Information

The Rise of Big Content

This post arises from several thought streams that I’ve had over the last several months that coalesced the last week when thinking about the purpose of Big Data and how the Content industry has had a Big Data problem for years.

  • Big Data is a great term, but it doesn’t resonate when talking about pulling insight from Content.
  • Enterprise Content Management (ECM) has never caught-on beyond the industry that created the term.
  • Even without the need for Analytics, content is still growing exponentially and the number of formats isn’t getting any smaller.

So like every industry wonk wanting to make a name for themselves, I am going to try and push a new term out into the marketplace.

Continue reading →

My CIP Breakdown

2 Comments

A few weeks back, I asked readers how they thought I did on the different sections on my Certified Information Professional (CIP) exam.image I was curious where people thought my weak points were based on what they knew of my experience, from reading my blog, and other sources. The goal was to see how my experience, shared publically over the years, matched-up with the exam.

Well, the results are in. As I write this, there are 23 votes but as one is from me, I’ll throw it out. Before I break down the voting, let me share the answers.

Continue reading →

Cloud May be Easier but Do Your Homework

3 Comments

imageAt this point, just about everyone acknowledges that the simplified, cloud-based Content solutions like Box and Syncplicity are here to stay. There is a place for them in the Enterprise world and that place will grow as their capabilities grow.

What I’ve been hearing and seeing is a repeat of what I’d like to call the SharePoint Experience. People would just role SharePoint out because it was easy and expect everything to work. As we all now know, that wasn’t always the case.

Content Management, when done in a way to do more than just replace a file share, requires planning. It requires Change Management aspects to be considered. The impact to the business processes needs to be planned. Old content has to be migrated.

imageWhen SharePoint hit it big, this didn’t happen. Technicians just implemented it without considering the need to understand Content Management. Now, it is a different story.

As these new offerings are purchased and deployed, I’m seeing a lot of the same things. Instead of IT, the business users are leading the efforts. Sure, they don’t need to create an architecture or determine what customizations are needed, but they still need to plan.

  • How are we organizing content? Are we going to rely on tagging? Do we need to establish a simple Taxonomy?
  • What are we going to do about existing Content? Do we migrate or leave it as is? Are we bringing any structures from the old system over?
  • How do we integrate our business processes?
  • Speaking of integration, what about our other business systems?
  • How are we providing documentation, training, and support to our users?

These are common issues in Content Management and with a cloud-based system they may be simpler questions to answer.

The key to answering these questions is knowing that they need to be asked before the project starts.

Checklists of things to do aren’t going away, they are just getting shorter. They are becoming simplified but still require knowledgeable Information Professionals to lead the effort.

The goal of these cloud-based Content Management solutions is to take the simplicity of file sharing and add the functionality of Content Management. We all need to make sure that the result of this combination is the best of both worlds and not the worst.

You Can’t Sell a Platform to Users

8 Comments

imageBeen working on building a new, solid, backbone for AIIM’s information since I joined as CIO. We finally reached the stage for detailed demos last week. While extremely time consuming, it was also extremely educational.

One of the things I hadn’t expected to be so obvious is the right and wrong way to demonstrate a solution built upon a platform. In fact, the dichotomy was so severe that almost every person not giving the demo commented upon it.

I thought I would share the two approaches that we witnessed and then relate it back to the Content Management industry of the last 10+ years. Before I get into that, I’ll provide some context in the form of the project background.

Continue reading →

The Lost Decade of ECM

13 Comments

imageOf the three posts rattling around in my head, this would be the third in order if I had to set a preferred order. Problem is, one idea takes more effort to develop while the other actually needs to refer to items in this post.

I spoke last week at Momentum in Las Vegas as part of EMC World. Instead of talking about Documentum or how I had worked with a client to solve a problem, I talked about the changing landscape of the Information Industry. The SlideShare version of the presentation is at the end of this post but I wanted to talk about the Lost Decade first.

Continue reading →

What You Need to Know about Cloud-base Content Management, AIIM 2012 Style

A couple months ago, I spoke at the AIIM 2012 Conference on the topic Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Cloud-Based Content Management (But Were Afraid to Ask). It was fun and I’ve been meaning to share the presentation with everyone but there have been two issues:

  1. The presentation is image heavy and even with notes, SlideShare doesn’t really help convey the content.
  2. The video was under wraps because it was under consideration for the free Best of AIIM 2012 virtual event in June.

