Digital Landfill

Attached is a link for our new INDUSTRY WATCH survey on Business Process Management (BPM) technologies and services.

For those unfamiliar with our INDUSTRY WATCH surveys, the deal is pretty simple. The surveys take about 10 minutes to complete. Those who complete the survey get a copy of the results ($295 value). As a non-profit, we make a contribution on behalf of all those who participate to another non-profit to acknowledge and thank you for your time.

The link for the BPM survey is the following. If you have any trouble connecting, please try to paste into your browser.

http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB226EYXQT3M4

The non-profit we will be acknowledging this time is the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge (www.pmc.org). The PMC, presented by the Boston Red Sox and Overstock.com, is the nation’s first fundraising bike-a-thon and today raises more money than any other athletic fundraising event in the country. On August 4 and 5, 2007, 4,800 cyclists will travel nine routes, logging between 50 and 192 miles over one or two days, through 46 scenic Massachusetts towns to raise $27 million. Our rider this year is former AIIM Board Member and AIIM Award of Merit winner Ed LoTurco.

It is clear that for many organizations, e-mail management will be the “killer app” that finally gets them to think in some sort of systematic way about getting control of unstructured content. I was struck by the article in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal on the Intel/AMD case (NASDAC GS: INTC and NYSE: AMD). Much of the recent coverage has centered on e-mail. Intel yesterday indicated that it had already spent $3.3 million on reproducing the e-mails in question, and that it would likely need to spend millions more. The coverage notes that one of the primary issues is that e-mails in the Intel system are automatically deleted after 35-45 days if employees take no proactive action to save them. In one of the more vivid analogies used to describe e-mail management, AMD criticizes this policy for its “grim reaper” impact on evidence in the case. I can’t help but think back on all the presentations I’ve done in which I ask the audience, “How many of you have ever gotten an e-mail from IT telling you to delete everything older than X days because they need space on the server?” and seeing two-thirds of the hands go up.

Chart is from our new State of the Industry Study.

I am not sure what this is about. It seems to be some sort of strange convergence between Fantasy Baseball and the content management industry. But if you're interested in even less clarity with regards to ECM, the Cosmic Baseball Association might be your place.

But then again, I might just be jealous about being left off the roster. If this was a cricket team, I could see Alan over me at third base. As you can tell from some of the the secrets that Doug Henschen unearthed during a recent interview, this association stuff wasn't always my first choice. In fact, given the Nationals' fortunes this year, I still harbor secret hopes that come mid summer, they will be in the market for a no-hit, no-field, slightly balding and overweight third baseman with extensive association experience.

One of the challenges we observed in the most recent AIIM Industry Watch survey (www.aiim.org/industrywatch) is that while organizations are increasingly viewing ECM as “infrastructure,” they still are very much in the box of needing to justify this “infrastructure” with hard dollar savings. I think this is a pretty realistic glimpse of how ECM is viewed in many organizations…many wish it was infrastructure, when in fact many are still viewing it through the prism of direct hard dollars savings (when was the last time an e-mail system, for example, needed to be justified through “hard dollar savings?”)

I’ve spoken at a number of the IBM/FileNet “mock trials” alongside Doculabs. Doculabs (www.doculabs.com) has some interesting thoughts on how to cost ECM as a shared service in organizations, a necessary step toward moving toward a more realistic assignment of ECM “infrastructure” costs. Some of the background can be found on their web site -- I'm sure if you want more detail, they would be happy to provide it.

From the point of view of entertainment value, I must say I enjoyed the Mr. Paperhead guy (appearing on behalf of Captaris) at the AIIM show. He seemed to become somewhat of a celebrity as the Show progressed. I know what I should be for Halloween -- just have to figure out where to get the headgear.

Ch…Ch…Ch…Changes…

According to AIIM's new State of the Industry survey, there has not been a great change in the core “50,000-foot” obstacles facing end users in considering document and records technologies during the four years in which the survey has been conducted. At a high level, the trio of primary obstacles—selling management, managing change, and maintaining employee commitment—are consistent.

Other posts related to the survey...
Key business drivers
Status of information management in most organizations
RM Starts at the Top
Confidence in electronic information lacking
Most organizations vulnerable to e-discovery

For copies of my keynote presentation based on the survey, CLICK HERE.

Link:
Content Management In Focus: Q&A With AIIM's John Mancini > Intelligent Enterprise: Better Insight for Business Decisions .

