C3 Associates Inc.

For this week’s blog post I was going to provide my perspective on the recently completed AIIM show but there are already so many excellent summaries out there I’m not sure what more I could add. I thought Barclay Blair’s observations were particularly astute, especially as it related to Google’s perspective on ECM. Mike Alsup provided a solid list of nine observations (just to go one better than John Mancini I’m sure), Russ Stalters highlighted the big push by Microsoft to promote SharePoint to the ECM community and also commented on the evolution of cloud-based ECM offerings. Finally, the Big Men on Content gave their considered opinions on the impact and evolution of CMIS. Once you’ve read through these articles it will feel like you were there.

My big “aha” moment at AIIM came in the speakers ready room. I got to talking with fellow Canadian Lewis Eisen about how to truly measure success when implementing information management. We discussed whether traditional measures of success like the number of documents loaded to the system, number of users, number of searches, etc. are really all that valuable. The short answer for both of us was a resounding no. These measures are peripheral at best, sort of like saying “It always rains when I go to Philadelphia for the AIIM conference, therefore I make it rain in Philadelphia”.

So what metrics and measures are valuable? The answer to that question is another question; what is the mission for your organization? The main point of my AIIM presentation this year (“What Success Looks Like – The Anatomy of a Successful ECM Implementation“) was that there is nothing inherently valuable about an ECM implementation (at this point you’re wondering why I’m blogging about ECM…bear with me, there’s a point here).

There is little doubt most organizations are dealing serious information overload problems and these problems are impacting their ability to succeed, but setting out simply to fix an information management problem without considering the broader objectives of your organization is a recipe for failure. Many (or perhaps most) ECM projects started out as IT-driven initiatives. Measuring the success of a project by the amount of content loaded to the system in the first year, or counting the number of users who have been trained, or even counting the number of new versions added by users will not tell you whether the system is a success or not.

To truly measure success you first must establish key performance indicators (KPIs) for ECM. While that hardly ranks as the most earth-shattering bit of news you are likely to hear this week, it is amazing how often this basic principle is missed when implementing ECM. KPIs must measure outcomes that are important to the bottom line of your entire organization, not just your IT department.

For example, if you are a sales-focused organization develop metrics within your ECM program that measure the impact on sales. The impact on the sales cycle from implementing good information management practices within the sales group is a good KPI (note: the amount of time it takes to find current sales collateral is not a valid measure; the amount of time it takes to convert prospects into clients is). This is obviously not a simple task and requires very close alignment with leadership in this part of the organization, and that’s really the point. If your ECM team is close enough to identify and measure KPIs within a business unit, your ability to design information architectures and work practices that support business objectives will increase exponentially.

The last, and possibly most critical point is that you need to be committed to continually monitoring, reporting and evolving your KPIs. This continual improvement review should be formalized to be at least an annual process or perhaps even more often if you have met your objectives and need to set new targets (or equally important if you have not met your objectives).

I am certainly interested in hearing about your experiences creating and measuring KPIs for ECM so please feel free to share your comments below.

Cross-posted from my blog on the AIIM ERM Expert User Community.

I want to make the world safe for records management.

Scratch that. I want to make the world safe for records managers. Why? Because they don’t seem to get the respect they deserve and in most cases, neither does the information they help manage.

Based on the fact that you’re reading this blog I’m sure you agree organizations should work hard to manage information well. Certainly most have taken a crack at it with varying degrees of success but regardless of their efforts we can usually predict which parts of our organizations will succeed or fail based on their organizational mission in life. For example:

• If I’m in accounting I can usually dig up an invoice from a few years back if I really need to
• If I’m in legal I can usually find a contract (or at least sheepishly call the company we contracted with to get a copy)
• If I’m in marketing I usually wonder where the he*l that file went

I’m generalizing to make the point that many organizations have failed to realize the full benefits of their enterprise information management programs because their efforts to date haven’t been truly enterprise. Information management within many (if not most) organizations has emerged from a series of point solutions deployed to individual departments, often on different platforms.

So what are successful organizations doing right? How do they manage the ever-present tug of war between efficiency and process? How do they get buy-in from senior executives and how do they sustain the momentum of ECM initiatives to ensure they stay relevant?

The answer is deceptively simple; they evolve. They move beyond managing records as valuable in their own right to governing information as a true asset of their organization. Easy to say, hard to do. Organizations that successfully navigate this transition usually do so because they establish strong information governance practices.

