TakingAIIM

Context is King and ECM-based BI is the Keys to the Kingdom

Yesterday I tweeted (@carlfrappaolo) about a Boston Globe article on ECM search company, Endeca. I was going to let it go at that, but then this morning, serendipitously I heard a story on NPR about the dramatically changing world of television watching and the impact that is having on the services provided by Nielsen. ECM is at the foundation of great new opportunities and challenges for organizations. Read on

Content Security and KM "D'oh"

OK, I admit it. I do not spend all my weekends sitting around thinking deep ECM and KM thoughts. I enjoy hanging out with the kids and indulging in some mindless TV watching.  Its amazing though how the KM/ECM geek in me will sometimes connect the two – mindless TV and ECM/KM that is.

Last night I was wrapping up the weekend watching The Simpsons with my 2 daughters. Sure, occasionally there is a poignant message or two – usually lost on the kids. But in last nights episode there was a strong and important message directed right to every KM, ECM and E2.0 manager. Intentional or not – it was there and you did not have to think to deeply to catch it.

The Simpsons find themselves in Machu Pichu (don’t ask why – its not worth it). The narrator is explaining the significance of the site and states something along the lines of “This great civilization built a great wall around its people to protect it from the outside and keep their culture pure. But great walls also lock out knowledge, (Seriously that is the word he used.) and as a result the Incas were not adept at understanding the rest of the world or dealing with change. When the conquistadors appeared they were confused, ran and were destroyed.”

Did you catch the quote that got me excited? - Find out and learn how to read more about this ECM, KM and E2.0 challenge.

A Historical Moment for the ECM and RM Industry

Today, I learned that Miep Gies died. She was a stellar example of why content and records management is so important. Many of you may not recognize her name, but you will likely recognize the name of the content author she helped immortalize, Anne Frank. Ms. Gies was the last remaining member of the group that hid the Frank family and others from the Nazi's. More importantly, she was the one who seized Anne's diary after the Frank's were found. She kept the diary safe, somehow instinctively knowing that it (content) was worth saving for future generations. Had Ms. Gies not acted in this way, the world may never have come to know this story. I believe this is a shining example of the power and importance of content preservation and felt compelled to take a moment to recognize the efforts made by this brave and noble individual.

ECM: A Rose by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet – and I do mean Sweet

A week ago, my long time colleague, whose opinion I respect, Whitney Tidmarh, (@whitneytidmars) EMC Documentum CMO and AIIM Board member tweeted the following: “ Great discussion with #AIIM board about the relevance of the term #ECM today. Does #ECM mean anything to you? What would you call it?” I immediately tweeted back “Duh – ECM”. I was pleased to see a others chime in on my side of the debate – including @Bduhon and @piewords.

While Twitter gave us a forum in which to quickly and succinctly express our views on this issue, the issue is one I am passionate enough about to want  (OK need ) to expound further. (Whitney are you listening?)

read on

E-Healthcare Provides a Prescription for Universal ECM

Yesterday AIIM NE held their fall kickoff event. In a word WOW. 

In many words:

Once again, AIIM NE delivered. We had two guest speakers, Girish Kumar Navani and David Cochran. I now refer to them as the dynamic duo. Check out their resumes – their qualifications and experience are most impressive, and they both delivered excellent presentations.

Although both gentleman hail from the e-medical records/healthcare vertical, the update they provided on the state-of-the-market concerning e-medical records was nothing short of a primer on the ECM market in general. The challenges faced by the health care industry, including compliance and security, addressing the needs of a diverse community (from patient to physician), and increased collaboration and transparency, are after all exemplary of the challenges faced by virtually any organization embracing ECM.

Among the points they made were:

Expectations are rapidly changing. More individuals are coming to expect access to content electronically, in a collaborative manner, and via mobile devices.  At the same time, protection of content is paramount.

Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the federal government has offered approximately $20 billion in stimulus money to healthcare providers. But to obtain the stimulus money, health care providers must demonstrate “meaningful use” of e-content. I immediately glommed onto this term, meaningful use. Whenever involved with ECM strategy development, I stress the need to look at the impact of the technology from every angle in order to maximize its impact. I have often talked about, for example, how an investment in ECM focused on security, can and should be leveraged as a tool for increased accessibility as well. Although targeted at e-medical records, the federal government, of all people, has created a benchmark for ECM implementations.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 defines “meaningful use" as:

·      Documented improvement in quality and efficiency (read BPM, workflow and process improvement; demonstration of how the technology impacts business, not simply moves content storage from paper to digital), 

·      Engaged interaction with the patient (read going beyond simply capturing content, but deliberately involving the customer/user, implying content access, transparency and collaboration)

·      Improved Care coordination (read extended value chain, looking at the practice/process holistically via systems thinking and collaboration)

·      Interoperability (read technical support for the collaboration targeted, the ability to share content across a wide community in order to decrease redundancy, ensuring universal access and readability.)

