TakingAIIM

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.

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.

Doctors Offer Conflicting Diagnosis for E-Medical Records

Last Sunday on NPR Weekend Edition a debate was held between Dr. Jonathan Oberlander and Dr. John Halamka, over the practicality of e-medical records (listen to it - its only 5 minutes long). OK, maybe I am a bit prejudiced. As you may recall I have worked with Dr. John Halamka a few times, most recently interviewing him for an article in Infonomics. But that aside, really - Dr. Halamka was far more convincing and was speaking from a position of experience - not theory. Dr. Oberlander argues that while a good idea, despite President Obama's push for e-medical records, it was likely not going to happen anytime soon.  His reasons - the usual naysayers reasons - its too expensive, the gap between reality and success is too wide, the software is too complex, compatibility issues, expectations are exaggerated ...

Dr. Halamka, who has been successful with implementing e-medical records and practices countered  that the systems can be implemented leveraging the internet, leveraging web interfaces to allow doctors to participate with no additional hardware and minimal if any additional software.  By imposing a few foundational standards that are nearly transparent to the practitioner a universal means of collaborating and communicating is achieved. He admitted that some training is also still required, but not a whole redefinition of what it means in the day of the life of the health care professional.

Dr. Oberlander  retracted a bit, admitting that e-prescriptions are a good idea and "should" be adopted and that Dr. Halamka made a very compelling argument (he even suggested that the White House conscript Dr. Halamka as a spokesperson because he makes the case for e-medical records far more compelling.)

Again, I may be prejudiced, but in the end I do believe Dr. Halamka made the more compelling case.  What I liked most about his position, however, was that the advice he gave is relevant to any ECM project.  Start with a manageable project (he started with the Boston area only), know/define your community, leverage existing technology platforms, use technology to the nth degree to fit the current processes and users - not vice-versa (BPR efficiencies aside),  never be reluctant to impose a few critical standards to bring about a far greater good and be clear what the end game and benefits are.

Now that is doctor's advice all we ECMers can live with.

Q&A: SharePoint Webinar and Whitepaper (Part 4)

This is the fourth post in which I answer questions that were posed, but not answered during the webinar on SharePoint. (Parts 1, 2 and 3 also contain related questions and answers.)

You may listen to the recorded webinar, during which many other questions were answered.

This post has a theme to it - Records Management and SharePoint.  Several questions were asked, all revolving around this issue.  I have grouped them together, hoping that the juxtapositioning of questions and answers will render a result greater than a mere sum of the parts.

So here goes...

Q: What do you consider the difference between document management and records management?

A:  Clearly this question is not a SharePoint specific issue, but a far more basic ECM question.  I imagine it came up in the SharePoint webinar because, SharePoint received better grades for document management functionality than it did for records management.  I can and do provide lengthy training and lectures on such subjects, but this is not the time or place, so let me be brief.  Document management (DM) is basically the ability to provide library services on a file.  It tracks revisions (edits) and maintains an audit trail of what was done by whom to the file.  Additionally most DM systems also provide some approach to search and retrieval, and security. Records management (RM) is a far more formal and structured discipline, governed by a litany of standards and best practices. RM systems support the definition of a classification scheme for categorizing documents into “record types.” Additionally RM tools allow users to, or automate, the declaration of documents as records.  Once declared, the records are secured, and maintained until their declared destruction or archival date is met, and then appropriate action is taken. RM systems can also play a critical role in e-discovery and compliance applications.  Again, SharePoint gets “good” grades on document management, and “poor” grades on records management.  (See earlier post for more detail.)

Q: Why do you think the survey respondents said that SharePoint is not used or only used somewhat in compliance and e-discovery applications?

A:  I believe the answer to this question is implied in the response above.  Put frankly, SharePoint does not provide adequate functionality to address records management and therefore is not heavily used in applications that require this functionality, such as compliance and e-discovery.  Those who are using it “somewhat” are likely using the SharePoint environment as a platform for file sharing – only – and have augmented it with other integrated technologies and processes.

