TakingAIIM

Collaboration vs. Control - a pithy explanation

Earlier today I posted a commentary on the ECM market, spurred by my experience at the AIIM ECM roadshow in Los Angeles.  It was a long post, so I figured I would follow it with a pithy one. 

The roadshow is titled "Collaboration versus Control:  The Sharepoint effect."  I kicked off the day with a presentation derived from the the AIIM Market IQ on Content Security and AIIM Market IQ on Enterprise 2.0.)  I explained the delicate balance between the ability to easily collaborate and share, and the need to control and manage enterprise content.

At the break an attendee came up to me and said, "When I registered for his I was unsure what you all meant by The Sharepoint Effect, but now I get it.  You are telling us to not be the fool in 'powerfool'."

I told him that I would share his comment.  It is brilliant. It sums up the challenge that we in ECM face today - Don't be the fool in powerful.

ECM - From Here to Eternity

I just returned from an AIIM road show in Los Angeles on the Sharepoint effect – (there are 3 more cities - San Fransisco, Seattle and Dallas -  if interested you can still register).

The road show looks at Enterprise Content Management (ECM) – and positions Microsoft Sharepoint as illustrative of a current market phenomena:  the ability to more easily embrace online content creation sharing/collaboration, but simultaneously creating a control and command issue, one that if not managed can lead to chaos, unused resources and potential great risk.  This is a subject that is discussed in detail in the AIIM Market IQ on Content Security, and Market IQ on Enterprise 2.0.

The subject of collaboration versus control is not only interesting, but at the fulcrum of most ECM strategies today.  No guessing as to why over 220 people attended this event in LA, with similar numbers signed up for the upcoming cities.  The enthusiasm of the audience, the questions and comments made rekindled my own enthusiasm for the ECM. 

Over the 20+ years in which I have been a part of the ECM market place,  much has changed but much has also remained the same.  The physical characteristics of the document, the approaches to "document-based" communication and the platform have changed, but the need to manage documents, no matter the format or platform, and the criticality of an ECM strategy remain constant.  Viewed slightly differently: the potential value derived from enterprise content has significantly increased, but so too has the potential risk associated with poorly managed content.

I recently read an article entitled "IT Hiring Defies Broader Job Picture."  The article points out that in Massachusetts, IT related jobs are actually on the rise.  Among the technologies behind this is ECM.  While the perspective of the article is one of pleasant surprise, I was not surprised.  ECM is burgeoning.  New opportunities and challenges exist.  Technology alternatives and  opportunities emerge on a regular basis. The ECM component of the organization is likely to stay active and grow in importance as business migrates more to e-based communication and business models. 

In deed, while I often like to discuss the cutting edge issues surrounding ECM, the LA road show activity reminded me that the vibrant nature of ECM is found not just in the cutting edge, but in the ongoing adoption of technologies and capabilities that are well established components of the ECM platform.

Among the 18 technology providers that were exhibiting at the road show, 7 represented scanning and imaging products.  These are technologies that have been part of ECM longer than I have.  Those in the industry, like myself, sometimes take them for granted - like picking up the phone.   The road show activity caused me to step back and re-assess the vibrancy of this sector of the ECM market.  While imaging and scanning are by no means new, there is still a large market associated with them.  While more and more content is created online, paper (that needs to be scanned) is still prevalent  in many organizations, both in the form of legacy content, and new content. 

In an earlier post,I introduced a New York Times article in which it was reported that for the first time, paper consumption in the United States, France, Germany, Japan, Belgium, Sweden, Austria, Canada and Finland actually went down, between 2000 and 2005.  Such statistics cause people (including myself) to sometimes  lapse into thinking scanning and paper are less relevant.  Ah, but in doing research for a whitepaper he is writing, my colleague, Dan Keldsen uncovered an equally telling statistic of a different nature.  The advent of electronic filing (e-filing) of taxes began in 1992.  This year the IRS expected about 60% of tax returns to be filed electronically. (ah yes, less paper consumption in the U.S.) Nonetheless that meant that for the 2008 Filing Season, the IRS was still expecting approximately 52 million paper returns (Source: “Interim Results of the 2008 Filing Season” TREASURY INSPECTOR GENERAL FOR TAX ADMINISTRATION,Reference Number: 2008-40-100).  In a word - WOW.  Sure we are embracing new technologies and migrating to online communities and content, but in the process we are still creating a fair amount of paper that still needs to be dealt with.  While more Americans are now submitting tax returns electronically, the 52 million that continue to use paper represent a very real and large scanning application.