Sounds like a healthy prescription for any ECM project – does it not? Indeed, these are the very metrics we at Information Architected use when developing strategies for our clients – no matter the vertical.

But this was not pie-in-the-sky optimism. Girish and David are realists. They admitted that the road to meaningful usage is a tough one (like so many ECM practitioners know). They identified likely challenges including change management, cost and financial viability, cycle times for success and project management. They stated that it helps to have a vision of where this change will ultimately lead and to not look at this as an exercise in IT change management, but fundamentally changing the business, again by addressing the project system-wide via systems thinking. 

Content ownership also received a fair amount of discussion. The questions was posed, “Who owns the medical record? The patient, the originating doctor, other medical personnel that obtain it?” There was no simple answer.  The entire group in attendance, including our speakers, agreed that ownership is a very real challenge for most organizations. (This reminded me of a similar issue that was discussed about a year ago at an AIIM NE event at which I was a panelist.  The question then was “Who owns the data captured when a customer transacts business with a commercial establishment? The customer or the establishment? What privacy should be afforded? Then as now, we did not come to a definitive and clear answer.)

David stressed the importance of project management, and offered that within the State of Vermont, the project was managed by breaking it down into 60+ discrete active initiatives. Excellent advice I have often given to those embarking on ECM – advice that cannot be reiterated enough.

As for prognosis: Girish and David postulated that the information revolution instigated by the advent of the internet will prove to be the fastest revolution of all time, dwarfing the rate of the industrial revolution. Girish felt that within 5 years, 80-90% of the health records in the state of MA would be completely e-based.

One reason for the positive prognosis, in my opinion, the government and healthcare industry are leveraging a Knowledge Management best practice, namely providing incentivization to encourage participation and acceptance to change. (Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, participants can obtain significant financial reward as part of the stimulus package, but only if they achieve meaningful use.)

The room was energized by this dynamic duo, who provided a most healthy outlook for ECM. At the conclusion I thanked them as an ECMer- for their positive outlook and insight placed on ECM, and secondly as a citizen of the US – for providing us with great hope that our health care is going to be enhanced – with a little help from ECM.

There was a certain amount of pride and excitement in knowing that ECM was fundamental to these positive changes in the health care industry.

ECM ROCKS.

IT meets KM meets E2.0 meets Innovation in the Boston Subway

Yesterday I was preparing for an Innovation Management training session I will be doing later this week. The sponsor, after reviewing my credentials asked “How you make the leap from information and knowledge management to coaching/developing innovation
skills?  … Your background seems to be IT.”

I provided what I hope was not too lengthy a response. In essence it stated that I view Innovation management as a fully ingrained component of KM, and IT as a strategic facilitator of both. Its interesting, but to many friends, family and colleagues my background appears disjointed. To me it is completely synergistic and intertwined.

Well, this morning I saw an article that pulled it all together. (read on and access the article.)

Email Management and Government: Do as I say not as I do

Nearly a year ago I posted a blog on the Bush Administration's attempt to not comply with a court ordered discovery of e-mails. In the blog entitled You Can Fight City Hall, I drew attention to the power of the courts in requiring compliance with e-mail records management mandates, "If such mandates can be successfully argued against the While House, is there any doubt in your mind regarding the ultimate fate your corporate e-mail management policy will meet? "

Well, apparently not everyone was listening. "City Hall" once again tried to circumvent e-mail retention policies, and this time I am embarrassed to say it is my own City Hall, Boston.

Questions were raised after a public records request by the Boston Globe unearthed only 18 e-mails to or from mayor Menino's top, Mr. Kineavy, between Oct. 1. 2008 and March 31 2009. Apparently Kineavy deleted hundreds of work e-mails before they were archived - a violation of laws regulating public records - which yes include email. Menino stated that the deleted emails were a "glitch" in the system and "sometimes technology breaks down."  A glitch? This city famous for its high-tech industry and research was not going to swallow this. A glitch?  Could you imagine how city officials  would react if the glitch were on the other foot. Oh I am sorry mister Mayor, I would have paid my taxes, but there must have been a glitch in my laptop andonline banking system. 

The City of Boston has done the right thing though (article). It has seized  Kineavy's computer and hired  outside experts in e-mail management. 