Q: Does a Records Management program assist in deploying SharePoint?

A:  Clearly RM is an area of functionality that most users believe SharePoint does not provide well.  So, in scenarios in which RM level control is  desired or necessary, then yes, the integration of an RM system with SharePoint can be very beneficial, and render a less-risk SharePoint environment.  On the other hand, no, this does not simplify deployment – but rather complicates it.  Integration of additional functionality such as RM, was the number 2 greatest challenge sited by survey takers, second only to adequate personnel and toolsets to execute the integration.

Q: Does SharePoint increase the need for corporations to reignite their records management programs?  What do we tell executives who think that SharePoint is the ultimate, simple solution to complete records management.

 A:   SharePoint provides facilitated sharing of files, not necessarily in a secure or controlled environment (read RM.) So yes, in my opinion, an organization should "reignite" its RM programs when deploying SharePoint, at least to ask IF the SharePoint collections warrant records-level ocntrol. If an executive is insisting that SharePoint should “simply be implemented to ultimately solve the records management issues of the organization", a little and simple education is necessary.  This is a perception problem of what records management is. Have him/her describe what they mean by records management.  If focus is on facilitated sharing – proceed.  If focus is, on the other hand, on compliance, point them to these survey findings and beg that they learn from the experiences of those that went before him/her.

OK that's it for the RM questions.  In my next post, I will revert back to a rich mixture of issues.  BTW - we are getting close.  Probably 1-2 more SharePoint Q&A posts, so stay tuned...

Q&A: SharePoint Webinar and Whitepaper (Part 3)

This is the third post in which I answer questions that were posed, but not answered during the webinar on SharePoint.  (Part 1 and Part 2 also contain related questions and answers.) As always, but especially on this topic, given its relative immaturity, I encourage any of you that have similar or conflicting opinions, insights and experiences to comment.

You may still listen to the recorded webinar during which many other questions were answered and issues discussed.

So here goes -the next 10 questions and answers:

Q:  Are BLOBs full-text searchable?

A:  This question may have been asked generically, so let me start with a broad answer. In general, BLOBs or Binary Large Objects, can be full-text searched only with some search engines.  My understanding is that BLOBs can be made full-text searchable with the SharePoint full-text search tool, but that this requires customization.

Q:  How would you define "file sharing"? How is that the same or different from "file document storage"? Is one predominant application of SharePoint a file document storage system? (AND I am tacking on this separate question : How does SharePoint file sharing differ from a normal file system?)

A:  Although some may argue that there are technical differences between file sharing and file document storage (comments welcome), based on the tone of the question, I am inclined to answer: file sharing and file document storage are basically the same functionality. File sharing is typically used to denote common access (sharing) of files over a network, usually following a peer-to-peer model. (This is the big difference between file sharing and a simple file system – the ability to share files without replication.)  And, yes, based on the survey responses as well as my general, observations, the MOST predominate application of SharePoint is file sharing/ file document storage.

Q:  Where is the best place on the Internet to get governance information about SharePoint deployment?

A:  I do not know if it is ”the best” but the Microsoft SharePoint website has a sub-site focused on governance.  Additionally Microsoft employee Michael Gannotti covers this topic in a recent blog post.

Q:  Does the Oracle Integrated ECM product improve the records management functionality of SharePoint that was not positively viewed in the initial survey?

A: The Oracle ECM product, as is the case with many other ECM and RM products such as those from CA, Open Text, and IBM do provide records management functionality superior to that offered natively in SharePoint, and these product will integrate with SharePoint.

Q: How many of the surveyed organizations were using the RM portion of SharePoint?

A:  The majority of users, 64%, were not using the records management functionality within SharePoint at all. 5% of the surveyed organizations were using the records management capability within SharePoint exclusively as their enterprise records system. Another 6% were using it to a significant degree. The remaining 25% said they used it "somewhat."

