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OK, here's your chance to chime in. This is a quick survey (OK, really 10 min).
But it will be extremely helpful to the Board of Directors next week in starting to build a plan for 2011.
Would love your input. Click HERE or on the image for the survey or on the links below.
Today's guest blogger is Mitch Taube. Mitch is the principal founder of Digiscribe, formed in 2001 to provide companies of all sizes with cost-effective document scanning and electronic document management services. With over 25 years in the information services industry, Mitch brings a wealth of experience and insight to helping companies go paperless. He has served in various leadership roles for the imaging industry trade association – AIIM. He is a frequent speaker at seminars and trade conventions on how e-forms, document scanning and electronic document management systems helps companies streamline business processes, reduce costs, improve efficiency and improve customer service. Contact Mitch at , x 103 or .
Mitch is a past -- and early-on -- contributor to the "8 things" series -- 8 Things to Look For In a Document Management Service Provider
8 Reasons Why E-Forms Can Transform Your Business
When most people think of e-forms, they think of a fillable PDF that is printed, signed and either scanned for emailing, faxed or – heaven forbid – mailed. Whichever scenario you conjure up, a fillable PDF is not a “true” electronic form and cannot provide companies with an integrated solution to streamlining and automating key business processes.
Here are 8 ways in which “true” electronic forms can transform your business. This is especially important since according the Gartner, 85% of business processes rely on forms.
1 -- Eliminate the Paper from the Beginning.
E-forms are more than just an electronic version of a paper form. They promptly capture, verify, approve and integrate data with the critical business systems used to run organizations. When information is automatically captured and distributed without a paper form to begin with, business processes are streamlined, efficiency is improved, costs are cut and your organization becomes a little greener.
2 -- Release the Information Needed to Run Your Business.
Most of the information needed to run your business is trapped on paper and paper equivalents such as Word® documents, PDF files and pre-printed forms. By capturing and moving crucial information—previously trapped —into core business systems faster and more affordably, e-forms enable organizations to improve customer service, shorten cycle times and lower operating costs.
3 -- Integrate Data with Core Business Systems Automatically.
Once submitted, data entered on an e-form can be saved to one or more business system databases automatically and seamlessly. With two-way integration, an existing database can pre-fill a form, allowing for confirmation of information and elimination of user error. Integration is secure and works within an organization’s IT architectural structure and standards. Data captured on e-forms are typically sent to HR, finance, customer support and custom applications. The e-forms themselves reside within an electronic content management system for secure storage, retrieval, distribution and management.
4 -- Improve Data Accuracy.
Auto drop down lists and completion guides with field-specific instructions ensure data is captured accurately and completely. E-forms can auto-populate fields based on prior data entered and validate field-level data and form-level completeness before submission. Without the need for someone to manually enter data from a paper form into another system, data entry errors are eliminated and no data is lost in transcription.
5 -- Kick off Automated Workflow.
Once submitted, e-forms can implement an automated workflow based on an organization’s business rules. Employee applications can be distributed to the appropriate individual in HR for review, sales orders can be sent to a manager for approval and then on to distribution for delivery, credit applications can be sent to the appropriate manager in the finance department for immediate review and approval. Automated workflow is seamless, quick and ensures accountability.
6 -- Digitally Signed E-Forms are Legally Binding.
Digital signature technology allows users to sign an e-form without the need for distributed digital certificates or third party certificate authorities. Existing login ID/Passwords can be used for signing e-forms and built-in encryption tools allow for secure transmission of data.
7 -- Easy to Design & Set Up.
E-forms are easy to design, create and publish with no programming skills required. Features such as drag and drop, pre-built field validation controls and group controls ensure sophisticated layouts with trouble-free design and implementation. Existing paper forms and PDFs can be easily copied or customized so screens can have a familiar user interface to speed adoption.
8 -- Realize a Quick ROI.
E-forms can deliver an ROI in as little as a few months, depending upon the number of forms processed monthly. Form completion costs, processing costs and correction costs are radically reduced. Paper related expenses, such as supplies, storage and transportation, are eliminated altogether.
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Here's another post that may be of interest...