Now keeping that in mind, also consider the fact that electronic-based content grows exponentially.  While the legacy keeps ECMers busy, so too does the emerging electronic content.  With it come myriad issues - many unprecedented.  In an earlier post, I discussed the ongoing concern of migrating business content so that is  accessible and readable  years from now.  This issue also surfaced in a recent article in the Business & Innovation section of the Boston Globe. Its worth a read and is referenced here to call attention to a real and present issue (yet another) that ECMers need to manage.

But access and readability over time is just one issue.  If we make content accessible and readible over time we also have to worry about copyright.  Electronic content is easily proliferated. ECMers must  contend with the impact their domain has on copyright. After three years of hearings, studies and deliberation, the Section 108 Study Group, a committee of copyright experts charged with updating for the digital world the Copyright Act, has posted its final report on how to bring the U.S. Copyright Act regarding libraries and archives into the digital age. The results are somethingthat every ECMer need to be concerned with legally and technically.

A few weeks back I listened to an NPR "Marketplace" broadcast,  in which the issue of obituaries was discussed.  Apparently, obituaries are one of the last things to go the digital age.  In their own way they are keeping paper newspapers alive (of the irony).  But Web-based alternatives are emerging and will likely pose a formidable challenge.  Newspapers, like many business, find themselves caught with one foot in the paper age, and one foot in the digital age, forced for the time being, with straddling the two to meet various market demands. Nearly every organziation must deal with issue of ECM - media migration, legality, readability, storage, process efficiency, effective communication, generational differences, the list is nearly infinite. 

Perhaps this post is a bit long, but perhaps it needed to be.  The point is despite its age, ECM is an issue that is still growing - perhaps an eternal issue. Old issues linger, while new issues arise.  The talents and competencies  required of an ECMer grow.  But one thing is for sure there is great job security for those that do it well.

Thought Leaders Meet at ECM Writers Summit

What a great week for ECM, Enterprise 2.0, SaaS and me.

Looking back on the past week, I have to say the ECM techno-geek side of me is smiling.  As I posted earlier, the week stated off with participating in a AIIM New England chapter event that included a panel of users that have adopted a SaaS model to ECM.  As if that wasn’t enough fun and education, the week ended with my moderating and participating in a thought leadership writer’s summit on SaaS & cloud computing, SOA & BPM, Social Computing & ECM, and Text Analytics.

The event was sponsored by EMC.  I again thank them for inviting me to co-host this summit. Some of the brightest strategists and technologists from EMC were there including Howard Shao, Mark Lewis, Whitney Tidmarsh, Razmik Abnous, Michael Hackney, Matt Coblentz,   and Lubor Ptacek.  More importantly, we were joined by a variety of ECM industry thought leaders including Nathaniel Palmer, Barclay Blair, David DeLong, Margie Semilof, Mary Cohodas, Geoff Bock, Bill Trippe, Vincent Berdot, Stephen Cameron, Christian Daems, Christos Varelas, Ron Miller and Beth Pariseau (see her post on this event).  (I apologize for he inevitable omission of others who were there, whose name I fail to recall at the moment.)

Well, as you can imagine, with such a crowd, the discussion of was lively and full of opinion (sometimes agreeing and sometimes differing.) The purpose of this post is to provide my recollection of the key points that came for the discussion.

Despite the variety of topics (SaaS & cloud computing, SOA & BPM, Social Computing & ECM, and Text Analytics), discussion almost always came back to a basic value proposition for ECM, striking a balance between increased access/collaboration, and content governance and security. (See the AIIM Market IQ on Content Security for more on this idea, and a post by summit participant Ron Miller.) Terms frequently uttered in discussion included mobility, social networks, collaboration, agility, flexibility, e-discovery, compliance and risk. Collectively these seem to represent the potential benefits associated with ECM.