Q:  Beyond employee facing portal, what's the next killer application for SharePoint?

A:  Based on the survey data, there is no other clear front-runner for a SharePoint killer application, beyond employee facing portals.  Although used in many applications, survey respondents predominately positioned SharePoint as a minor role within the business application.  Findings such as this one led to the observations that SharePoint is very much positioned as a component to an overall ECM strategy (assuming of course you have a strategy - and issue I will address more directly in the next post - I promise.)

Q:  Would you say that SharePoint is more for a medium to large environment rather than the small company?

A:  No, one of the strengths of SharePoint is the (initially anyway) low barrier to implementation.  While the collaboration and file sharing issues may scale very differently for a large company, many small companies can still benefit from such functionality.

Q:  [NOTE:  Several questions from multiple individuals have been grouped together here.]
Is Microsoft planning to fix security issues? Do you believe MOSS will bring any value to these findings with significant product improvements in the next 1-3 years or will it continue as is? We are in the process of migrating our SP 2003 sites to MOSS. I am finding the improvements in MOSS (over SP 2003) to be significant. Do you feel that Microsoft is attempting to fill some of the 'gaps' that were mentioned in the presentation?

A:  I am not privy to any Microsoft internal strategy for future releases of SharePoint.  But I am sure most who watch this space would agree that yes, Microsoft has definitely improved the efficiency and functionality of SharePoint over the last 2 years, and will continue to do so. SharePoint is a strategic and fundamental product for Microsoft and given the number of users already on board, it would be unlikely that Microsoft would abandon the product or put it in mothballs.  Note that the FAST search tool that was acquired my Microsoft approximately a year ago, was recently integrated the SharePoint product set into (though not embedded yet). There are also a host of partners that are adding functionality to SharePoint.

Q: To what extent is SharePoint being offered as an on-demand solution vs., installation on the user's servers?

A:  SharePoint is available as both licensed software and as an on demand or SaaS solution from both Microsoft and third parties. Among the organizations that took the survey, 30% were using SharePoint in a hosted solution capacity.

Q: Does SharePoint provide version control capability when documentation has been modified?

A:  Yes. Among survey respondents, 20% did not use the document management (which would include version control) functionality provided in SharePoint, and 49% used it somewhat.

Q: Exactly how would a BPEL process interact with the SharePoint repository - is it an API, a SharePoint web part, etc.?

A:  BPEL (Business Process Execution Language ) for Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) is an add-on for Windows Workflow Foundation in the .NET Framework 3.0. The download is aimed at software developers.  (Also see Paul Andrew's blog,  he is a Technical Product Manager on the Sharepoint team at Microsoft Corporation. )

OK - enough for now.  More to come - so stay tuned...

Q&A: SharePoint Webinar and Whitepaper (Part2)

This is my second post in which I answer questions that were posed but not answered during the webinar on SharePoint. (See earlier post for additional Q&A, and original post for details on the SharePoint study and the slides from the webinar ).

You may still listen to the recorded webinar during which many other questions were answered and issues discussed. 

Q:  Is SharePoint a hot short-term fad or will we it in prevalent presence 10-15 years from now?

A:  I am reluctant to make predictions that go out 10 – 15 years.  Far too much can occur to really have genuine insights regarding the fate of SharePoint over a decade+ from now.  That said, however, I will say that I do not believe that SharePoint is a “fad”.  Far too many organizations have invested time and money into it for it to simply go away like yesterday’s fashions.  Moreover, Microsoft has much riding on this product/platform, and Microsoft is a force to be reckoned with.  There is every indication that they will continue to support and enhance SharePoint.  So while I am reluctant to speculate on what SharePoint will look like 15 years from now, I will state that I believe that it will continue to grow in scope and capability for the foreseeable future, and that it will continue to have a presence in most global organizations.  We will see much market activity amongst ECM solution providers to complement SharePoint rather than compete head-to-head, and we will see Microsoft making improvements to SharePoint.  What will it look like in 15 years – cannot say, but at the very minimum, remnants of SharePoint applications will remain 15 years from now.

