In today's business world, customers expect organizations to be able to adjust, respond, and deliver products and services effectively, efficiently -- and on their schedules.

Summer is ending, but the resources from around the AIIM community are heating up! Check out what's new this month to keep you informed with the latest trends and information from our industry as well as an opportunity to participate in our Paper-Free research. Review these great pieces at your convenience to stay at the top of your game.

I also invite you to take 10 minutes to participate in our Paper-Free in 2016: Are We There Yet? and help us paint a true picture of how far we've come in our efforts to reduce paper-driven processes. We'll make a donation to a children's charity for every response we receive.

For years, AIIM has been a major advocate in the paper-free movement. Through our research, resources, and events we’ve preached the importance and benefits of reducing paper in business and major strides have been made so far.

It is the best of times and the worst of times for HR professionals.

Here's some great resources from around the AIIM community to help you keep up with the latest trends and information from our industry as well as an opportunity to participate in our latest research. Review these great pieces and stay at the top of your game.

Digital Transformation Roundup -- 6 Information Management Tip Sheets and 28 "Must Knows" You Don't Want to Miss

In case you missed them while taking a few days off this summer, here are a few of my most popular tip sheets and posts from the summer. Check 'em out.

7 Tips to Create MORE Information Chaos

There are lots of ways to being to attack the challenge of information chaos.  But how might you inadvertently make things worse? 

6 Things You Need to Know About Emerging Markets and Information Management

Among both information management users and information management solution-providers, the digital disruption that is coming drives a number of opportunities and challenges.  On the user side, organizations must extend their content and information management capabilities into new markets, and understand how those markets are different from the traditional markets they serve, and think through how those different needs translate into different content management infrastructure requirements.  Similarly, content management solution providers have focused on established markets and economies. They will now face two pressures: 1) new “home-grown” content management competitors who really understand the unique issues of their home markets; and 2) pressures from their customer base to provide the tools they need to penetrate emerging market. 

3 Reasons Why Document Processing Should Matter to the C-Suite

Here’s the fundamental question for many organizations – When it comes to streamlined document processing, why bother? What business results can you expect if you go down this path?  Let’s take a look at intelligent document recognition and streamlined document processing through the prism of the 3 things that keep C-level executives up at night:  Cost, Compliance, and Customers.

4 Steps to Leverage What You Already Have and Know to Improve Customer Experiences

Digital Disruption. Digital Experiences. They are on the wish list for just about every C-level executive. But where do you start? How do you move from the hype to value? A good place to start is by leveraging the capabilities you likely already have – scanning, capture, and the digital mailroom – and extending them into the core processes that you use to run your business.

5 Faces of Information Chaos

For many years, I’ve watched people in organizations that I KNOW could benefit from content technologies politely listen to sales presentations, nod their heads and then back away from a decision.  I find this “reluctance to commit” mysterious, because most of the people that I’ve spoken with who have automated a previously paper-driven process swear by the results and wouldn’t return to life pre-content management for anything.  I’m convinced that this “reluctance to commit” is due to the fact that many on the sell-side of our industry (including AIIM at times, I’ll confess!) can’t resist talking about technology.  ECM! BPM! Taxonomies! Metadata! Capture!

3 Questions to Ask About Content Creation

Content is a valuable corporate asset, driven by value, created by many authors, and generated from many sources. Yet content creation is often taken for granted by business organizations as something that just happens as part of the daily business routine.

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You might also be interested in these 6 blog posts...

8 Reminders About Why World Paper Free Day Matters

Digital Disruption and the Structure of Emerging Markets

7 Tips to Unstick Your SharePoint Implementation

Big Data, Content Analytics, Information Capture and the Hype Curve

Preparing for the Era of Intelligent Machines

What Part of Being Blockbustered Don't You Understand?  Digital Transformation In Action

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In the Toronto, NY or DC metro areas?  We've got a process improvement seminar coming up in your neighborhood!  They're FREE.

Washington DC event -- October 4 at the National Press Club

New York event-- October 6 at the Manhattan Penthouse

Toronto event -- October 13 at the Allstream Centre

Digital disruption is moving quickly past the surface level of disruption as technology innovation in the consumer realm gets incorporated into the very fabric of how business is done, creating radical disruption along the way.  All of this ultimately manifests itself in international trade, financial, and data flows and the impact these on the individual knowledge skills that workers need to have to survive and the organizational competencies in information management that companies and governments require to continue to be relevant and competitive.

I came across a great McKinsey study on this, Digital globalization: The new era of global flows which got me thinking about the six points below. 