It amazes me when the governments that are behind the compliance laws that are at the root of corporate records compliance, ignore those rules and practices themselves. But it is encouraging that we have public officials that apply the same letter of the law no matter the owner of the records. It is also exciting to know that the ECM industry provides the means with which to control such situations.

Many eyes will be watching as the drama unfolds and once again ECM technologies will be part of the center stage - at least to ECM geeks like me.

A Nobler Side of ECM

 Last night was a very special night in my ECM career. I attended the 14th annual golf benefit for the Horace Mann School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, sponsored by the AIIM New England Chapter.

I came to this event feeling honored and excited - anticipating my ceremonial induction as the 2009-20010 New England Chapter President. But, my self-centered emotions quickly paled. Despite my membership in the AIIM New England Chapter of 20+ years, I have never attended this annual fundraiser. (The event is anchored in a golf tournament and I do not golf. I always assumed therefore it was not a place for me. I could not have been more wrong.)  After a full day of golf, there is an amazing gala complete with dinner, an auction and social networking (without the aid of ANY technology - a refreshing change.) This year also included a special tribute to a colleague and friend, Mark Robinson.

Participating in the latter part of the event, it became apparent to me that over the last 14 years, a most successful partnership has developed between AIIM New England and the Horace Mann School. Horace Mann is a unique school.  It is the oldest public day school for the deaf and hard of hearing in the United States. Throughout the evening, students, parents and staff from the school mingled with AIIM members and friends in a familiar and warm way that only comes with time and purpose shared over deeply meaningful goals.

Witnessing the many ways in which the New England-based ECM industry supports the Horace Mann School (including financial contibution, donation of equipment an dteh hiring of older students and alumni), gave me an entirely new sense of honor in being associated with the AIIM New England Chapter. (Sponsors included: Hyland Software, Kodak, Iron Mountain, IKON, Vignette, DatBank IMX, Muckle & Associates, Xerox, AIIM New England, ARMA Boston, C/F Data Systems, Versitec, Scanworks, Cranel Imaging, and many other non-ECM local establishments.)

I came to realize that along with accepting the official AIIM New England gavel, I've also received the opportunity and privilege to be part of a community that has successfully worked together to reach beyond the boundaries of ECM business and technology, to better the lives of others. As a Boston public school parent, I am keenly aware of the struggles and challenges our public schools currently face.

I am indeed honored, but also humbled to assume a position on this team of extraordinary folk, to help guide and grow the local AIIM chapter, and to continue the wonderful tradition of alliance with the Horace Mann School. Heck - I may even learn how to golf.  

 

  

It Ain't the Medium Its the Message or - Its the Content that Counts

In 1964, Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase " The medium is the message."  I have often quoted McLuhan in my writings and presentations, in agreement.  But, I fear far too many take his message the wrong way, which can and has lead to serious repercussions.

Yesterday I was watching a video podcast interview between two colleagues.  Both will remain anonymous.  Who they are is not important.  Their posture and what they said are important. Both are noted industry advocates in the ECM and Enterprise 2.0 space. Both provide advice to the market, which is what concerns me. One of them made a statement that was simply naive and misleading, and the other one did not correct or modify it.

My angst is grounded in the further worry that history will repeat itself, and not in a positive way. The interview was focused on the use of collaborative social technologies in an Enterprise 2.0 setting. The comment made that caused my concern - and I paraphrase - was that many enterprise users are using tools such as Twitter (Twitter was specifically mentioned in the discussion),  without any real thought as to the management of the content created.

There were two distinct points made that were misleading - possibly downright wrong.

1. My colleagues casually pondered who will "own' the content and if indeed it will be considered subject to discovery. I believe that the courts, at least in the United States, have already ruled on this. As I stated in an earlier blog post, in a class action suit regarding patient/individual privacy rights, the courts ruled that content in "FaceBook, MySpace, instant-messaging threads, blog posts and whatever else the plaintiffs might have done online" was discoverable. The plaintiffs' objection that this violated the plaintiffs’ privacy was shot down. These tools and their content were viewed as public, not on a private network, but the public world wide web. Who "owns" the content.  Apparently Twitter, in the example given by my colleagues, and, Twitter content is "public" content and therefore discoverable.  There should be no speculation about this. 

I believe part of the reason these individuals got it wrong was that they confused Web 2.0 tools with Enterprise 2.0 tools.  This is an issue that also caused frustration for me and Ron Miller during the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference, an issue we both blogged about.