Q:  Is SharePoint like another Lotus Notes Virus?

A:  OK, I am guessing that this was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but as they say, many a truw word [and question] are said in jest.  So let me answer it. This question is perhaps related to the earlier ones regarding the competitive nature between Notes and MOSS.  As I said in the last post, Notes users who have built complex and critical applications in Notes, do not yet appear to be actively migrating them to SharePoint with any degree of consistency and momentum.  At the lower end of Notes applications, yes, SharePoint is a serious alternative that is replacing many Notes databases. If for no other reason, SharePoint is to be commended to applying pressure on IBM and its Notes product line. In both cases, however, the relative immaturity of the products, as full-fledged ECM solutions still warrants, for many organizations an investment in complementary products, and certainly much customization and integration work.

Q:  What are the scalability issues in SharePoint and would you recommend SharePoint to be used as Document Management system, where collaboration is not primary requirement.

A:  There are several scalability issues with SharePoint.  Based on the responses to the survey, the greatest amongst these are performance issues when increasing quantity or size of the document repository, lack of support for complex document architectures, and the administration associated with larger installations.  Based on feedback from users, I would not recommend using SharePoint as an ECM solution in cases in which internal collaboration is not a primary requirement.  Again, internal collaboration and knowledge sharing were ranked as the primary strengths of SharePoint and the number one application amongst its users.  To leverage SharePoint in a situation focused on other applications (for example, an external customer facing portal, complex internal records and content security management) would be a case of misapplying technology.  These features are not SharePoint strengths (yet).  Satisfaction ranks high amongst those using it for internal collaboration, and then satisfaction levels significantly drop (to say nothing of the need for customization and integration complexity.)

Q:  What are the key functionality weaknesses that make SharePoint a weak solution for records management.

A:  Two main issues.  First, the records management functionality, known as the Records Center is a MOSS component and does not function in Windows SharePoint Services (WSS).  Thus, right off the bat it requires further investment beyond SharePoint itself. Secondly, the Records Center is a platform, not a near-turnkey records application like that available from products such as CA, HP/Tower, Autonomy/Meridio, OpenText, IBM and EMC Documentum.  Most records functionality has to be built using the toolset.  There is no auto-declaration of records for example, nor rendition control or clawbacks. SharePoint provides only the most basic of records management features. Consider that MOSS Records Center is not DOD 5015 compliant out of the box, but requires a “resource kit” to make it compliant.  If you attempt to download the resource kit from the Microsoft site you receive the following message:
“This additional download provides an easy way to learn about the pack while deciding if it is useful for an organization. It is not for production use. Please work with your account manager to engage a partner that has been trained on the DoD 5015.2 Resource Kit to support your DoD implementation.” – enough said.

Q:  When or at which cross point is SharePoint expected to seriously compete with other ECM packages.

A:  I would say that that time has already come.  Granted, SharePoint still lacks all of the functionality that is bundled in the leading ECM suites, but consider that each of these products has a SharePoint integration story to tell.  The point is that while SharePoint may not compete feature to feature, it does compete “enough” to be positioned as a viable component of an ECM strategy, as we have discussed, especially for collaborative internal knowledge sharing environments and portals.  As Microsoft continues to enhance SharePoint, and there is every indication that they will, it will only become more competitive.  Indeed, it is not outside the realm of possibility that Microsoft may acquire a “full-featured” content management system, and leap frog its competitors.  Although they have not yet integrated it into SharePoint, recall that last year, Microsoft leapfrogged into enterprise search with the acquisition of FAST.

Q:  Thoughts on limitations with SharePoint enterprise search and how FAST might come into play in the future?