8 Reasons to Consider a Document Management Service Company as Part of Your Information Strategy
Since joining Vamosa in 2001, Nic has helped transform the company into a sector-defining software and solutions company specializing in the emerging area of Enterprise Content Governance (ECoG). Nic has led the expansion of Vamosa in the US, while continuing to work closely with the UK team on Vamosa's strategy and vision for the recently launched suite of products. Lots of good stuff on the Vamosa corporate blog...you should check it out.
A previous Nic post for the 8 things juggernaut -- 8 things that always worried you about legacy content, but you were afraid to ask about.
Most organizations do not realize the actual volume of data living and breathing on their corporate web properties, document management systems and file shares. In a world where it is estimated that around 80% of corporate data exists in unstructured forms; knowing how to turn the contents of that digital landfill into a knowledge asset presents a huge challenge for any business. But by capturing, sharing and retaining that knowledge, you will definitely build business advantage. Here are 8 things you need to do get the most out of your digital landfill.
8 Things You Need to Do to Capture, Share and Retain Knowledge from Your Digital Landfill
1 -- Define Knowledge (and how it is to be deployed).
Content knowledge is the building blocks for your business to differentiate. Smart companies take content knowledge and turn it into a strategy, product and/or service that builds competitive business advantage. Before you can begin to understand and get the most from the information within your system, you must define knowledge. It needs to be up-to-date, relevant and map onto your prime business objectives. It also must be aligned with the mode of operation of your business; in a distributed, technologically advanced enterprise, there is often no need to produce paper-based information, with all the associated challenges of change control, and inherent costs. Similarly, within more, traditional, slower moving environments the use of electronic media alone may involve a level of culture change that is unnecessary due to the prevalence of paper based manuals, such as in field based applications or within engineering workshops. The reality is that knowledge should be independent from the channel through which it is delivered. It should be fit for purpose, and ideally operate across all communications channels within the business.
2 -- Adopt Industry Standard Classification Schemes where Possible.
Your organization has so much data, but which data maps to valuable knowledge is not necessarily apparent. You’ve already defined knowledge, however, now you need to understand how to extract this value from the data. This requires a process of classification, but one that is flexible. You should identify all business content within your company and then associate those pieces with an industry or corporate standard classification.
3 -- Embrace Long-Term Standards.
Using industry-wide standard object based classification will provide your business with a flexible organizational solution. That way, if the business changes, you can modify your taxonomy (that is, change the way in which the relationships exist between the objects) rather than having to physically re-classify every object to reflect the changed taxonomic requirements of your organization. This will help to ensure the knowledge assets are of use now and will be in the future as the business changes.
4 -- Apply Consistency to Your Existing Content to Reduce the Noise.
There is so much static noise within your organizations’ proper information in the form of inconsistent nomenclature, patchy classification, duplicate and near duplicate content. That noise makes it hard to find anything – normally because you don’t have the tools or techniques to pinpoint a relevant subject area, or because your information is stored in functional silos – in department-specific storage areas, for example. Apply your standard classification to your existing content to reduce the noise within your organization.
5 -- Make Sure Your Content isn’t Duplicated.
Fighting through the noise needs to go one step further; it needs to ensure that there are no duplication issues. A Swiss Bank client once told me that attaching a PowerPoint presentation of 1Mb to an email within that bank increases corporate storage requirements by at least 1 GB and produces on average ten versions of the file. In one search, a single document could exist in 100 different places. That single fact alone highlights how difficult it is to sort out the knowledge from the noise. By de-duplicating your content, you’ll already be streamlining the process. Anecdotally this can reduce the file count by between 50% and 80% - significant in anybody’s language.
6 -- Find the Holes within Your Knowledge.
Look for existing entities in your classification that do not exist within your metadata – the information you have about your content. Holes provide you with the ability to clean information, ensure all relevant metadata is being completed by content creators; and if it’s not to get those content creators in line. That way you’ll be able to ensure content is relevant, findable and clean.
7 -- Share Knowledge.