2. The second statement that caused angst was the more serious one.  In further discussing how and why organizations should take a proactive approach to managing Twitter content (again - I am being liberal here in accepting their example of Twitter as an Enterprise 2.0 tool, my commentary is more focused on Enterprise 2.0 content - not public-based Web 2.0 content),  a statement was made that organizations need to take a specific look at the Enterprise 2.0 content and develop a management strategy specific to it.  A comment was made along the lines of "You should not want to apply the same rules and policies to the Twitter threads that you do your contracts."  WRONG.  As stated in the title of this blog post, it ain't the medium it's the message.

This perspective and advice was the same naive opinion that got too many organizations in trouble with e-mail.  You should not have a different management policy for e-mail, or blogs, or microblogs. The medium or format should not dictate policy (other than acceptable use of the tool of course). It is the content that matters no matter what format or tool it was created in.  My two colleagues made somewhat light reference to "Twitter streams" as if they could not really contain any mission critical content.  This was the same way many felt decades ago when e-mail was emerging as an "unofficial and casual" means of communication.  If commentary regarding contract terms (sticking with their example) are made in a Twitter stream then they should most definitely be subjected to the same policy and scrutiny as the contract - just as any relevant and related e-mail is now subjected to e-discovery.

Do not trivialize Twitter or any other form of Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 created content.  The tools used do not determine the value of or discoverability of the content - the content does.

ECM Writers Summit Looks at Web 2.0, Text Analytics, SharePoint, Cloud Computing and e-Discovery

I have Twittered about it, as have many others in attendance - but now its time for the "beyond the 140 words-at-a-time" input.

Last week I had the distinct honor of moderating the 2nd Annual Content
Management & Archiving Writers Summit (#ECMWriters), sponsored by EMC Documentum.  (I was also the moderator of last year's Summit.)

Over 30 industry analysts, consultants and practitioners assembled in New York City to discuss the current state of:

• Content Management in the Cloud
• Text Analytics
• Web 2.0
• SharePoint
• e-Discovery.

Those in attendance included Ralph Losey, Ron Miller, Bryant Duhon, Dan Woods, Jerome Wendt, Fern Halper, Gabe Acevedo, Virginia Backaitis, Geoffrey Bock, John Webster, Annette Weller-Collison, Theodora Blanchfield, Kemal Carr,  Vincent Berdot, Leonid Chernyak, Yuval Dror, Fred Van Der Molen, Philippe Niewbourg, Marta Oldani, Markus Gross, and Daniel Alguacil.

Additionally, the group was rounded out by several EMC strategists and leaders:  Mark Lewis, Whitney Tidmarsh, Razmik Abnous,  Matt Coblentz, and Marko Sillanpaa.  (I apologize for the inevitable omission of others who were there, whose name I fail to recall.)

With such a crowd, you can imagine the activity level. The room never went silent. The day was structured around the 5 topics listed above, each initiated by a formal but short presentation, and followed by open discussion and debate.

There was a subtle difference from last year, with discussion much more focused on business - less on technology, per se. With few exceptions, the discussion focused on real world business applications and case studies.  In this regard, the group often concurred that the change in the market has been subtle and more evolutionary of late.  Many of the technologies we focused on, from text analytics to SharePoint (soem even argued that the cloud was the latest iteration of time-sharing/ondemand/SaaS), have been available for several years, but the group felt that it was within the last year or so that their application within a business setting was being realized and appreciated beyond IT.  We agreed this was a positive sign of market maturity - though there is still a ways to go.

A major exception was Cloud computing, which we agreed is still a technical value proposition, but one whose value can be appealing to the business manager (in terms of greater agility, lower costs, and greener processing)

Razmik Abnous led this part of the discussion, and he continuously brought the conversation back to the business impact Cloud computing could have on ECM.  The group concurred that there is an erroneous preponderance of thought in the market that cloud computing is an all-or-nothing situation.  Razmik felt it was important to appreciate that in reality ECM can be deployed flexibly in a cloud, supporting many different architectures. The underlying ECM application, for example,  could reside in the cloud but the content may not.  Ron Miller shared an example of the US Military who is aggressively using cloud computing to enable dynamic creation of collaborative ECM sites around the globe, in an agile AND secure manner. (Miller learned of the program "from the horse's mouth - Rear Admiral Elizabeth Hight, at the recent MIT CIO Symposium).  Perhaps the strongest value statement discussed for ECM in the cloud was its potential as a connector, a means to provide transparent access across repositories and applications. 

Connection was a major theme of the day.  In fact, Mark Lewis kicked-off the day by stating connection was the single biggest challenge for ECM today. While the issue of content and application silos is not new, Mark proposed that other facets of ECM are fairly stable, and focus for both solution providers and business users needs to turn to connectivity.   While the group agreed, the message took on additional meaning (beyond bridging access to content silos), as the day proceeded.  As we proceeded through the various topics du jour, the degree to which these technologies need to be connected  in order to reach their full potential became apparent.  (The most powerful example of this was the role that text analytics can play within e-discovery.)