A:  I purposely listed this question to follow the one above, in which I used the FAST acquisition to show how Microsoft can leapfrog into targeted ECM markets through acquisition.  Yes, the acquisition of FAST made Microsoft “a contender” in the enterprise search market, competing with products such as Endeca, Autonomy, Vivisimo and Google.  To date, FAST functionality has not yet been tightly integrated into the SharePoint environment, but that is inevitable, and when that occurs, the features and functions of FAST will catapult SharePoint enterprise search functionality, positioning it  amongst the leaders.

Q:  Would you identify SharePoint as an Internal Social Network?
A:  Yes.  SharePoint does not provide all of the functionality that comprises social networking (e.g. social tagging and social network analysis), but it clearly has some of it.  For example, SharePoint provides Wikis and Blogs, “My Sites”, and the ability to track and share declared groups of colleagues.  You may recall from the webinar that most SharePoint functionality gets a “good” rating.  That would pertain to this question as well.  The Internal Social Networking capabilities are not leading edge, but for many teams – good enough.

Q:  Are you seeing competition from open source solutions in same area?

A: Yes, and the most visible is Alfresco. 

Q:  How many respondents didn’t use SharePoint because they already have another solution in place?

A:  I will answer this question in two ways.  First, using the survey that was the focus of the webinar.  You may recall, that amongst 592 responding organizations, 33% were NOT using SharePoint.  Of those, only 5% indicated they were not using SharePoint because of a preference for another product. Not a conclusive answer. Because of the way the question and answer were worded, I cannot tell if the preferred product was already in house (the nature of your question), or if a new purchase was made in lieu of SharePoint.  With that said, I will also share my observation based on working with many organizations over the last 2 years. In most cases where SharePoint is being used, other ECM products precede it.  SharePoint is being embraced in many cases, not as a replacement, but an alternative.  As SharePoint matures, this attitude or approach is beginning to change.

Q:  With SharePoint are you restricting yourself to Microsoft platform?

A:  Virtually every major vendor has a SharePoint integration story and strategy, so no, you are not restricting yourself strictly to a Microsoft-only platform. But, with that said, obviously, as an organization becomes more dependent upon SharePoint they are  becoming more aligned with a Microsoft platform.

OK that's it for this post. You are probably tiring of reading, and I certainly am of typing.  More to s=coem so stay tuned ...

Records Management - You Can Fight City Hall

Despite years of legal precedent and expert testimony, many businesses continue to flounder on the issue of e-mail management.  I was recently privy to a major US financial institution whose e-mail records policy was clearly defined on paper, but had no system in place to enforce the policy.  Compliance with policy was based on user's identifying and manually declaring specific e-mails as records appropriately.

Good enough right?  Once again the answer is no.  If you don't believe me, how about U.S. District Court Judge Henry Kennedy.  According to a recent article, on Nov. 10  the judge ruled that courts  have jurisdiction to review the adequacy of an organization's record-keeping guidelines - including the provision of substantial and automated approaches. (What is amazing in this case is the "organization" is The White House.)

It is alleged that The White House replaced its  Automated Records Management System in 2002 with another automated archive system, which led to  at least five million e-mail messages being "lost."

[Interestingly enough - the messages allegedly lost between  2003 to 2005 include details on the invasion of Iraq, the Valerie Plame leak investigation and Hurricane Katrina.]

The Bush administration argued among other things that the court does not have jurisdiction to order the establishment of a records keeping system. Nay said the judge and the case will continue.

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?  E-mail management and records management is serious business - no excuses - and apparently no one is above the law.

For those interested in more detail, read the article.

Q&A: Market IQ on Findability

This is my second post in which I answer questions that were posed but not answered during the AIIM Market Intelligence webinar on its Market IQ on Findability.

Readers may still listen to the recorded webinar during which many other questions were answered and issues discussed. Previous posts also provide additional Q&A on Findability.

Q: Is there an application which can fulfill the scheduling and classification needs of a records management system plus advanced querying using complex Boolean searching (multiple keywords, thesauri, nested queries, etc.)? It seems that library software developers need to speak to records software developers to integrate both functions.