6 Things You Need to Know About Emerging Markets and Information Management

1. The global trade, services, and financials flows that have traditionally driven the world’s economy have stalled. 
2. We are now in an era in which global data and information flows are the primary determinant of economic benefit.
3. Digital disruption will be accelerated by the growing gaps between the world as it was and the world it is becoming.
4. Emerging markets are where much of the growth in information management will occur in the next decade.
5. Radical disruption and its impact on emerging markets is opening up a host of opportunities for new players.
6. In order to capitalize on the opportunities arising in emerging markets, organization must look hard at their organizational structures and the information systems that support them – and that means content management

Download the full Tip Sheet for more information!

 You might also be interested in this post:

Brexit, Presidential Campaign Follies, the Olympics and Disruption Déjà vu

Information is driving today’s organizations, it has become the key to better insight, seamless experiences, and improving performance overall. Many of us are gathering information every day in the form of business documents; but, how many of us are actually putting this data to work? It's time to shift your focus to utilizing this information to provide more insight and improve your processes.

The possibilities for more information chaos surround us.  Content is proliferating at geometric rates, and organizations and the people who work in them are struggling with massive amounts of information overload.  The sheer volume of content and data entering our organizations is growing in complexity, volume, and variety.

That would all be complicated enough on its own.  But what are organizations doing – often with the best of intentions – to actually make things WORSE? 

Here are my top 7 tips to make things WORSE!  I've put together a free tip sheet with the details -- check it out, and feel free to spread it around if you choose -- just click the button.

1. Assume that your existing process platforms – like your ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), Human Resource Information Systems or Accounts Payable system – can just handle everything.
2. Assume your nephew can probably create the online forms you need because he is pretty good at technology.
3. “Go paperless” by just using your copier to scan to a folder on a shared drive.
4. Go cheap when it comes to getting outside expert help.
5. Tackle ALL content and processes at once.
6. Let IT handle this; business people don’t have time.
7. Allow “the business” to buy lots and lots of unconnected single application SaaS solutions.

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In the Toronto, NY or DC metro areas?  We've got a process improvement seminar coming up in your neighborhood!  They're FREE.

Washington DC event -- October 4 at the National Press Club

New York event-- October 6 at the Manhattan Penthouse

Toronto event -- October 13 at the Allstream Centre

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You might also be interested in...

• Brexit, Presidential Campaign Follies, the Olympics and Disruption Déjà vu

Brexit, Presidential Campaign Follies, the Olympics and Disruption Déjà vu

I was in London during the Brexit debates and heard a lot of "interesting" things about trade during those debates.  Coming home, I and the rest of the world have obviously witnessed a lot of irrational pontifications in the context of our own presidential election about trade and jobs and disruption. 

Watching the Olympics opening ceremonies and the parade of nations got me thinking in particular about how all of this plays out in emerging markets. And in particular, it got me thinking about the critical role that information management and disruption plays in emerging markets in changing the game and bringing new customers and new competitors into the game.

Image source = http://www.indiaexpress.com

That led me back to James McQuivey’s Digital Disruption: Unleashing the Next Wave of Innovation.  I’ve been a big fan of the book, and find myself coming back to the book again and again in the context of thinking about the future of information and content management.

For those unfamiliar with his core premise, McQuivey starts the book with a description of a 12-year old entrepreneurial mobile app developer named Thomas.  As he thinks about the kinds of technology resources available to Thomas versus those available during his own youth, he offers this conclusion:

“What tools does Thomas need to pursue his digitally disruptive goals? A computer? Check. An internet connection? Check. A programming language and SDK? Check. A friction-free digital platform for distributing and making money from his innovations? Check.”

As he thinks about this disruptive stew, he reaches two conclusions about “old” disruption (the kind that Clayton Christensen talks about so eloquently) and what is going on now.

“Under old disruption, only a very small number of innovative companies can amass the tremendous amount of capital necessary to develop and bring a small number of possible ideas to market. Capital is the first constraint. You can raise capital through bank loans or IPOs or private investment, but as long as you have to spend money to make money, the market can only fund so many innovations. The second constraint is information. Because only a few ideas will make it to capitalization, people keep ideas secret, floating only those ideas that have immediately obvious economic merit. And the only innovators who get funded are those who have access to holders of capital and are willing to jump through whatever hoops investors deem necessary to prove their ideas have merit.”

And he offers this prediction, which I think hits the nail squarely on the head in terms of the disruptive challenges facing companies, and the critical importance of information management in the disruptive times ahead:

“When companies adopt technology, they do old things in new ways. When companies internalize technology, the find entirely new— disruptive— things to do.”

That's exactly where we are right now, moving quickly past the surface level disruption of technologies as they play out in the consumer realm and get incorporatied into the very fabric of how business is done, creating radical disruption along the way.

All of this ultimately manifests itself in international trade, financial, and data flows and the impact these on the individual knowledge skills that workers need to have to survive and the organizational competencies in information management that companies and governments require to continue to be relevant and competitive. 

I came across a great McKinsey study on this, Digital globalization: The new era of global flows, and that led to this tip sheet, 6 Things You Need to Know About Emerging Markets and Information Management.

Check it out.