John Mancini's Keynote View of the Digital Future

future_TECH

John Mancini, President of AIIM International was kind enough to make a zipcast of his info360 keynote presentation slides. This allows him to do “present” his slides. I am very, very grateful that he did this, as I was not able to attend the conference. I was really impressed by John’s comments. I made some “rough” notes. (I call them “rough” because they don’t capture all of John’s message – If you want, scroll to the bottom of this post to see the link to his zipcast.) ============================================================ Rough Notes made from John Mancini’s keynote at Info360 We are in the middle of an interesting technology inflection point —————————————————————- We have been through many phases, each with its content management focus.

  • Mainframe – Batch Transactions
  • Mini – Departmental Processes
  • PC – Documents
  • Internet – Web pages

Effectively what we have done is just taken the old world of paper-based records, ledgers and transferred it to the next phase of technology. This may the the source of some of the challenges that we have. The next iteration after the Internet will be “Social” – a focus on interactions and conversations. The content management focus will be capturing and managing these. John mentions that companies can’t just put a social layer on top of their current processes. They will need to think about the social layer and how they embed it in all of their processes and push it back through our web presences and information repositories so that everything connects up. A system of engagement that just has a front-end social process and nothing else behind it is not enough. John also points out that we need to avoid pushing just old world concepts into this social world. We will need to adapt these ideas, and ways of doing things. The old transactional ideas had to do with control, auditing and securing. This won’t be always possible in the new way. Implications ———— CIO’s will need to approach things differently.

  • Traditionally – Minimise Risk and Reduce Cost.
  • The new is Add Value and Create New Reality

The end of the email era John did an analysis of his e-mail:

  • 46% was actually unwanted (spam);
  • 21% was e-mails to colleagues – these could actually be better addressed with social media;
  • 21% was bac’n (interesting, but not essential, can be deleted without any harm).
  • The only things of real value were the e-mails sent to, and received from, real people outside of the organisation. This accounted for only 6% of total volume.

His point was – we need to think differently about e-mail. This is compounded by the fact that the people coming into the workforce are from the “social” phase, while the people making the decisions are from the “PC” phase. The End of IT autocracy.

  • 10 years – the coolest technology was was you got at work.
  • Now that is reversed.
  • Workplace IT is lagging behind.
  • If a business imperative is important enough, it doesn’t matter how much IT control it, if going outside that control will allow a user to get the job done, people will do it.

Implication of Compounding

  • Information growth will be incredible.
  • At the same time the cost of storage is dropping.
  • However this is not proportional. (Information growth exceeds decrease in cost).

Why we should care ——————-

  • If we ignore this, we will make the same mistakes again. E.g. when e-mail came out, companies considered it a risk, and that it was really only needed for management, etc.
  • However, companies need to embrace this technology to remain competitive. Otherwise there is a risk of a “digital divide”. The longer that it takes, the more difficult it will be.

============================================================== Link to John Mancini’s Zipcast ———————————————–

  • 7 Social Media Statistics That Will Get You Thinking on Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
  • Social Media Use at Work on the Rise
  • Guy Kawasaki – The Art Of Social Media
  • 10 ways to use Zipcast (slideshare.net)
  • SlideShare Brings another collaboration tool to the crowded web conferencing market (zdnet.com)

John Mancini’s Keynote View of the Digital Future

future_TECH

John Mancini, President of AIIM International was kind enough to make a zipcast of his info360 keynote presentation slides. This allows him to do “present” his slides. I am very, very grateful that he did this, as I was not able to attend the conference. I was really impressed by John’s comments. I made some “rough” notes. (I call them “rough” because they don’t capture all of John’s message – If you want, scroll to the bottom of this post to see the link to his zipcast.) ============================================================ Rough Notes made from John Mancini’s keynote at Info360 We are in the middle of an interesting technology inflection point —————————————————————- We have been through many phases, each with its content management focus.

  • Mainframe – Batch Transactions
  • Mini – Departmental Processes
  • PC – Documents
  • Internet – Web pages

Effectively what we have done is just taken the old world of paper-based records, ledgers and transferred it to the next phase of technology. This may the the source of some of the challenges that we have. The next iteration after the Internet will be “Social” – a focus on interactions and conversations. The content management focus will be capturing and managing these. John mentions that companies can’t just put a social layer on top of their current processes. They will need to think about the social layer and how they embed it in all of their processes and push it back through our web presences and information repositories so that everything connects up. A system of engagement that just has a front-end social process and nothing else behind it is not enough. John also points out that we need to avoid pushing just old world concepts into this social world. We will need to adapt these ideas, and ways of doing things. The old transactional ideas had to do with control, auditing and securing. This won’t be always possible in the new way. Implications ———— CIO’s will need to approach things differently.