There is always a presumption that the way to share content is with a content management or document management system. But this is not always the first thing to address. Content Management Systems work optimally when the content that they are custodians of is focused, relevant and classified. You need to understand how the content is being used and then drive your choice of platform as required. When migrating emails, for example, you have the real opportunity to be selective about where you store content. One customer was migrating 120,000 user email accounts from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange. When discussing the migration, it was identified that 70% of the storage requirement was generated by attachments. Moving all of the attachments to SharePoint instantly enabled ‘share-ability’ and de-duplication. You don’t need to follow the obvious route when sharing knowledge, rather choose a platform based upon what your business requires.
8 -- Maintaining Your Knowledge Assets.
If you don’t look after your house for years, leaving the walls to crack, the ceiling to leak and mould to grow in the bathroom, it’s not an easy task to repair. But if you manage it on a weekly basis, maintenance is much easier. The same applies to your knowledge. Once you get it to a point of usefulness, where it is relevant and findable, keep it there. If you don’t’ look at it for a year, you’ll then see some major gaps in the metadata, incorrect naming conventions, incorrect storage locations etc. If you invest in a pragmatic care and maintenance program, then spotting minor deviations from the documented standard will be easy to monitor for, highlight and resolve.
Possibly of interest...
I've been both reading and listening (I know, very nerdy) to Tom Peters' new Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence. Lots of thought-provoking ideas, and the audio is a hoot because a) Tom does it himself; and b) a book with lots and lots of repetition and big giant letters comes across interesting as an audio book, particularly when one is running around and around and around a 1/16 mile track.
One of the items I especially like is his discussion of "Guru Focus" vs. "Real World." I touched on this in My Commencement Speech post from last week, but the more I thought about it the world relevant it seems to the world of content and information management.
His point is that there is a difference between what goes on in thetheoretical world of gurus and pundits and analysts and what goes on in the real world of actually trying to get things done.
Guru Focus tends to be on Fortune 100 companies in cool businesses with presences around the world. Real World tends to be the land of small and mid-sized organizations, in not terribly sexy businesses, doing what it takes to get things done.
Two of his examples serve to illustrate some of the challenges that we have in our industry.
Guru Focus: An encompassing IS-IT strategy, with everything wired to everything else.
Real World: While integrating IS is very important, most of us muddle through, trying to ensure that the IT-enhanced bits (the front line subsytems) are marvels of simplicity that deliver the goods for those front line folks and their internal-external customers.
Guru Focus: Imposing word-phrases like "business models," "scalable," "strategic talent management," "customer retention management," and "knowledge management paradigm."
Real World: Most of use try to use everyday language such as "the way we make a buck" (instead of "business models"), "let's grow this sucker" (not, is it "scalable?"), "hire good people and treat 'em well and give them a chance to shine and thank 'em for the stuff they do" ( rather than "strategic talent management"), "bust our asses to keep our customers happy and keep em coming back" (instead of customer retention management) and "share the stuff you learn with everybody ASAP, don't hoard it" (rather than "executing a knowlege management paradigm").
With these observations in mind, I took a look at the top results that come back when you Google "define Enterprise Content Management."
I also took a look at some definitions on some leading vendor web sites...
Well...
Thinking about Peters' comments (and a warning -- I am making a commitment to write in his style for most of the rest of this post) two things strike me: 1) we are way too guru focused; and 2) we need more passion.
...it all sounds a bit boring, frankly. And I acknowledge we are all culpable.
YAWN!
I raise this because what organizations are doing with content management is ANYTHING BUT BORING.
When I talk to users -- and this isn't just at big Fortune 500 customers, in fact, even more so at mid-sized organizations, I usually don't hear boredom, I hear excitement.
Lots and lots and lots and lots of excitement.
So I decided to test this a bit for a recent keynote I did. Prior to the keynote, I did a survey of the users of the vendor. Here are some of the results. I am convinced these data points are NOT atypical...
60% agree = “XXXX has much improved our response to customers, suppliers and colleagues.”
63% agree = “We wouldn't now want to manage the business without our XXXX system.”
81% = “The ROI for XXXX was equal to or better than expected.”
...and the pièce de résistance...