Vendor consolidation, new federal rules on e-discovery and moves by giants including Microsoft are changing the enterprise content management market. Preparing for this week's AIIM Conference & Expo in Boston, AIIM International president explores what's driving deployment and whether ECM is being subsumed by information management.

Check out Doug's interview with me, and you can find out such secret tidbits as...I was once on a college intramural team that lost a game 121-18!

On a more direct ECM note, Doug references our new "State of the Industry" survey. For a copy of my keynote presentation, CLICK HERE. For a copy of the survey itself (FREE to AIIM professional members, $295 for everyone else), CLICK HERE.

Vulnerabilities related to e-discovery are clear from the most recent AIIM Industry Watch "State of the Industry" survey. 31% of those surveyed indicate that it would take at least one month to produce all of the information related to a specific customer or constituent. The vulnerability scales with the size of the organization, with 14% of small organizations indicating it would take more than one month, 26% of mid-sized organizations, and 39% of large organizations.

Other posts related to the survey...
Key business drivers
Status of information management in most organizations
RM Starts at the Top
Confidence in electronic information lacking

For copies of my keynote presentation based on the survey, CLICK HERE.

According to the new AIIM Industry Watch survey released at the AIIM Show, users have great concerns about their ability to meet some of the basic requirements of information management in the 21st century. Click here for my keynote presentation on the survey results.

Take, for example, confidence in the ability to produce information that is accurate, accessible and trustworthy, a basic requirement of any records management strategy. Perhaps as a result of high-profile mistakes relative to information management—and simply more awareness of their vulnerabilities--end user confidence in their core capabilities has eroded in the past year (63% “confident” or better in 2006 vs. 54% this year).

Information management confidence declines with organizational size. 64% of small organization express confidence in their core information management capabilities. This declines to 51% among mid-sized organizations, and to 50% among large organizations.

Other posts related to the survey...
Key business drivers
Status of information management in most organizations
RM Starts at the Top

Today we are all Hokies.

Whoa. That’s a statement I never thought I would hear myself say.

I hope the readers on the blog will bear with me while I share some personal thoughts today. Today is a day of mourning in the Commonwealth of Virginia to remember the victims of the Virginia Tech shooting earlier this week.

For those who don’t live in Virginia, at the same time that we take great pride in the quality of our public higher education system (William and Mary, UVA, Virginia Tech, George Mason, James Madison, Mary Washington, VCU, Old Dominion, Christopher Newport, Radford…I’m sure I’m leaving some out), there is also a great deal of rivalry between the universities.

As a William and Mary graduate (and partner in carrying an infamous anti-Tech sign during a W and M/Tech game during the late 70s), I can safely say that I wouldn’t have ever thought about saying the words that head up this posting. As the father of a University of Virginia 4th year, I know the thought would never have occurred to me in recent years, even though during my W and M years I would have placed the Cavaliers into the same bucket as the Hokies. I can safely say that the words would not have occurred to my 4th year Cavalier before this week.

But a lot changed this week.

We had a moment of silence at our AIIM Awards Dinner on Tuesday night in Boston. I was somewhat surprised how many people came up to thank me for doing so.

When I look at the list of the hometowns of the victims, I am stunned at what it says about what a small world it has become. Saugus, MA. Martinez, GA. Westtown, NY. Dumont, NJ. Bayamon, PR. Mumbai, India. Zagazig, Egypt. And on and on.

It’s an even smaller world here in Northern Virginia. 5 of the victims were from here in Fairfax County. Three (including the shooter) were from a single high school--Westfields High School—which is next high school over from ours and one of our primary rivals. One of the girls was on the Westfields Dance team, whose coach is my daughter’s dance teacher. This girl was the daughter of the French immersion teacher in our elementary school. The other girl was on the Westfields basketball team. I’m sure we saw her play sometime, but to be honest I just can’t remember. She worked last summer for the father of my middle son’s girlfriend. I watch CNN and don't see places from the other side of the world, but places on the other side of town.

The connections just seem to go on and on and you keep discovering new ones when you stop and talk to people in stores or on the street, which people seem somewhat more willing to do today than usual. Not unlike 5 and a half years ago when a plane crashed into the Pentagon. Or 4 and a half years ago when a sniper roamed the area.

So we’ll take a pause here today and forget about ECM for a day. Today we’re all Hokies.