A: There are several applications in the market today that provide integrated sophisticated records management capabilities and advanced Findability capabilities.  Two of these providers, Vignette and  OpenText, underwrote this report.  These “solutions” have typically been developed though the integration of “standalone” content management and search tools with records management tools.  In the case of OpenText for example, the OpenText search and Findability product was integrated with the records management software from PSSoftware, and Vignette acquired Tower Technology. Open Text was actually the first of the ECM vendors to integrate with records management products by acquisition. However, many ECM vendors have now also done so.

Q: Does findability collide with records management or does it enable RM to be successful?

A:  Obviously this question is related to the one above.  There is great synergy between RM and Findability technology, which led to the acquisition of many RM products by many ECM/Findability vendors.  Advanced Findability techniques can be used as a front-end to RM, providing automated approaches to classification and declaration.  Findability can also be used as a back-end providing enhanced and varied approaches to retrieving records.

Q:  (This is actually two separate questions that have been merged) Why do you think that organizations lack a champion for Findability? Is there a lack of ownership for intranet initiatives, metrics and accountability?

A:  One of the fundamental obstacles to developing and deploying an enterprise Findability strategy is the lack of a champion and owner.  There is no ownership of a Findability strategy because no one is held accountable for Findability.  It is a feature of many IT strategies that slips through the accountability cracks.  The lack stems from the fact that Findability is not, in most organizations, viewed as a centralized capability.  It is too often viewed as a function of the content – each repository and content-related application has its own approach to Findability.  These embedded approaches are usually after thoughts, or features tacked onto an underlying tool. Most organizations have yet to realize the benefits that can be achieved trough a centralized managed approach to Findability.  This of course is related to the fact that metrics for measuring the impact and benefits of Findability  can be difficult to define and measure. What is the bottom-line value of faster, more effective, and accurate retrieval of content in your organization?  They exist, but are most often associated with soft benefits – not directly tied to hard-dollar gains or savings.   

Q:  Can you define "Parametric search"?

A: Parametric search is search based on meta-tags. If content is associated with one or more tags (i.e. data values associated with a body of content but not necessarily stored within the content itself such as a date, author name, or contract number), parametric search enables the query and retrieval of the content based on user specific values within the meta-tags. For example, “Retrieve all documents published between January 2007 and January 2008,” is a parametric search leveraging a published date tag.

Q:  Please comment on the pros/cons of a faceted taxonomy of metadata to organize unstructured information.

A:  Faceted taxonomies can be very valuable facets of a Findability strategy.  Based on metadata values, or tags, content can be associated with various categories.  These tags can be leveraged by a user interface to display content in a taxonomy, which aids understanding of the collection of content and enables navigation through the content.  The faceted taxonomies can be used as both a precursor to search (enabling a user to identify categories of interest and limit the search to those categories), and/or as a back-end to search, used as a way to display retrieved content via categories.  Faceted taxonomies are particularly flexible and dynamic.  They can be used to arrange or dipaly content in many different ways, based on user preferences and/or business objectives.

As for cons, I cannot think of many, except for the fact that these taxonomies must be designed manually, and subsequently, content added to the repository must be tagged, which is also a manual process, or in some cases a semi-automated process.

Q:  Is it your contention that a Search Appliance/tool should be part of an organization's overall technology infrastructure with hooks into all deployed applications?

A:  I do believe that this is a Findability best practice, yes.  In most situations, it would behoove an organization to develop a Findability platform, and then integrate that platform/capability across all applications and content repositories.

Q: Would following the aforementioned strategy does this lessen the necessity of ERP and ECM applications have robust search engines?

A:  Yes.  In fact this approach to Findability potentially removes the need to seek, integrate and support separate search tools in individual business applications.  Not only does this provide the users with a common user interface (reducing training), but can also eliminate the costs associated with supporting and maintaining multiple search tools.

Q: So how do we get a Google like functions into the business organization?