“How important is XXXX to your organization’s business goals and success?”
Well, heck. That ain't boring!
If we were talking like real people rather than gurus and experts and poobahs, what might we say about content and document management?
"We couldn't live without it!"
"It has totally changed the way we do business!"
"Our customers love us!"
"It has saved us big bucks!"
Ahhh ... That feels better.
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Been to our new community sites yet? Join the conversation.
Jeetu Patel co-runs Doculabs, a strategy consulting firm focused on ECM, social computing and collaboration as well as process optimization. He also serves as a director on the AIIM board. Follow him on Twitter at or on his blog at http://pateljeetu.wordpress.com.
Some past 8 things contributions by Jeetu -- check them out...
8 Ways to Garner Adoption for Social Computing in Your Company
8 Essentials to Consider for Social Computing and Collaboration in Business
[Note: Doculabs White Papers are a good source of additional information and insight.]
For better or worse, I have been in the ECM industry for over a decade and a half. During this time, I have consistently seen opportunities for organizations to use ECM to bring about transformative value. But more often than not, ECM implementations fall short of the initial promise.
These so called failures are of three specific types:
So the obvious question is: What are the key causes of such high failure rates? The other side of that question, of course, is: What can be done by organizations to avoid them? A more fundamental question is whether ECM is even worth pursuing, given the odds of success – which, for purposes of this discussion, I am going to assume is not worth debating, since many organizations have in fact been successful at it; it’s just that certain proactive measures that are critical to ensuring success need to be addressed.
But before we do any of it, I think we need to understand the key reasons ECM implementations fail.
8 Reasons Why ECM Implementations Experience High Failure Rates, and What to Do About It
1 -- Disregard for Adoption.
Most organizations are so focused on trying to get something in production, that they tend to disregard the simplicity and fluidity of user experience that is required to garner the appropriate adoption rates. Adoption is a two-dimensional problem. The first dimension is making sure that a critical mass of users is enabled to access and use the ECM system. The second dimension is that a critical mass of content be available through the system. If either of these conditions doesn’t hold true, overall system adoption suffers. However, for both the number of users and amount of content, simplicity of user experience is the most critical dimension. If a user has to perform additional work to use the ECM system, that he/she didn't have to do in their old world, more than likely than not, they will bypass the ECM system. Not placing sufficient emphasis on both of these dimensions of user adoption is one of the biggest reasons ECM implementations fail.
Recommendation: Focus on scaling the number of users and the amount of content with an acute emphasis on simplicity of user experience. Integrate ECM's back end with social computing front ends.
2 -- Picking the Wrong Business Scenarios.
Most organizations don't pick the right business scenarios to start with to demonstrate the true potential of ECM. Those organizations that choose the first few scenarios for roll-out based on a combination of strong ROI potential and strong strategic enablement of long-term business directives can drive high (and positive) visibility for their ECM initiatives. It is the demonstration of the transformative potential of ECM to a business that tends to get the right level of enthusiasm from the other business areas.
For example, if your company is looking to move non-core business processes to a cheaper geography via business process outsourcing (BPO) activity, digitization of content is a necessary pre-requisite and enabling condition. Enabling digitization for BPO will have a higher likelihood of obtaining executive attention than digitization to save file-room real estate.
Recommendation: Pick business scenarios to start with that: (i) have high visibility at senior levels of management; (ii) offer strong potential for cost reduction or for increasing the top line; (iii) need ECM as a strategic driver to their business rather than a toolset from IT.
3 -- Over-customization.
Doculabs consulted for more than 500 companies across a multitude of highly regulated and complex industries, including life sciences, financial services, consumer packaged goods, utilities, state and local government, etc. Very seldom have these companies recognized the similarity of their operations to those of their peers. Instead, what we hear more often than not is how unique each company is, despite the fact that very few are that different from each other, especially regarding the reasons they could potentially fail with ECM.