ECM was frequently discussed not as a technology, or a single implementation, but as a platform, a competency that should be available across the entire enterprise. In this regard, the group often reiterated that solution providers and pundits of ECM all too often talk in terms of unstructured content, and that this is wrong.  ECM is about all forms of content – and therefore should provide a single integrated interface to the unstructured content (e.g. documents), as well as structured content (e.g. databases associated with ERP and payroll systems.)  Too much focus has been paid to the unstructured content separately and distinctly from the structured.

This single interface was extended to the concept of enterprise search.  We discussed that enterprise search has erroneously been discussed in the market far too often as a product.  The often touted single enterprise master taxonomy and search tool is not most effective.  In reality effective search across the enterprise will likely involve multiple search tools, taxonomies, relevancy rankings, etc., each finely tailored and tuned to specific content and use cases, but presented and managed as a single interface to the user.  The group agreed that this requires great complexity on the part of IT, but that complexity can and needs to be hidden for the user.   

We all acknowledged that the rules of publishing have changed.  On the positive side this has allowed faster and more wide scale dissemination of knowledge and experience.  On the other, this has created a demand for new approaches to demonstrate reliability and trust in “discovered” content.

Similarly, the long tail of electronic content (compared to the much shorter tail of paper content), necessitates more powerful approaches to management, retention, and findability.  Without it enterprise content can quickly become chaotic and/or grossly under utilized.

In this regard, Matt Coblentz of EMC proposed that “Content is Stupid”.  The group agreed, (or at least some did), with the addition that Content Management is intelligent.

We thought that overall culture was ahead of technology with regards to collaboration, but behind technology with regards to security and compliance.   

Some of us saw ECM in a state of evolution, progressively increasing functionality and ease of use over time.  Others argued that the advent of functionality such as SaaS and Enterprise 2.0 represents a hockey stick inflection point for the industry, that will be viewed as a revolutionary point in the market in time to come.

I for one walked away with a sense that ECM is once again a very exciting marketplace.  Ron Miller reminded us, that in his review of the AIIM 2008 show, he had indicated that the show was buzzing with excitement.

With that, the realm of ECM has become increasingly complex.  ECM is not just about technology, nor just about content.  The ECM practitioner MUST be concerned and involved in people, process and content (EMC’s words), or content, community and context (my words.) This is what keeps this market place alive and vibrant.  This is what affords careers and debates that go far beyond technology alone.

On a final note, I will share a light moment. To a large degree there was much reaffirming among this  group, as opposed to learning. There were some exceptions. Two new technologies were introduced:  “blockies and wigs.”  These terms were coined by one of the speakers in a slip of the tongue in his excitement over the power of “wikis and blogs”.  We all got a good laugh out of it. OK – maybe you had to be there, or maybe you just aren’t ECM-geeky enough.

A SaaSy View to ECM

I literally just returned from an AIIM New England chapter event, focused on SaaS and ECM. Like many of these local chapter events, this one was small enough to allow lots of Q&A/interaction, yet big enough to create energy in the room.  When I departed at 12:30 (the official end time was 12:00), there were still 10 - 15 people in the room buzzing about.  Also characteristic of many local chapter events, this event focused around real world case studies.  In this case, we heard from Alan Pransky (user of a SaaS imaging and ECM system from Kaulkin) and Joe Graves (user of a SaaS DM system, integrated into Salesforce.com, from SpringCM).

Both users had had positive experiences with their SaaS implementations, which is to be assumed given that their respective solution providers recommended them as speakers,  were in the room and had sponsored the event.  That said, there was some candid discussion. Obviously much was talked about over the morning.  I will provide highlights here, as a means to spread the learning that went on.

Both speakers indicated that one of the biggest strengths of the SaaS implementation was the low cost and speed of deployment.,  In Alan Pransky's case this was especially valuable.  Migration to an imaging solution was not a foregone conclusion for his company.  The ability to develop a working/real proof of concept in a few weeks, and a cost that was a fraction of other solutions they were looking at made all the difference.  Without this type of approach, Alan was not so sure he would have been successful in convincing his company that this was the way to go. 

