps.
10. 45% of respondents suggest a 33% or more improvement in productivity if field-based or travelling staff were able to connect to back office processes. The average assessment was a 36% improvement in productivity.
11.  45% of respondents consider that the speed of response to customers, suppliers, citizens or staff would be improved by three-times or more by the use of mobile information access, process interaction, and local capture.
12. In 5 years’ time, 33% of respondents consider that over half of their employees will be using iPads, tablets or digital clipboards for filling-in forms – compared to 2% now.
13. For customer processes, 75% consider mobile technologies to be important (50%) or extremely important (25%). This compares with 71% who consider social technologies to be important (57%) or extremely important (14%).
14. Only 30% of organizations have effective rules and policies regarding the security of data on company-issued mobile devices and on personal mobile devices. 70% have rules but only 30% of respondents feel they are being actively used and enforced.
15. Half of responding organizations would consider adopting a 3^rd party or Government cloud system for active content management, although most (35%) are waiting for security and reliability to mature.
16. Strategically, 11% would go fully cloud-based for their ECM, whereas 14% would look to a mixed on-premise and off-premise system.