One result of this conviction of uniqueness is that as businesses implement ECM, they tend to over-customize their implementations, believing they are different from the rest of the world in the ways they use information. The net result: long, arduous, risky, and expensive roll-outs, with even more expensive upgrade cycles. If most organizations focused not on meeting 100 percent of their needs with ECM, instead aiming to get 70 percent of their most important needs fulfilled by ECM, the cumulative benefit over a period of time would be far greater than trying to boil the ocean all at once. This seems like common sense, but is very rarely practiced.
Recommendation: Focus on less custom development; place greater emphasis on configuration.
4 -- One-off Provisioning of Business Requests.
The period from the time a business request comes in to IT to the time users have a functional system is, on average, 12 to 15 months of elapsed time. This extremely slow turnaround time is characteristic of many companies and is primarily the result of the lack of a repeatable implementation process.
Recommendation: Implement ECM as a shared service so that repeatable, configuration-based roll-outs become the norm.
5 -- Lack of Focus on Proving Business Justification.
A big reason why ECM implementations fail is a lack of focus around quantifying the ROI for ECM. Defining concrete and credible benefit streams and tracking against the model to ensure that the implementations produce those results is the only way to obtain sustained executive support and funding. Most business justifications tend to be either too optimistic to be taken seriously, or too generic to be applicable to an organization.
Recommendation: Develop specific business justifications with organization-specific data and a defensible heuristic model, showing peer group benchmark data that can be demonstrated to an executive in 10 minutes or less, but with rigor in the back end to be able to support the conclusions. (See Doculabs' white paper for more details.)
6 -- Ignoring the Impact of User Experience.
Eventually a system either succeeds or fails based on how it appeals to the user emotionally and whether the user is able to imagine the possibilities of a better world as a result of sustained use of a system. Since ECM has such a huge platform component to it, many organizations fail to get clarity in how "a day in the life of" a user will be impacted a result of ECM.
Recommendation: Build out storyboards or prototypes depicting how a user's life would be materially impacted for the better as a result of using ECM capabilities.
7 -- Lack of an Overall Vision for ECM.
Most organizations don't tend to have a sufficiently comprehensive vision of ECM to be able to determine whether their efforts are a success or a failure. A strategy for information management within an organization is largely absent in most places.
Recommendation: Either develop an ECM strategy, or dust off and refine your existing ECM strategy, especially in light of the rapidly changing landscape of social computing, information governance, and cloud-based computing models.
8 -- Underestimation of Cultural and Change Management Implications.
Last but not least, most failures aren’t the result of technology issues. ECM is a mature technology; most ECM suppliers are in their tenth and eleventh major versions of their products. The primary reason for failure is that organizations grossly underestimate the cultural and change management implications related to automating certain business tasks. People have become accustomed to doing things a certain way, and this sort of change can sometimes have a jarring effect. If not properly positioned, the ECM initiative starts off on the wrong foot and never gets back on track.
Recommendation: Whatever you're budgeting for change management during a roll-out of an ECM project, simply double it. No matter how much you think you've overestimated the effort, trust me when I say you've probably underestimated it by a long shot!
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While you're thinking about ECM and Change, here's my keynote from the AIIM On Demand event:
See more presentations by jmancini77 | Upload your own PowerPoint presentations
Robin Smith is currently Head of Information Governance at Northampton General Hospital and has over ten years experience in UK information risk management. He is currently authoring his second publication, "Legacy Information Management: Strategies for Optimization."
His new book, "Information risk management: Valuing, Protecting and Leveraging Business Information," can be ordered via the Ark Group.
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death. (James F. Byrnes)
Risk, just like death and taxes, is part of every day life. The risk associated with business information and knowledge is sometimes dismissed as an acceptable business overhead. However the need to maintain and raise the value of business information is clear during economically challenging times. To this end here is a crash course in improving information risk for your organization.
8 Steps to Information Risk Compliance
1 -- Establish a program board of senior managers and change makers to oversee and monitor the implementation of information risk management.
IT strategists routinely operate in a Prince2 environment, particularly in the UK. This is the standard project management methodology adopted to embed best practice standards for corporate initiatives. Prince2 aims to provide new project managers with an understanding of the main components required to successfully manage a project throughout the Project Life Cycle.
2 -- Establish an IRM (Information Risk Management) performance plan.