Joe's situation was a bit different.  His company was not quite so technology averse.  Nonetheless he did agree that the cost and speed of deployment had much to do with why they went the SpringCM route.  In fact he shared that in looking for a ECM solution they solicited bids.  Typical bids were coming in at about $800,000 and another $200,000 in maintenance for first year.  The SaaS approach came in at about $200,000.  He shared this in response to an interesting question for the audience concerning taxes and depreciation.

Basically, the gentleman in the audience wanted to know if the two pricing models (purchasing software versus having provided as a service) were different enough that they mattered.  From an accounting standpoint was one preferred or viewed as more advantageous.  Neither of the panelists was a CPA, but both seem to agree that for their respective companies, the financial model between SaaS was not initially positioned as more advantageous or a requisite, but that in the end, there was a positive side seen.  Joe joked - hey it was cheaper, and what CFO doesn't like that (I am paraphrasing.)

Many questions from the audience focused on issues of security, authenticity and reliability.  (This may have been due to the fact that earlier in my presentation I shared AIIM market data that indicated security was the biggest concern in considering SaaS models, and encouraged questions in this regard.)  Alan and  Joe agreed that  issues of security have to be addressed and handled from the outset.   Both stated that their respective solution providers had to demonstrate an ability to protect their content or they would not have been able to go forward.  Alan shared that the provider's offering of storing the content on three separate sites was an improvement to existing practices and provided a needed approach to business continuity.

In selling the security component  of SaaS (actually any technology), Joe recommended doing so by speaking as techno-nerdy as possible.  In this regard Alan agreed and they both  offered that here the solution provider should be able to help. This is the time, they suggested, to toss around acronyms, standards, technical terms, and by all means provide the names of companies that have already adopted the SaaS solution, if they are perceived leaders in a field or in need of secure content.

As for risks, the main one  talked about was in going with the wrong provider - one who cannot provide an adequate level of support,  reliability and security.  They also stated - more to the solution providers in the room - that they are not selling technology, but business solutions.  As such, they suggested that technical terms should be avoided.  That providers should listen carefully to explanation of the targeted business processes, and then sell business applications.

With a bit of help from Dan Carmel, CEO of SpringCM, the speakers reminded the audience that their SaaS implementations were not just hosted implementations. While hosting was a key component, the services  and configurability of the system (versus customization - which in Joe's case included integration into SalesForce.com)  were also key to the value statement for their SaaS implementations.

Lastly, when asked which business applications are most likely to be solved via a SaaS model, Joe offered its the ones that your management does not think of as a service.  His point was SaaS by definition may confuse or frighten some folks, but that if you do not position it as SaaS (a service) - but a cost-effective solution it is easier to get in the door.

aiimALERT: HP climbs Tower to ECM; Stops Short of Top Floor

Yesterday HP and Tower Software announced a pre-bid agreement for HP to acquire Tower. (See press release.)

The independent/standalone ECM solution market got 1 vendor less with this acquisition, leaving this segment of the market extremely lean.  Are Interwoven and Open Text the only two top tier players left alone (belles of the ball or wall flowers?).

OK, that aside, what does this mean specifically for HP and Tower?  According to the press release, " The acquisition of Tower will add electronic records management to HP Software’s existing e-discovery and compliance capabilities in information collection and retention."  No argument there, nothing very new there either.  Under an pre-existing agreement, Tower TRIM Context was already integrated with the HP Integrated Archive Platform, providing records management within the compliance archiving platform. 

Although Tower has consistently touted its records management capabilities, it did so within a full ECM suite, that includes functionality such as workflow, document management, e-mail management, document assembly, web content management and, to a certain degree, collaboration (i.e. a small step into the Enterprise 2.0 arena). 

There is more potential to this acquisition than HP is touting in the release. Are they being near-sighted based on the previous partner relationship?  It would behoove HP to re-assess the value of this acquisition and perhaps position these new capabilities beyond records management, e-discovery and compliance, into the realm of a full fledged ECM platform offering from a systems and hardware provider, putting them head-to-head with the likes of IBM and EMC.

aiimALERT: Open Source Players Join to Close Functional Gap

Yesterday Intalio, Inc. an Open Source BPMS company, announced a partnership with Alfresco Software, an Open Source  Enterprise Content Management (ECM) company. The integrated offering allows users to manage  document-centric workflow processes and support the collaborative development of business processes. (See details.)