What’s the difference between records management and information governance? In my opinion:

• Records management is static where information governance is dynamic
• Records management is reactive where information governance is proactive
• Records management is focused on the retention schedule where information governance is focused on enabling the business to get their work done

I am most definitely not saying that records management is not important (some of my best friends are records managers…). Organizations that successfully manage information across the enterprise (and this information includes records) realize that information is only valuable if it helps advance the cause of your organization. In the case of highly regulated industries or those with a high litigation risk there will be a strong focus on creating hard-and-fast rules for information retention and disposition. The challenge that most organizations face is that this is where enterprise information management begins and ends.

Organizations with a focus on information governance realize the importance of creating a living model that puts appropriate structures in place to enable users to manage information appropriately. This means a risk-based approach to records retention, but frankly there’s nothing especially new or unique about that. What is unique are those organizations that establish mechanisms to efficiently support the changing information management needs of their users. According to IDC individuals (rather than transactional systems) create 70% of the information in organizations; this means organizations that provide simple, intuitive and, most importantly, flexible information management structures will be the ones that succeed.

Information management structures (a folder hierarchy, metadata model, line-of-business integration, or custom interface) must make sense to the end users and fit easily into the flow of their work. This is no easy task and is only made more difficult when there is an overemphasis on command-and-control governance structures.

My advice to records managers and information management practitioners everywhere is to focus on a thin layer of standardization, then provide “guidelines” and “principles” for managing information rather than hard and fast “must do” policies. Users are much more likely to follow good practices for managing information if they feel they have some flexibility to do it on their own terms. Yes, there is still a need for certain information to be managed with more rigour, but my challenge to the records managers of the world is to find ways to empower your users to manage information rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach. A little freedom might just be what your information, and your users, need.

I’m back from Vancouver and my presentation to Project World. It was a good event and well-attended by people from throughout Western Canada and the Pacific North West.

My presentation stimulated a lot of interesting discussion (well, interesting if you’re a PM or ECM enthusiast). Here’s a link to the presentation. Questions or comments are welcome.

There’s been an interesting convergence of opinion pieces and hard news over the past 24 hours that speak to the future of Enterprise Content Management as we know it. I know that sounds a bit melodramatic but I sense that we’re in the midst of a seismic shift in the way organizations view ECM applications and the way vendors are providing those applications.

Yesterday, Matt Asay of CNet compared the recenty hype about Google’s Chrome browser to the quiet (or maybe not so quiet if you’ve been paying attention to the ECM blogosphere) reality of SharePoint’s massive expansion within the enterprise. His suggestion that Google has a long way to go to grab the attention of corporate IT groups and displace Microsoft is an understatement to say the least. He goes on to say that the trick for Google and others is to focus on interoperability if they have any hope of challenging SharePoint.

Matt is either incredibly astute or just plain lucky because it looks like Microsoft and friends have beaten Google to that punch as well. Today, Microsoft, EMC and IBM, supported by other key ECM vendors including Open Text, Alfresco, SAP and Oracle announced the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) standard (see also the Yahoo Finance article on this).

At this point in the history of ECM, I think Google Chrome and Google Sites are just noise from an enterprise point of view. Until we see significant adoption in the real world and some acknowledgement from Google that content has a lifecycle, I’m not going to consider Google tools as part of the ECM equation.

And that equation, in my mind, includes both collaboration and control. All true ECM tools enable both but each tool does some things better than others. Traditional ECM applications like Livelink, Documentum and FileNet are very strong when it comes to controlling content but have not been noted for their ease-of-use when it comes to collaboration. SharePoint, on the other hand, is not the first choice amongst the records management community but provides arguably the best enterprise-ready collaboration platform on the market.

Which brings me back to the CMIS Standard.

My first impression about the impact CMIS will have in the ECM market is that it validates what I’ve been saying for a while. SharePoint will not be the video that kills ECM’s radio stars (hands up all you Buggles fans; be honest). CMIS allows organizations to legitimately pursue an “all of the above” ECM strategy and removes any impediments they may have in deploying SharePoint to supplement an existing ECM application. At the same time, traditional ECM vendors will continue to survive and thrive as they support content that requires more rigorous controls.

Ultimately, as the news release announcing the CMIS standard says, this should be all about the customer. Of course we all know that vendors don’t do things out of the goodness of their hearts, there’s clearly something in it for them as well. Here’s hoping that the CMIS standard will help break down barriers to successful content management by providing the best of both collaboration and control to the benefit of everyone.

I’ve got an upcoming speaking engagement on October 28 at the ProjectWorld Vancouver conference. My topic is “ECM Rescue – Picking up the Pieces from a Failed Implementation”. I’m excited about the opportunity to share some of my experiences in “rescuing” suboptimal ECM implementations and I’m sure I’ll learn a lot while I’m there as well. You can find out more about the event here. Hope to see some of you there.