Defining the IRM program’s high-level goals is critical to innovation and risk-taking as it sets out what will be delivered by when. Governance is also required to define specific policies on matters such as IRM oversight responsibilities, related management processes, information threat notification and escalation processes. The IRM performance plan can also clarify risk definitions and risk appetite within limits or tolerances. This should integrate with corporate performance objectives.
3 -- Developed common information risk definitions.
Drawing on leading IT practices, a company’s information risk assessments, based on interviews and other information-gathering techniques with selected change makers, should produce a high-level list of the organization’s information risk priorities. These should map to current and future priorities include assessments of the monetary value of risks and lead to clear action planning to mitigate or control information risks.
4 -- Define information risk assessment process.
The program board should sponsor common standards for evaluating information risk along several dimensions, including the threat and likelihood of impact of a risk event and the organization’s vulnerability to the event. Annual threat assessments are extremely common among IT firms and Kaspersky produces a publicly available threat review each year to help this process.
5 -- Prioritize and value key information risks.
The program board should identify the top 50 people across the enterprise who have specific knowledge or competencies relating to particular information risks or related threats. These people should be asked to support the evaluation of potential risks and threats within their field of specialty for each event’s impact, current vulnerability, and speed of onset, using the criteria established by the IRM process. Deloitte routinely adopt this as a key part of the strategy development process for customers, encouraging a wide-ranging discussion of the values and threats impacting costs and services at the current time.
6 -- Develop a prioritized list of the top strategic and financial information risks to the organization.
This list should be consulted on far and wide to gain many perspectives in relation to the threats facing an organisation. This should form the information risk and control assessment and be widely communicated to all staff as part of training and induction. This promotes knowledge sharing and can lead to the generation of ideas across services for risk mitigation. Risk scanning and compilation in itself is a valuable knowledge transfer activity, allowing links and connections across networks that did not previously exist.
7 -- Identify important interrelationships among information risks.
Groups of related information risks (for example, related risks among contracts, third-party relationships, and outsourcing) must be identified and the connecting points between each of the risks were explored. This requires a degree of expertise and innovation to map information risk.
8 -- Take intelligent risks.
This is the key lesson to learn and should be reflected on by all information professionals. Recent research highlights that a critical part of success psychology relates to the attitude of information professionals. Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology, Harvard University states, "Studies show people regret not having done things much more than they regret things they did. Why? We can rationalise an excess of courage more easily than an excess of cowardice, because we can console ourselves by thinking of the things we learned from the experience. We hedge our bets when we should blunder forward. In fact, large-scale assaults on our happiness – a lost job or failed marriage – trigger our psychological defences (and hence promote our happiness) more than smaller annoyances. The paradoxical consequence is that it is sometimes easier to achieve a positive view of a very bad experience than a bad one. And yet we rarely choose action over inaction. Knowing we overestimate the impact of almost every life event makes me a bit braver and more relaxed because I know what I'm worrying about probably won't matter as much as I think it will."
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A leading IT thought leader has quoted Goethe by stating that IT professionals should,” Be bold and might things will come to your aid.” This must become the mantra for any information professional seeking to learn the lessons of those who have pushed forward IT during the last ten years.
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Also of interest...
AIIM's Electronic Records Management community.
Have you seen these two presentations? One on emerging disruptive trends, and one on E20?
You can embed either on your site. We'd be honored.
See more presentations by jmancini77 | Upload your own PowerPoint presentations
Bruno Wildhaber started his career in industrial electronics over twenty years ago and became a shareholder and manager in one of the first IT security enterprises in Switzerland. Since the successful sale of this business to Entrust he has participated as an expert in the establishment of the German Signature Law, and is a member of the expert group for "IT and the Law" of SWICO (the Association of the Swiss IT Industry). From 1995-1999 he was President of the Swiss Chapter of ISACA. He is a founder of the Competence Centre for Records Management. He has published several books on information security, IT-Governance and a practice guide for records management. Here's a link for Bruno.
[My keynote presentation at AIIM On Demand, if you didn't get a chance to see it.]