Lucky for you, my session was deemed not one of the very best and I can share it with you now. I’d be upset if the quality of sessions at the AIIM Conference this hadn’t been so high. Billy Cripe gave a great presentation on Two Types of Collaboration and Ten Requirements for Using Them and that didn’t make the cut, but you can see that online now.

So, complete with the Q&A session, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Cloud-Based Content Management:

If you take anything away from the presentation, remember this:

  • The cloud is big and evolving. If your solution isn’t available today, it may be tomorrow.
  • You face the same issues if you stay at home as you would if you move to the cloud.
  • Creating new Information Islands is the new big trap. Avoid them.

Watch the presentation to learn more details on those takeaways, cloud terminology, and why Darth Vader is in the default image.  I’m also speaking on Moving Content Management to the Cloud: A Practical Perspective at info360 if you are planning to be there in June.

Please feel free to ask questions or add your thoughts in the comments below.

It’s 2012 and We Are Still Working on Process

2 Comments

There are two great frustrations in my overall career. The first is that there is more unmanaged content now than there was when I started. The growth of Content Management just isn’t keeping pace with the growth of Content.

The second is the fact that we are still trying to automate the same types of processes now as we were when I first started in this industry in the 90s. My first project was a Correspondence Management System. Call it a mail room solution or whatever the latest slang dictates, the problem is the same one I was talking to a large agency about solving in January!

People are asking me to speak on Process and why projects go wrong. Cloud and mobile are dropping as stand-alone topics. They are becoming part of the discussion around how to solve the old problems with addition of these new tools.

Reinforcing the issue are a few fun facts from some recent AIIM research:

  • 45% of scanned documents are created digitally
  • 77% of invoices that arrive as PDF attachments get printed
  • 31% of faxed invoices get printed and scanned again

Depressed yet?

Continue reading →

Getting to the Big Data Problem

5 Comments

The amount of data in your organization is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean you might think that it take a long time to read your inbox but that’s just peanuts to how much your organization touches in a single day.

– Mangling of quote by Douglas Adams in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

The amount of data in your organization is massive. Anyone who has been in the Content Management industry for more than a few years can tell you that much. All those content repositories are nothing more than messy, poorly structured, data warehouses.

The part that I didn’t realize until watching Clay Shirky’s keynote at AIIM 2012 was that the amount of data that many organizations is amassing isn’t always enough. Many organizations just are dealing with what I will now shockingly classify as “traditional” Big Data issue. They don’t have the volume, variability, variety, or velocity of data. (Your actual “V”s may vary)

Continue reading →

The Content Management Expert Paradox

10 Comments

Several weeks ago, Alan Pelz-Sharpe tweeted an observation that I have observed many times that is paradoxical in nature.

Many/Most CMS projects fail, but few/any CMS professionals have ever worked on a failed project 🙂

While this quote was likely referencing more Web Content Management (WCM) efforts than the broader world of Content Management, I have noticed this as well. In fact, this is something that seems to be true among all branches of Content Management.

Aside from people hiding their failures, I think there is an additional factor.

Failure begets Transition.

Before I dive into that, I will now confess to my least successful projects. I am only listing projects where I had a significant role and am aware of the final outcome for the project.

Continue reading →

Debating the Future of Content Management at AIIM 2012

3 Comments

imageBack before either Cheryl McKinnon or I were considering bringing our skills to AIIM, we submitted a proposal to this year’s AIIM Conference to moderate a panel on the Future of Content Management. For this discussion, we decided to bring representatives from the traditional, open source, and cloud-based Content Management worlds onto the same stage.

As a result, we have the following on the stage:

Pretty exciting group there. I have laid out some rules that we’ll be enforcing in the debate.

  1. No Selling: This is vendor solution approach versus vendor solution approach. Each speaker represents their entire Content Management vendor area, not just their own companies.
  2. Speak Ill of No Vendor: To be honest, if they want to say something negative about themselves, they can. If they want to say something bad about one of the other vendor groupings, that works as long as it is generic.
  3. No Speeches: Hoping for a discussion, not a few rehearsed viewpoints.
  4. No Selling: Or did I mention that already?

To warm things up, I asked them some questions to set the stage for next week. In addition, if you have any questions you’d like to submit to be put to the panel, add them to the comments below. I will be writing a follow-up afterwards to capture the debate.

Continue reading →