A:  Interestingly enough, this is not simply a matter of buying a search appliance.  To achieve a level of effectiveness similar to Google on the internet, within your firewall, you need to do a needs assessment and develop a Findability strategy specifically for the enterprise (inside the fire wall) and then implement the appropriate Findability tools.  Section 5 of the AIIM Market IQ on Findability provides more detail on this process.

Q: (This is two questions merged together.) Can you expand on Enterprise Taxonomy? How do we get enterprises to devote time & thought to library sciences for taxonomy?

A: Taxonomies are a hierarchical or poly-hierarchical listing of topics or subject categories. A taxonomy may not contain a definition of the topics it covers, but only the hierarchical relationship of the topics to one another. An enterprise taxonomy is a taxonomy that is developed specifically for the content within the firewall.  It provides a centralized singular view or organization of the enterprise content. As discussed in the webinar and the Market IQ on Findability, an Enterprise taxonomy can be a fundamental component of a Findability strategy, providing a navigational aid to content and a precision enhancing (front and back end) complement to search. 
Getting enterprises to devote time and thought to library science and taxonomy construction is not necessarily a simple lask.  If there is no pre-disposition or appreciation for the value of library science  and taxonomies, you may have to start with some fundamental education and enlightenment.  You might start by using examples of taxonomies on the commercial web as examples of how such approaches to library science can enhance the interaction with content.  It is also sometimes easier to make the case for outward facing web sites, and then using their success to drive adoption of taxonomies inside the firewall as well.

Q:  What is the best business case basis that works to secure funding for Findability?

A: Unfortunately there is no one best business case.  Each organization and situation warrants its own business case.  Start by looking at the existing business situation, and look for areas where ineffective or inconsistent means to access content is impacting the business bottom line.  Some examples are: Loss of customers/decreased customer satisfaction, non-compliance with industry and/or government regulations, non-compliance with internal best practices/governance, inconsistency in communication between functional areas, increased costs associated with duplication of efforts, poor decision making and decrease in competitive standing/delayed market responsiveness.  Then demonstrate how a proposed Findability strategy would positively impact these issues.

Q:  How does purposing the content and/or proactively providing the content through applications fit in this approach?

A:  This is a great question because it helps to highlight the fact that a Findability strategy is more than just effective search.  A thorough Findability strategy not only looks at how users will search for content, but business scenarios in which the content should search out the user (or application).  Thus if processes in which tasks involve the retrieval of content based on certain dynamic criteria exist, the  Findability tools can be integrated into the workflow/BPM tools to automate the retrieval of the content, in the context of the process.  Search agents can also be used to proactively provide content to a user.  Findability also can be used a means to monitor and “pluck” content in applications such as e-mail security/monitoring, eDiscovery and trends analysis.  These are all examples of proactive use of Findability within a given business application.

Stay tuned - thereare several more questions, and answers to come...

ECM Finds a Web 2.0 Home

Like many of you, I am a member of many online communities; Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, not to mention the many sub-communities within each of these.  So why would you or I need to join another?  In a word FOCUS. 

AIIM has created a Web 2.0 environment focused exclusively on the issues of Enterprise Content Management. Known as Information Zen; this platform allows us ECM zealots and aficionados to congregate, collaborate and commiserate.  This is a no holes barred platform where you can share ideas, propose suggestions, air your product experiences - just about anything ECM related, and get feedback and support from your peers. 

So join Information Zen  now.

View my page on Information Zen

Once you join, you can choose to participate, or simply monitor any or all of the focus groups, which already include:

Compliance & eDiscovery

PDF

Enterprise 2.0

Email Management

Business Process Management

Enterprise Search

Electronic Records Management

Enterprise Content Management.

AND - you can create your own groups as well.  Be the first to create a product users community, or a community of ECMers from a particular vertical. 

While I hope you continue to read and comment on this blog, I also hope to see you soon in the Information Zen garden - where the level of interaction is much greater.

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.