8 Ways Information Management (IM) and IT Governance (ITG) Will Support Each Other
1 -- "IT doesn't matter."
When Nicholas Carr published this statement in the Harvard Business Review in 2002, there was an outcry from the IT pundits. Obviously the fear of becoming irrelevant seemed exaggerated. Today we know Carr was right. He realized that we should talk about services and information, delivered based on our requirements fitting the needs of the business and other stakeholders such as employees and clients, instead of concentrating our energy on running bulky machines heating up the environment and driving up the electricity bill. So the T in IT is becoming less important. Typical IT Governance initiatives are still focused on in-house IT installations and software development; this will have to change. IM can support this.
2 -- IM will allow IT Governance to leave the conformance niche.
Although many IT Governance experts might strongly disagree, IT Governance is still a very defensive and cost and risk oriented topic. Coming mainly out of the auditor scene, IT Governance always came up short on the "value" side of the equation. If “Management is the balancing act between Conformance and Performance decisions," IT-Governance clearly addressed only the conformance side.
The five cornerstones of IT Governance: Risk management, Business/IT alignment, Value Delivery, Resource Management, and Performance Measurement (ITGI definition) have not been treated equally. Business/IT alignment -- one of the goals IT governance tried to accomplish -- was never really a core issue. Consultants stuck with the old risk and control focus. IM can help to change this view.
3 -- It's the fuel that powers the engine - it's information that creates value.
Information as a production factor has seen growing importance for some years. But things are changing faster then ever. Realizing that true business benefits will be created by having the right information in the right place, the importance of cloud computing and outsourcing services has grown. Business and other stakeholders should be in focus.
In many organizations it was the IT department that controlled the use of data -- a world upside down! Information Management is the key to better Business/IT alignment. Due to the decoupling of information and the technology to process it, the information owners are the new chiefs. IT Governance needs to adapt this view and focus more consequently on the business benefits of I. Many organizations won’t produce software or run hardware any longer, so the ITG domain models need to change. This will allow ITG to become a more business oriented topic.
4 -- Storage cost will be one of the drivers for better IT Governance.
Whereas all typical IT costs have come down, the cost of storage in total is increasing. This is true for the HW cost, but even more for the data management cost: If management of data costs 10 times the HW cost, data management is becoming a factor that directly affects the bottom line and shareholder value. Eliminating stovepipes and building a data highway are key components of an information strategy and need to be supported by IT Governance. The optimized management of data will become one of the more important drivers for value delivery.
5 -- Measure, measure, measure.
One key lesson we’ve learned from implementing ITG also be applied to IM. Maturity models are very useful tools to implement IM/ITG and to measure the success of the implementation. However, monitoring is key. Measuring the right things means to measure not only the amount of concrete you transport to the construction site (typical KPI) but also measure what has been built (typical KGI = Key Goal Indicator). Use only a few indicators, but track them permanently and with persistence.
6 -- Forget “best practice," use “adapted” or “optimized” instead.
One of the biggest misunderstandings when talking about maturity levels is the widespread (or consultant driven) idea, that a higher maturity level means it’s better for your organization. This is nonsense, because the level to be achieved depends solely on your organization and the goals deduced from the business you’re in. So in certain domains, a level 2 maturity might more than enough, whereas in other domains a 3 can be minimum. This also means: Get rid of best practice thinking. A focus on optimized practice thinking enables you to create the maximum benefit for your organization. Challenge standards and frameworks and adapt them to your needs.
7 -- IM must be governed.
If information is put in the hands of the business, the educated and controlled handling of this vital resource is key to the success of the organization as a whole. So Information Governance -- the subset of IM which takes care of all the conformance aspects -- needs to be harmonized with the domain control objectives for this area.
Therefore, an information management strategy is key and life cycle management a must. Coordination and governance of data spread throughout the cloud is not an easy challenge. Relying on the over-potent search engine will fail, so better tackle the challenge now!
8 -- IT Governance 2.0.
The next generation of IT governance will move away from in-house, IT-shop centric controls and must focus on cloud computing, the lifecycle of data, social media and the integration of data from a dozen different sources.