  • Traditionally – Minimise Risk and Reduce Cost.
  • The new is Add Value and Create New Reality

The end of the email era John did an analysis of his e-mail:

  • 46% was actually unwanted (spam);
  • 21% was e-mails to colleagues – these could actually be better addressed with social media;
  • 21% was bac’n (interesting, but not essential, can be deleted without any harm).
  • The only things of real value were the e-mails sent to, and received from, real people outside of the organisation. This accounted for only 6% of total volume.

His point was – we need to think differently about e-mail. This is compounded by the fact that the people coming into the workforce are from the “social” phase, while the people making the decisions are from the “PC” phase. The End of IT autocracy.

  • 10 years – the coolest technology was was you got at work.
  • Now that is reversed.
  • Workplace IT is lagging behind.
  • If a business imperative is important enough, it doesn’t matter how much IT control it, if going outside that control will allow a user to get the job done, people will do it.

Implication of Compounding

  • Information growth will be incredible.
  • At the same time the cost of storage is dropping.
  • However this is not proportional. (Information growth exceeds decrease in cost).

Why we should care ——————-

  • If we ignore this, we will make the same mistakes again. E.g. when e-mail came out, companies considered it a risk, and that it was really only needed for management, etc.
  • However, companies need to embrace this technology to remain competitive. Otherwise there is a risk of a “digital divide”. The longer that it takes, the more difficult it will be.

============================================================== Link to John Mancini’s Zipcast ———————————————–

  • 7 Social Media Statistics That Will Get You Thinking on Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
  • Social Media Use at Work on the Rise
  • Guy Kawasaki – The Art Of Social Media
  • 10 ways to use Zipcast (slideshare.net)
  • SlideShare Brings another collaboration tool to the crowded web conferencing market (zdnet.com)

SharePoint Will Not Own ECM (At Least, Not Anytime Soon) – My 2¢ worth

Came across a post via via the other day…

@SharePointBuzz retweeted  @JoeShepley about a post that was written by Linda Andrews in response to a post Joe had originally written about SharePoint 2010. (You may have to read that again).

Here’s Joe’s original post: http://joeshepley.wordpress.com/2010/06/08/sharepoint-will-own-ecm/.

And here’s Linda’s response: http://www.doculabs.com/?p=1260.

I read Linda’s post first, and started writing a response. Once finished, I thought it might be prudent to read what Joe had originally said, and tweaked my response slightly. Originally I was going to post my response as a comment on the page of Linda’s post. But then thought “Nah – I’ll post this on my blog to give it the glory that it deserves”…

Here is my contribution to the debate:

Hi Linda

Interesting article – thanks.

I’ve been working in the ECM for about 16 years now, having cut my teeth on FileNet, and have worked for the last three years with Documentum (and also SharePoint).

 

When SharePoint 2003 appeared on the scene, it did not even show on my radar. I was aware of the name, but that was it. When SharePoint 2007 took to the stage, I watched the hype and excitement that it bought with it for the first 6 months, but watched that die quickly. While its strengths definitely didn’t lie with ECM, it did offer a lot to collaboration.

SharePoint 2010, on the other hand, I am treating with a modicum of respect, and I have been looking at the “threat” that it is supposedly bringing with it.

I have read Joe Shepleys original post. He makes some very valid points, and while, in principle, you do too, I’d like to share my own thoughts…

For many companies that already have an existing ECM solution in place, the cost, as you pointed out, of swapping to SharePoint is more a reason not to. To uproot a working system, as well as to migrate the documents is not something undertaken lightly.

However, consider a minus of some of the big ECM products. The cost of licences can be quite hefty. This does make SharePoint attractive (even taking into account the points you have made in Reason #3). Any smart company will try and reduce the cost of something that is considered an overhead. As a result, during times of document management system upgrades, it may be that the move to SharePoint could be worthy of consideration.

And, with that in mind, I would like to reiterate Joe’s Shepley’s closing paragraph, by saying that it is not unreasonable to consider that, for the sake of reducing costs, a change in expectations may also be considered. Analyse the actual business process and, if the cost savings are really worth it, adapt it. Maybe a less complex process, that has been built around the “reduced” functionality that SharePoint has, could be put into place.

I’m not going to make any hard predictions, but, maybe SharePoint will actually start owning more and more of the ECM world…

  • AIIM White Paper on SharePoint Deployment (arnoldit.com)