Digital Transformation

The Open ECM Platform

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[Originally published on the TeraThink blog]

There has been talk of creating enterprise content management (ECM) platforms for years. They typically do not live up to the hype or expectations. The upfront investment typically required dooms most projects before they deploy their first business solution. It has reached the point where if an organization wants to implement ECM I typically walk away if I cannot persuade them otherwise.

That doesn’t mean that the need for ECM platforms don’t exist. Given the ever increasing creation of content today, it is even more important to be able to rapidly solve content-centric problems without creating numerous content silos. What is needed is an alternate approach to gaining the benefits of an ECM platform without forcing a big-bang approach to ECM with its large upfront investment.

The answer is to pick an ECM system the same way an organization picks a database system. Choose based upon the system’s ability to scale and meet the needs of the organization. An open API (application programming interface) allows the exposure of content services that can be used to add content capabilities to other applications and to build new solutions. Being open allows an organization to move forward without worrying information being bound to that system forever.

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Stop the Closed Content Silos

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[Originally published on the TeraThink blog]

It starts simply enough. Your company needs a system for managing its contracts process. The finance department goes out and purchases a contracts system. Being forward thinking, they pick one that is cloud-based so they don’t have to maintain the infrastructure. Things are going well until…

  • The ability to track supporting documents from within the system is identified shortly after launch
  • After finance loads supporting documents, those documents are now stored in multiple locations
  • Nobody knows which version is the current version any longer
  • Groups outside of finance need access to the contracts but licenses are limited
  • Contracts need to be linked to their CRM and ERP records but nobody can figure out how

The contracts process may be working well but information is trapped in a system that is closed-off from the rest of the organization. The only way to have information everywhere it is needed is to duplicate it which leads to complications in managing information.

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The Cloud’s True Advantage is Bringing Focus to Solving Problems

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Looking at the Loudoun Heights from the Maryland Heights near Harper's FerryI’ve been talking cloud for years. Most of it was focused on simply removing unnecessary complexity from the world of IT and content management. Why setup servers, create networks, manage databases, or any other tedious, redundant, and valueless tasks?

When I say valueless, I am referring to the fact that managing a database does not bring any differentiating value to your organization. The value comes from the analysis of that data or through the leveraging the data to deliver better, more efficient, products and services to your client-base.

That still isn’t the greatest benefit or the cloud. Too many project spend a lot of time focused on sizing, performance, system compatibilities, and other technical details. That time would be better spent on designing and delivering the ideal solution to the client.

By moving to the cloud, those discussions are taken off of the table. Those conversations don’t exist. The higher up the cloud stack you move (IaaS => PaaS => SaaS), the more conversations focus upon how to better meet the needs of the organization.

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A Whole New World, Again

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Chris Pine as Captain KirkWhile the industry was aflutter talking about the fall and rise of the CIP certification, I was planning my next big thing. My next big thing has happened and I am now a director at IBC, a DBS Company. [Note: IBC later rebranded as Dominion Consulting].

What does that mean? Well it means that I’ve joined a team of people that focus on solving problems, regardless of scale. One observation from a client regarding IBC was that they solve problems that need solving. That fits nicely with my goal to make things work.

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