Security, privacy and control will remain very important topics, so will cost issues and resource management. But because costs are more transparent and resources calculable, business IT alignment will be even more in focus. The significance of your internal IT shop is decreasing -- the governance and control aspects must be concentrated on delivering services and less on software development or things like disaster recovery and physical security. However, a slavish implementation of so called “best practice” standards will not support your business. Only optimized practice will empower your organization.
Also of interest...
8 reasons why information governance makes sense
8 things to consider when developing an information retention policy
8 Things You Need to Know About the CMIS Standard
My guest blogger today is Lubor Ptacek. Lubor joined Open Text in 2008 and as the Vice President, Product Marketing. He is responsible for overall product marketing activities for the entire suite of Open Text enterprise content management products. His responsibilities range from messaging and market intelligence to analyst and public relations.
In case you missed these posts from earlier in the week -- there were some Feedburner problems.
8 Things You Need to Know Now That You Are Out in the Real World Looking for a Job
8 Business Use Cases for Twitter
Twitter can be a powerful business tool—if you can get past the initial thought of blasting your messages to a trusted audience waiting for every word from your corporate news room. The rules of Twitter have been well documented – keep it personal, don’t spam with useless info, keep it interesting, and so on. These rules apply to each of the use cases described below, which are the most common use cases for using Twitter and other microblogging services as business tools:
1 -- Thought leadership.
When your key employees actively engage in conversations with other players in your industry, sharing their thoughts, opinions, and favorite information sources, they begin to attract followers. You are not a leader if nobody follows.
2 -- Competitive intelligence.
Following the key employees of your competitors is a great way to gain competitive information about the technologies and trends they are paying attention to, what conferences they attend, what products they are launching, and so on. Even more information can be gathered by following the key players in the competitors’ ecosystems – those who don’t work for the company directly are usually much more open in their tweets.
3 -- Sentiment analysis.
When you mention a product in your tweet, you often gain another follower – the company that makes or sells that product. Smart companies have realized that they can monitor the overall sentiment or mood around their product by following people who talk about it. They often use specialized software to do this monitoring in a way that allows them to do sophisticated sentiment analysis.
4 -- Surveys.
If you want to quickly check the opinions of your followers on a particular topic, use a tweet with your brand as a hashtag. This doesn't yield statistically relevant results, but still provides useful feedback in most cases. For everything else, there are tools like SurveyMonkey.
5 -- Customer communities.
Twitter allows you to respond to your customers’ questions publicly. You can demonstrate that you care, you can engage with your customers in a dialog, and you can continuously educate them about your product capabilities. Thanks to its informal nature, your customers might be much more willing to contribute to conversations on Twitter than on other media. They can and will participate by sharing tips, answering each other’s questions, or simply commenting on their experience with your product.
6 -- Networking and expertise location.
Do you want to find out who matters in your ecosystem? Start following some of the key players you know and start watching who they follow. Soon, you’ll meet many experts you’d otherwise not know about. It’s not their title or profile that makes them experts; it’s what they do and say. Twitter is a great audit trail of a person’s activities. This is different than using LinkedIn, since Twitter is based on unilateral relationships – the people you follow don’t always know you.
7 -- Event coordination.
Twitter is being used on mobile devices at conferences for networking and comments within the participant community, but it can also be used effectively for coordination – such as for last minute agenda changes. The same concept can be applied to the coordination of projects and emergencies, such as accidents or natural disasters. As we’ve seen recently in Iran and Thailand, Twitter and other social networking services can be used to great effect in organizing political protests.
8 -- Marketing communication.
Using Twitter for blatant marketing propaganda can be a major turn-off, but when used with subtlety and in combination with other tools—such as a press release, material posted on a website, or a webcast—it can be a powerful addition to your marketing mix. The beauty is that Twitter obeys the rules of permission marketing since your followers are following you of their own accord. Just make sure it stays that way – do not abuse them for your marketing goals.
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There are certainly other business use cases of Twitter out there today and many more will be developed in the future. Feel free to tweet me if you’d like to comment:
Some other posts about social computing and ECM that may be of interest...
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