C3 Associates Inc.

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)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 at 12:12 am and is filed under Calgary Document Management, Document Management, ECM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.