Despite its age the ECM market is ripe with new beginnings.  As readers of the blog know, I am wrapping up the Market IQ on Enterprise 2.0 (register for 3/27 webinar).  Major themes of this topic include collaboration, low-barrier application development and open business models.  Part of the report looks at the intersection of Enterprise 2.0 and ECM.   Although with a slightly different perspective, this announcement by Inatlio and Alfresco does the same thing.

Alfreso provides an Open Source approach to ECM.  With the integration of Intalio, an Open Source workflow offering the ECM platform is far more complete.   But, even more fascinating to me is the fact that the integration effort was undertaken by  the Demand Driven Development (D3) model introduced by Intalio in 2006, an Enterprise 2.0 approach to development in and of itself.

There is great synergy in this simple announcement on many plateaus.  Open Source and SaaS represent new models to implementing ECM in an enterprise.  Enterprise 2.0 offers new ways to support and facilitate collaboration in an enterprise, as part of an ECM strategy.  And here the twain doth meet.  These are all industry trends that AIIM must, and will continue to monitor. 

The ECM market is anything but dull.

ECM Fundamentally Still a Challenge

                   

I was recently commissioned by EMC  to conduct a market survey assessing the state of the Enterprise Content Management (ECM)  industry. 

The survey polled more than 200 IT business professionals.  It provided many insights into the current realities of ECM deployments - some expected - some surprising.   

Despite the tenure of ECM technologies, organizations continue to struggle with management of unstructured business content. The issue is a very real one.  Virtually all of the respondents (99%), stated that unstructured content is fundamental to all of their core business processes.  Most respondents identified major challenges if unstructured information was not readily available as part of those processes.

The inability to effectively manage content was linked to problematic issues such as inconsistent communications between functions, duplication of effort, poor decision-making, higher costs, and non-compliance with internal best practices.

Respondents also agreed that ECM deployment still require more effort than desired.  The biggest challenge to deployment was sited as integration. Nearly half of respondents (47%) reported that content management offerings require too much effort to implement, with integration of disparate technology components (37%) and integration with legacy systems (34%) accounting for the biggest delays in developing business solutions on top of ECM platforms. Because of these integration challenges, half of respondents indicated that they wanted solutions built on top of an ECM platform.

Publication of the full findings is forthcoming.  In the interim, I discussed the survey findings with Steve Robins of EMC.   Listen to a podcast of the discussion.             

Enterprise 2.0 - Thanks for Noticing

Readers of this blog know that this week we spent a fair amount of time at the AIIM show.  You also realize that AIIM Market Intelligence has been spending much effort lately on the subject of Enterprise 2.0 (blogging, a recent webinar, training program, market survey, upcoming Market IQ, and associated Market IQ webinar.) At the show I delivered a one hour presentation on the intersection of Enterprise 2.0 and ECM (download slides used).  Dan Keldsen and I also rolled out the just completed Enterprise 2.0 practitioner training. 

Things went real well.  But don't take my word for it.  An attendee, Ron Miller, recently posted a commentary on the AIIM show.  To paraphrase Ron, ECM is relevant (again), and one reason is the focus on Enterprise 2.0 this year.  I agree Ron.  Thanks for noticing. 

As I stated in my inaugural post, I joined AIIM in order to broaden the direction of ECM, quote: "Please join me in TakingAIIM, in placing different technologies, applications, solution providers and industry trends into the cross hairs of TakingAIIM."

It is most rewarding to see that individuals, such as Ron also share this exciting new horizon for ECM.  To that end I must thank organizations such as SpringCM, Socialtext and EMC who have underwritten our market research on Enterprise 2.0.  They too share our excitement and vision for Enterprise 2.0.  Because of their generosity we can make this research available to the market at no cost.