Fern Halper, who kicked-off the discussion on text analytics had just been at the Text Analytics Summit in Boston a week earlier.  Her presentation was peppered with real-world examples, garnered from the summit. Though some in our group started from a perspective that text analytics was still not practical, Fern's anecdotes, as well as those from others in the group, dispelled that sentiment.

Dan Woods provided a  review of the success of Web 2.0 and how it is ushering in Enterprise 2.0.  It was interesting for me to observe how some in the room (a room of ECM industry analysts and consultants), were still somewhat unclear on the role and value of Enterprise 2.0, separate and distinct from Web 2.0.   Dan's main message, which many, including myself concurred with is that although Web 2.0 has been somewhat successful in accelerating adoption of Enterprise 2.0, there is often a tendency for enterprise adopters to adopt not only the underlying technologies, but also metaphors, models, techniques and strategies. This often leads to failure. The subtle differences between communities, goals and objectives inside the firewall require a targeted fresh look at how technologies such as wikis, blogs and mashups should most effectively be used, and what it takes to foster user adoption.

There was much agreement among the participants concerning the state of SharePoint.  Bryant Duhon shared with the group a wealth of data regarding current SharePoint market trends.  Most users leverage SharePoint as a front-end to a larger ECM deployments. Nonetheless, given the extent of penetration across organizations, SharePoint is viewed as a near ubiquitous component of ECM platforms within organizations. While we agreed that SharePoint still lacked much functionality that keeps it from being an all encompassing ECM system,  we also agreed that Microsoft is likely to continue adding functionality, both through acquisition and development. There was much speculation regarding how far it might go, and how quickly. Some felt current utilization of FAST search indicated a poor understanding of search within Microsoft.  Others felt that Microsoft's roots and strengths are in consumer-oriented, small scale applications, and as such, SharePoint would remain a "good enough for the masses", "not good enough for the enterprise"  player in the market.  (This attitude of "good enough" is supported by the findings of a study I did on SharePoint on behalf of Oracle earlier this year.)  It was interesting to watch the body language and listen to the comments from the EMC Documentum folk in the room.  There were moments of defensiveness and squirming, but there were also moments of confidence and a clear strategy for how to complement SharePoint, and leverage the fact that it is raising the business community's awareness of ECM - albeit at a elementary level.  Perhaps it was Ralph Losey (an attorney and our e-Discovery discussion leader) who exhibited the greatest frustration with SharePoint providing a "good enough" approach to ECM.

Though SharePoint is not fully to blame, Losey felt that far too many organizations  under estimate what good content management is really all about, and that lack of adequate management leads to impractical, and perhaps unnecessary challenges for e-discovery. Ralph quipped that when it comes to ECM - most organizations have the "E" and "C" (there are Enterprises and they certainly know how to create Content), but there is little "M" (too few have solid management practices.) Losey challenged records management proponents in the room, stating that a good records practice is simply no longer enough.  In the electronic world - everything is potentially discoverable - record or not, and thus good management must apply to all content.  Ralph boldly proposed that the rising costs associated with e-Discovery are killing the American judicial system, but that this can change if technology (and practices) were properly leveraged.  Here, he challenged not the business users, however, but the technology providers. In his opinion, solution providers do a terrible job in educating legal and management executives on the benefits of ECM, and as a result technology goes much under utilized.

The discussion that ensued on e-Discovery was a great culmination of the day. E-discovery most obviously related to all the other topics of the day. E-discovery is most certainly more about business than IT.  Tools such as SharePoint and Web/Enterprise 2.0 are accelerating user command and speed of content creation, but offer little to nothing in the way of management.  The virtualization of ECM in the cloud is also an issue that needs careful scrutiny from a discovery standpoint before adoption. The power of text analytics within a e-Discovery system was recognized by everyone, but again some felt that there was more promise than results.  Most concurred that the big ECM solution providers do a poor job of incorporating text analytics techniques into their systems.

Someone (I forget who) shared how the field of ECM has become more exciting.  Following discussion on text analytics in particular,  it was observed "Library services and document management is boring, but  this, this is sexy." Yeah baby.

On a final note, it is highly likely that next year's ECM Writers Summit will focus much more on Documentum's upcoming CentreStage.  Both EMC and non-EMC participants several times alluded to CentreStage as a product that will have a significant impact on redefining state-of-the-industry, and will likely incorporate much of the technologies discussed throughout the day. So stay tuned - we'll see.