Digital Landfill

We just publised a new Industry Watch Report titled, “The SharePoint Puzzle – Adding the missing pieces.” The study, based on the responses from 551 organizations, identified a lack of expertise, lack of strategic plans and resistance from users as the top three most prevalent business issues associated with SharePoint. But despite these concerns, most organizations are planning to increase or maintain the level of SharePoint spend on internal development, integration to other repositories, training, add-ons, hardware, services and licenses over the next 12 months.

Downloads are free and HERE.

The research investigates why organizations selected SharePoint and how it has performed against expectations; identifies gaps in enterprise content management (ECM), collaboration and business process management (BPM); and explores how organizations are adding missing pieces with SharePoint add-ons, third-party extensions and cloud services.

For most organizations SharePoint is considered a technology responsibility. The study found that 68 percent of SharePoint implementation decisions are made by the CIO or IT manager despite the fact that a single system is more often deployed across the enterprise, establishing SharePoint as highly-integrated business system when compared to most enterprise systems.

CEOs who view SharePoint as a technology tool rather than a business platform should reconsider. The research points to the need for a company strategy and executive vision in order to get the most business benefit from a SharePoint implementation. A successful SharePoint implementation calls for executives to engage with IT to drive effective collaboration across business units that maps to the organizational culture.

The top reasons given for SharePoint selection include internal collaboration, file share replacement and the creation of an intranet or portal. Unfortunately, SharePoint is still considered to be difficult to use. Organizations pointed to ease of content migration and information governance as two desired capabilities still lacking in SharePoint. Specific issues with metadata and taxonomies were cited by 41 percent. In these cases, investment in user training could likely help resolve issues.

Certain aspects of SharePoint functionality, including internal collaboration and document management, for the most part meet more than half of respondents’ expectations, yet a third of users complain about records management, email management and social tools. The findings point to the need for IT, end-users and management to be involved in the planning of a deployment, since without users’ contributions early on, success can be quickly derailed once the system is up and running.

The research indicates SharePoint will continue to dominate the market due to a growing appreciation for the software as a platform, and additional third-party add-ons will enhance capabilities to meet specific business needs. For the business success of SharePoint, however, there needs to be a careful orchestration of corporate strategy, end-user ownership, IT implementation and third-party enhancement.

The full report, “The SharePoint Puzzle – Adding the missing pieces” can be downloaded from the AIIM website at www.aiim.org/research/sharepoint-2012. The research was underwritten by Adlib, Axceler, EMC, Kofax, Knowledge Lake, IBM, Igloo Software, OpenText, Portal Solutions and QorusDocs.  Since they sponsored the study (we appreciate it), I thought a little background on each was in order...

About Adlib -- Adlib is the leading expert in document-to-PDF transformation that is seamlessly integrated with Microsoft SharePoint to reduce the financial exposure and risk of non-compliance with regulatory agencies; reduce IT costs by centralizing document transformation; and leveraging content-to-PDF as a shared service across the enterprise. Adlib is a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner.  www.adlibsoftware.com

About Axceler -- Axceler solutions enable enterprises to simplify, optimize and secure their collaborative platforms. Axceler is a global leader in solutions for SharePoint governance, security, migration, reporting and analysis. These include awarding-winning ControlPoint for governance and administration, Davinci Migrator for migration to SharePoint 2010, and FileLoader for migrating file share content. www.axceler.com

About EMC -- EMC Corporation is a global leader in enabling businesses and service providers to transform their operations and deliver IT as a service. Through innovative products and services, EMC accelerates the journey to cloud computing, helping IT departments to store, manage, protect, and analyze their most valuable asset—information—in a more agile, trusted, and cost-efficient way. www.EMC.com

About IBM ECM -- IBM ECM helps companies make better decisions faster by managing content, optimizing associated business processes and enabling compliance through an integrated information infrastructure. www.ibm.com/software/ecm

About Igloo Software -- Igloo develops social business solutions for your employees, your partners and your customers - securely stored and delivered in the cloud. As a standalone social business suite or as a complement to your SharePoint implementation, Igloo enables a more agile and open approach to collaboration at work. www.igloosoftware.com

About KnowledgeLake -- KnowledgeLake develops document imaging, document capture, and workflow products and solutions for Microsoft SharePoint. KnowledgeLake extends the Electronic Content Management (ECM) capabilities of SharePoint, enabling businesses to reduce mailing costs, streamline operations, and achieve regulatory compliance using familiar Microsoft products. www.knowledgelake.com

About Kofax -- Kofax Capture Enabled BPM™ solutions capture and streamline the flow of business critical information throughout an organization in a more accurate, timely and cost effective manner, enabling customers to be more responsive to their constituents, gain a competitive advantage and better grow their businesses. www.kofax.com

About OpenText -- OpenText is the leader in enterprise information management. EIM enables organizations to grow the business, lower costs, and accelerate business responsiveness, while ensuring governance and security. OpenText helps more than 50 thousand global customers build digital enterprises by unleashing the power of information. www.opentext.com

About Portal Solutions -- Portal Solutions help organizations share what they know and find what they need by connecting people, data, and content.  The company focuses on what drives user adoption to create solutions that people love to use. Our services span the development lifecycle -- Advisory Services, User Experience Services, and Implementation Services. www.portalsolutions.net

About Qorus Software -- Qorus Software is a provider of document automation solutions for SharePoint. Qorus software extends SharePoint and Microsoft Word and PowerPoint functionality to significantly reduce the time and effort required to customise and generate documents and presentations, such as sales proposals, financial reports, contracts, and advisory reports. www.qorusdocs.com

 

Calling everyone in the document and content management channel!

