On a recent plane trip I thumbed through the September 15 issue of American Airlines in-flight magazine, AmericanWay. About half way through this non-IT, general public magazine, I was struck by the presence of ECM throughout it. In this one magazine of 111 pages, 1% was concerned with ECM. (That may not seem like a high percentage, but this is a airline magazine. A large percentage is devoted to airline specific features such as AA Editorials, aiport maps, puzzles, in-flight movie and radio listings, food and beverage selections, travel-related advertisements, etc.). Indeed, the 1% was enough to stand out and grab my attention.
The majority of the ECM content was in the form of product advertisement - 6 to be exact, including e-books, scanners, e-filing systems and personalized e-communication devices. So? What hit me and drove me to write this posting was the realization that ECM, once delegated to techies focused on enterprise libraries and filing systems, is now mainstream. Implementations and development may still be technical in nature, but the application and usage, the fruits of our labors, have permeated throughout society. ECM, in many permutations is all around us and a part of many daily lives, even if many do not see it specifically that way. It is associated with revenue generating products. What is most exciting about this stage of market adoption is the high growth rate in technology uptake it represents, the wider variety of ECM-related jobs and application areas to work in. ECMers are no longer IT professionals tasked with managing content, but perhaps publishers who design more effective training manuals, interactive/situational spy novels or marketeers who manipulate content, BI and geo-spatial data to dynamically produce collateral and incentives.
The realization and excitement that was building in me as I thumbed trough the magazine came to a head on page 52, on which started an article regarding interactive TV news broadcasting. Apparently, the development and design of interactive television news stations is a burgeoning profession, being introduced for study in several universities. The article describes a near-future model for the delivery of news in a highly interactive and personalized manner. The article recalls the "early days" of on-line news coverage, exemplified by the CNN 24x7 model, complete with non-stop tickers and myriad modules, designed to engage, but ultimately causing information overload and a disenchanted audience. The new delivery model is founded in content delivery tools that seem revolutionary to the news writer, but familiar to the ECM practitioner. The delivery model is founded in flexibility, re-purposing of content and personalization. This is the same basic set of tools and models introduced in my posting on content delivery.
We could debate, (I am not going to here), whether the technologies that comprise ECM have all been invented, or if there are more to come. For argument's sake, lets say the advent of ECM technologies is waning, Nonetheless, we have only begun to scratch the surface on how ECM technologies can impact business, educational, commercial and personal communication models. The role of the ECM practitioner is likely to morph with many other professions. We have not even begun to scratch the surface with regards to the applications of ECM. The value of ECM tools and expertise is likely to catapult in the next decade.
