This week, AIIM released the most recent Market IQ I have authored, this one on the On-Ramps and Off-Ramps of ECM - or put more directly: Capturing electronic content and publishing/distributing electronic content.
As readers of this blog know, these are subjects at the core of my passion for ECM. Capture is foundational to the value of ECM. The scope and domain of any ECM system is defined by its input. If garbage is put into the system, only garbage will come out (GIGO). More importantly, if only "imaged contracts" for example, are put into teh ECM system, only images of contracts will come out. So, in the report I sought to establish a benchmark of the types of content that organizations are capturing in their ECM systems.
Similarly, if publishing models are strictly WYSIWYG, the the dynamics and communication effectiveness of the ECM system is limited to the exact look and feel of what is capture. There is no value add in the delivery process. To ignore either one of these "ends" (capture the front-end and publishing the back-end) of ECM, or simply allow business as usual to occur is not only negligent but quite frankly in my opinion BORING.
The scope of online content was significantly expanded with the advent of imaging and word processing. Once the exclusive domain of data (i.e., structured fields of numbers and characters), word processing and imaging systems introduced unstructured files containing free-flowing text, graphics and pictures. This was the impetus for electronic document management systems, which evolved into today’s more advanced ECM systems. Once the foundation to storing unstructured content in digital form was introduced, the doors were open to the challenge and realization of capturing virtually any form of information.
On the Internet today, we witness a plethora of rich content types: animated graphics, audio and video. As I have mentioned before, statistics from YouTube show that as of late 2008, 13 hours of video are uploaded every minute. But, while content capture has advanced significantly on the Internet, survey responses indicate a very different story inside the firewall – albeit one with some surprises and signs of progress.
According to survey data, paper is still universally used across all organizations - OK no surprises there. PDF is also a popular way to capture content, used in 90% of the organizations polled - YAWN.
Though a relatively new file format, PDF can be thought of as an “image file,” and therefore does not represent a radical departure from scanning/imaging technology. Legacy formats persist -- microfilm/fiche is still used in 43% of the organizations polled.
With all of that said, there is indication of change, albeit nascent. Survey respondents indicated that digital video and audio are used by 34% and 30%, respectively.
but, more surprising and telling is the fact that 1% of the organizations surveyed indicated that digital smell (i.e. olfactory content) and digital touch technology, both technologies I have blogged about before, are used within their organization. From a purely statistical perspective, a 1% response is not significant. Who cares - right? Well, for one - I do. Maybe statistically this is no big deal, but the fact that any organizations are using these forms of digital content, forms that are on the bleeding edge of content capture, shows that the business world is morphing -- slowly, perhaps -- but morphing nonetheless.
Source: AIIM Market IQ on the On-Ramps and Off-Ramps of ECM
Indeed, when asked what content formats they believed their organizations will be using in the next five years, there was evidence of planned migration to more rich media types. Survey respondents foresee enterprises in the next five years
still predominately using more traditional forms of content (including
film and fiche) but building momentum for and adoption of newer forms
of content. Multimedia formats, such as photos, audio and video, are expected to make modest gains, as well as the next-generation digital smell and touch formats. (See the AIIM Market IQ for that detail.)
Personally, I am very encouraged by these statistics. Expansion beyond image and text files is the future of ECM, and represents great new potential.
I know there are naysayers out there. Those who will say this is just a dream. That it is irrelevant. A 1% response rate is insignificant. Who cares? These new media types will never take hold in a business setting. Well, I have been around ECM long enough to know that these old fogies (hey I may be old but I am no fogy), just don't get it, and may be surprised by the adoption of rich media within organizations.
Yeah, I have been around awhile. I can recall the early days of Imaging technology. Scanners being demoed to audiences that ooohed and ahhhed, circa the1980s. "Wow a copy machine that makes the copy appear on the desktop. Cool - how do you do that?". But I also remember these comments: "Yeah that is cool, but what are we really going to do with that? Are they legal copies? What if the system crashes you lose your documents." Some of you may recall a popular argument used back then as to why organizations should NOT migrate to images: Digital representation of original documents is risky, too dependent on technology. We were often reminded that even if there were a total power failure, film and fiche could still be read using a candle and a magnifying glass. But what of images?
Well that argument may still be true, but the value derived from images outweighed the risk, and the rest as they say is history.
So what of audio, video and those crazies on the fringe that are experimenting with digital scent, touch and "lickable inks"? Oh, there may be just a whiff of change in the air, but change is coming. And, I for one am excited.
And what of distributing - well, I will save the survey findings on that topic for another post.