The upcoming report, available for download on the AIIM site on March 24th, promises to be a groundbreaking educational resource to the market.  It contains the results of months of research, including the results of an 80+ question survey, completed by 414 users and evaluators of Enterprise 2.0.  I encourage those who are excited by the recent coverage of ECM and Enterprise 2.0 to be sure and join us for the March 27th webinar in which we discuss the survey findings.

But this is just the beginning.  Is ECM still relevant?  Well as long as there are enterprises and they have content, ECM is relevant, and AIIM Market Intelligence will chronicle the latest points of relevancy.  Over the course of the next year, in addition to the Market IQ on Enterprise 2.0, we will be developing other Market IQs on topics such as ECM and managing business processes, the criticality of findability, the state of the art in content creation and content distribution and ECM and innovation management.

If there are other compelling business areas that you think are impacted by ECM, let me know, by commenting here.

The ECM Market - Its Not Easy Being Green - or is it?

At last night's annual AIIM awards dinner, Bob Zagami, Vice Chair AIIM, quipped how the ECM industry is green – "just compare it to the OnDemand (Printing) show next door."  Funny as the comment was (you had to witness the consumption of paper at the OnDemand show to appreciate the humor in this statement), Bob was right.  ECM does indeed have a green aspect to it.   

In fact, I am not sure if Bob realized how timely his remark was.  Its been a long time coming.  For the 20 years that I have been attending the AIIM show,  we have been touting the advantages of online content.   Perhaps not always with a focus on the ecology side of green, but the financial side.  The market has not responded to either "green light" (cost savings/new business models or reduction in paper consumption) with the speed one would have liked,  but there is evidence that we are finally reaching a critical mass, not just in business but in the general population.

In a recent article in the New York Times,  it was reported that, for the first time, paper consumption in the United States, France, Germany, Japan, Belgium, Sweden, Austria, Canada and Finland actually went down, between 2000 and 2005.  (Less developed countries such as China, India, Russia and Mexico continue to increase their paper consumption.) For years, despite the prevalence of computers and electronic content, we watched paper consumption rise globally, as the more content we created (online) the more we printed (on paper).  Apparently, in the world's more developed countries, that tide is turning and people are "Doing the AIIM thing", and not only creating electronically, but using, managing, sharing and accessing online.  The article points to several business and personal life scenarios in which paper is playing a lesser role in developed countries. 

At around the same time, NPR ran a story (listen to it)  entitled Digitizing Libraries.  This audio article focused on a recent move by several libraries and educational institutions to digitize their collections, for a variety of reasons. While this article also provided evidence for the movement by society as a whole to embrace online content, it also pointed out some of the challenges we face.

Apparently, Harvard teamed with Google to digitize its collections.  The Boston Public Library declined to work with Google however.  Why? Google wanted to place controls on access to the collection. (Ben Franklin would roll over in his grave).  In this regard, Google acted similarly to Amazon with its Kindle e-book appliance (see earlier post). So the library had to go a different route.   

Migration to online content at home and in the office is, and will continue to be fraught with challenges and challengers.  But, nonetheless the migration has started, in earnest.  Whether the migration is motivated by a desire to be green, or make green (cutting costs, new business models, better means to share and collaborate), is somewhat irrelevant.  Either way, the end is the same.  Digital content (and vicarioulsy the ECM industry) is no longer seen as fringe, and it should not be long before it is the norm, not the exception. 

East Meets West - Enterprise Report Management

In the world of ECM, focus is predominately on the unstructured side of the world - documents, web content and the like.  Enterprise reports are a curious form of content, while presented in unstructured or semi-structured formats, the majority of content is often rooted in structured databases.  I am speaking of reports and forms such as invoices, financial reports, inventories, packing slips and spreadsheets.  Enterprise reports bring challenges associated with both the data management and content management.  There is also the potential for these sources of content to slip through the cracks between data and content management.

In an effort to better understand the state-of-the-industry concerning Enterprise Report Management, I am conducting a short (very short - 16 question) survey, and invite you to please take it. 

You can access the survey at http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB2279E83X6DY

I will share the results of the survey with you as a thank you for taking the time to complete it.   I hope you will find the 15 minutes needed to complete the survey during this busy time of year.

It may sound trite, but you time and opinion are greatly appreciated.