I am preparing a presentation that I will be giving next week at AIIM Europe, at the AIIM ATM meeting. The topic is Enterprise 2.0, and the role that ECM plays in it. As I began to formulate my message I decided that I should start with defining Enterprise 2.0. In a survey that I ran a month ago, I asked several hundred AIIM members to rank their level of understanding of several technologies and concepts. Among these was Enterprise 2.0. Only 11% felt they had an expert-to-good level of understanding. I suspect that the AIIM members are not too different from business professionals overall. It is interesting that 70% of the same group indicated that collaboration was "critical" to their ECM strategy. There is much confusion out there regarding Enterprise 2.0 (and the role of ECM in it).
Serendipitously, earlier this week I was going through the Sunday New York Times and discovered an article that positions Enterprise 2.0 and ECM into the mainstream. In an effort to help locate Steve Fossett (the millionaire who disappeared last month while piloting his own plane), Amazon.com and Google joined forces to create a Web 2.0 approach to rescue. The latest satellite pictures of the general area where Fosset disappeared are being made available to volunteers (individuals from around the world) who in their spare time scan through the images and report anything that warrants a closer look by authorities. The technology and coordination behind the effort is worth reading more about. But, the point to be made here is that this is a great and dramatic example of ECM and Enterprise 2.0. Google is making the latest content available in manageable chunks, and monitoring the check-in and check-out of each chunk (read revision control and audit trails.) Amazon is proving a platform that orchestrates large numbers of individuals working collaboratively via the internet in a cooperative manner (read enterprise 2.0). There you have it - Enterprise 2.0 and ECM.
Though still somewhat immature, as evidenced by the low ranking of understanding of the concept mentioned earlier, Enterprise 2.0 holds great potential in fostering collaboration and innovation within organizations. When coupled with traditional approaches to managing content, searching content and process automation, the value proposition for each technology genre grows exponentially.
