C3 Associates

As promised, I’ve included a list of ECM blog resources at the bottom of this post. I’ll add this to my blog roll shortly.

I’ve also been thinking about a recent post by Russ Stalters, who is working on a better definition of ECM than those offered by AIIM, Gartner, Forrester, et al. I encourage you to have a look at his post and let Russ (and me) know what you think.

My thoughts: Russ is bang-on in his focus on governance and “oh-by-the-way-there’s-also-some-technology-involved” attitude. We’ve all seen too many ECM vendor demos that promise instant knowledge sharing, an end to email chaos, the elimination of shared drives within 30 days and instant harmony between engineers and accountants (I have yet to see this last benefit anywhere in the wild, although I understand it has been replicated once in a laboratory setting, albeit briefly).

My only quibble with Russ’s definition is its length and MBA-esque language (takes one to know one). One thing I’ve observed is that you need to be able to get a message across in 30 seconds or less or the overloaded knowledge workers who make up our stakeholder groups will tune out. So, here’s my very brief, cocktail-party definition of ECM:

Enterprise Content Management is about helping us manage our information better. It’s about helping us work together by providing simple tools to share our documents and communicate with one another. It also helps make sure that we’re in compliance with the rules that govern our organization by providing a secure central location to store electronic files and references to paper files so we keep what we need to keep and get rid of what we’re allowed to get rid of.

I recognize that this is a simplification of everything we do, but that’s the point. I’ve had a fair bit of success with this as a starting point to a more detailed discussion of the nitty gritty of ECM.

I’d appreciate your feedback on this definition. All comments (positive or complimentary) are welcome.

 

Blog Roll

AIIM ECM Industry Watch (http://feeds.feedburner.com/EcmIndustryWatch)

AIIM Podcasts (http://rss.mac.com/jmancini77/iWeb/John%20Mancini’s%20web%20site/Podcast/rss.xml)

Andrew Connell [MVP MCMS] (http://feeds.feedburner.com/AndrewConnell)

Andrew May’s WebLog (http://blogs.msdn.com/andrew_may/rss.xml)

BetterECM - Russ Stalters’ Blog on Exploring NextGen ECM (http://betterecm.wordpress.com/feed/)

CMS Watch Trends and Features (http://www.cmswatch.com/RSS/cmswatch.xml)

The Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Network (http://feeds.feedburner.com/ecmnetwork)

Gilbane Group Blog (http://gilbane.com/blog/atom.xml)

HBR IdeaCast (http://hbsp2.libsyn.com/rss)

Joel Oleson’s SharePoint Land (http://blogs.msdn.com/joelo/rss.xml)

Mart Muller’s Sharepoint Weblog (http://blogs.tamtam.nl/mart/SyndicationService.asmx/GetRss)

Microsoft Records Management Team Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/recman/rss.aspx)

Open Text ECM Briefs (http://www.opentext.com/blogs/ecm_briefs/atom.xml)

Patrick Tisseghem’s Blog [MVP SharePoint] (http://www.u2u.info/Blogs/Patrick/_layouts/listfeed.aspx?List=%7B91F6455C-4448-4303-8A38-B1722E1522D1%7D)

SharePoint Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Team Blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/ecm/rss.aspx)

Welcome to the first of what we hope are many entries in the C3 Associates ECM blog. Through this blog the C3 team hopes to contribute to the ECM community by sharing our experiences designing and deploying Enterprise Content Management solutions.

First, a very (very) brief overview of who we are and what we do. C3 Associates is a vendor-neutral team of ECM experts based in beautiful Calgary, Alberta, home of the mighty Calgary Flames (who are pretty much a lock to win the Stanley Cup this year, but I digress). C3 does only one thing; design, deploy and support Enterprise Content Management systems. Our team has experience deploying most major ECM applications including Open Text Livelink, Livelink ECM eDocs (formerly Hummingbird DM), Microsoft SharePoint, EMC Documentum, IBM / FileNET and others.

Our hope is that by focusing only on ECM we can provide targeted solutions and help organizations solve their pressing content management challenges. We do this by focusing on people first, process second and finally looking at the technology that makes ECM happen. We will expand on these ideas as we go, but hopefully this provides you with an idea of what we’re all about.

C3 Associates is made up of three principals with over 30 years combined experience in the ECM space (and no, we’re not called C3 because there are three of us…more on that later);

Sheila Bryant

Greg Clark

John Meilleur

C3 Associates believes that only when content is placed in context are people truly able to collaborate. Hence our name (and our slogan): Content + Context = Collaboration(TM)

Our goals for this blog are to:

Bridge the theory-practice gap. This seems especially pressing given Microsoft’s full-court-press into ECM, which has increased the general awareness of ECM (this is a good thing) but also has many people wondering exactly where the more robust Microsoft Office SharePoint Server fits into the ECM mix.

Talk about ECM in a Calgary context. This means that we’ll focus largely on the oil and gas industry, although most of the topics we discuss will have applicability well beyond oil and gas.

We will try to answer the “so what” questions associated with ECM technologies. ECM applications can do some great things, but if those great things are not matched with real-world requirements implementations are doomed to fail.

Share some technical insights into ECM applications. We will share the heartbreak and hope that comes from implementing and supporting a variety of ECM applications.

I promised John that I’d try to keep these posts short so I think I’ll call it an evening. Next posting I’ll share some of the ECM resources I find useful and will talk a bit about the evolving definition of ECM. Also look out for posts from the technical brains of the operation, John Meilleur.