The survey will take just 10 minutes to complete, and we'd appreciate your help.  Help us understand what is working for you -- and what is not -- and what are the key drivers for your business.  The link to the survey is HERE.

 

We've put together some how-to guides to get you started on the path to effective information management.  

Totally free, and pass the word to your peers and colleagues.

How to Achieve Best Practices: Records Management 

How to Conduct a Social Business Assessment 

How to Unclog Your Business by Automating Content-Intensive Process 

How to Assess Scanning and Capture Requirements 

Automating ERM with SharePoint 

How to Develop Taxonomies to Support Navigation, Information Discovery, and Findability 

We're doing a webinar next week with leading SharePoint consultant Errin O'Connor to discuss process automation in Office365 and SharePoint.  It's free - an open invitation to Digital Landfill readers.

Registration is HERE.

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How-to Guide -- Automating ERM with SharePoint

How-to Guide -- How to Conduct a Social Business Assessment

 

I wanted to draw your attention to an interesting presentation by my colleague Atle Skjekkeland, picking up on some themes raised in a recent article in the Harvard Business Review (The End of Solution Sales).

To give you an idea of some of the themes raised in the article:

A few other insights...

 

OK.  Quick Vote.  And everyone please vote, not just the usual suspects in the ECM space.  

The question:

Which term carries the most Google Juice (per )?

A.  Big Data

B.  Content Analytics

C.  Text Analytics

OK, any reader of the IT press has GOT to know, Regis, that the answer is "A. Big Data."  And that's my final answer.

Well, not so fast.  In terms of what people are actually looking for, it appears that before we all go running off and slapping "Big Data" on each and every product (kind of reminds me of the time more than a decade ago when I saw a scanner labelled "The Knowledge Management Scanner"), perhaps we should consider that many users are also discovering the world of Big Data through the prism of content.

The data, please...

Clearly "Big Data" is the "term du jure" and has risen dramatically in the past 12 months.  But it is just as likely that people will find their way to Big Data through "Content Analytics" or "Text Analytics."

[Note:  For help in navigating through the taxonomy and metadata issues associated with Big Data, check out our free "How-To" Guide, How to Develop Taxonomies to Support Navigation, Information Discovery, and Findability.]

 

AIIM research indicates that statutory and industry compliance combine to be the strongest drivers for records management systems, ahead of reduced storage costs. Sharing and exploiting knowledge comes next.

AIIM research suggests that legal costs could be reduced by a quarter through deployment of electronic records management technologies. Most respondents feel that audit costs, legal costs, court costs, fines and damages could be reduced by 25% with best practice records management. 

Unfortunately, most organizations have yet to address this threat.  Key policies are not in place:  Only 16% of organizations have a documented and effective information management strategy. A further 15% have such a policy but it is largely unreferenced. Less than half of even the largest organizations have a risk management plan that includes records management.

Of course, in addition to increased direct legal costs, poor records practices can severely harm your reputation: 28% of those surveyed by AIIM have had their records management and security practices criticized or exposed by an auditor in the last three years. 6% have been criticized by a regulator, 5% by lawyers and 4% (1 in 25) in the press.

Don't even think of proceeding without executive support -- at the highest level.  Lack of commitment at board-level or C-level is the biggest reason for non-adoption of ERM systems, and the difficulty of securing agreement across departments is also frequently cited.

Get these great (and free) how-to guides:

How to Achieve Best Practices: Records Management

Automating Electronic Records Management with SharePoint

 

 

There are a host of governance categories that need to be addressed as you build your information management strategy.

Content governance addresses how content is created, controlled, managed, and identified through the use of metadata, permissions, and templates.

Content governance is probably the most important of all the governance categories.  It is concerned primarily with efficiently managing work-in-progress content and records in a consistent manner in order to comply with internal policies and regulations – including litigation-related needs.  Content governance controls are designed to ensure consistency across the organization.  

Still another perspective is to recognize that content has a lifecycle within the organization.  The same document, or piece of content, can change from draft, to active, to archived, to expired.  The actions that can be performed on that content will change from one stage of the lifecycle to the next.  Combinations of the above approaches are used to ensure consistency of creation, management, and retention of both work-in-progress content as well as records.

[Note:  A free briefing paper is available from AIIM -- Automating ERM with SharePoint.]

Classification governance addresses content structure and content organization within the enterprise.  Classification governance also includes content type definitions,  and taxonomy and term management.

Classification governance is primarily concerned with how content is organized.  The objectives of classification governance are threefold:  first, to create classification structures; second, to organize content according to those structures using metadata; and third, to ensure that those classification structures remain consistent over time.

Functional governance addresses what users and administrators can use or configure.  Functional governance is controlling the capabilities that are made available to users by authorized individuals. This control is exerted over administrators as well as end users. Functional governance includes things like whether or not administrators can create new sites or create content types and metadata within a site.  It also includes whether or not users can take a web part and publish it for others to use or have access to web parts that others have created.

Security governance is primarily concerned with the organization and the assignment of specific permissions to users and groups.

Security governance is closely tied to the other areas of governance, since it is the manner in which security is applied that ultimately determines which users have access to sites, pages, web parts, administrative functions, and content

As with the other governance categories, the desired effect is to balance the benefit of a granular security model approach with the cost of maintaining that model.

Retention governance addresses the retention duration of documents and records.  This is achieved through consistently applying metadata, information management policies and records centers. Retention governance is what controls the conditions and duration that content is retained. 

[The above is drawn from AIIM's SharePoint for ECM course, created by the Gimmal Group.]