Over the past decade, there has been a “perfect storm” of change driven by consumerization, cloud, mobile, and the Internet of Things. It has changed how enterprise information and IT are viewed and changed the kinds of skills that are needed to adapt to these disruptions. The value-add for information technology in organizations is rapidly shifting from the technology per se to the stewardship, optimization, and application of the information assets themselves.

A “moment of truth” is a deciding instant that determines whether something will succeed. 

According to Wikipedia, “Transporting goods via freight rail networks and container ships is often the most efficient and cost-effective manner of shipping. However, when goods arrive at a high-capacity freight station or port, they must then be transported to their final destination. This last leg of the supply chain is often less efficient, comprising up to 28% of the total cost to move goods. This has become known as the last mile problem."

Even though today’s transportation and logistics industry has globalized and adopted technology for many purposes, it still relies heavily on such paper documents as Bills of Lading, Delivery Receipts, Commercial Invoices and Claims forms to convey information. Found at various stages of the supply chain, these documents are typically printed out and then manually keyed in to another electronic system. Unfortunately, this manual data entry translates into information delays, human errors and hours of redundant labor.

Find out about the special information management challenges facing every company trying to get something from Point A to Point B in 5 Reasons to Get Serious About the “Last Mile” Problem.

And a special question - Where is the place in this picture?

According to Radicati, the average worker sends or receives 122 emails per day. The Washington Post notes, “Any cubicle drone with a corporate email address knows this well already, of course, but a new report from Adobe describes the problem with some pretty startling numbers. According to its data, which is sourced from a self-reported survey of more than 1,000 white-collar workers in the country, we spend an average of 4.1 hours checking our work email each day. That’s 20.5 hours each week, more than 1,000 hours each year, more than 47,000 hours over a career.”

In the real world, the intersection (or more accurately, the lack thereof) between the world of many unconnected repositories and lots of work in the real world being done in an email client is the source of a lot of the frustration with many ECM systems – and one of the reasons why file shares remain so prevalent.

Almost every knowledge worker has experienced the “two screen” phenomenon – working in email or a business application on one screen, while viewing the information you need from an ECM system on the other.  According to AIIM research, file shares are still in widespread use among 52% of companies with at least one ECM system in place.

Find out more in our Tip Sheet, 4 Things You Need to Know About the Real World of Multiple ECM Repositories.

The case for more rigorous cybersecurity and the protection of personally identifiable information is compelling.  Consider the following facts:  

• The Identity Theft Resource Center found that data breaches have increased 40% from 2015 to 2016, reaching an all-time high of 1,093 in the U.S. alone; and,
• The average cost per breach in 2016 is pegged at $4 million, up 29% from the year prior.

First and Foremost, our brand spanking new E-Book on the Future of ECM -- Is it Dead or Not?

You might be interested in some recent guest posts I've done...

A Change Management Plan: Usually Easier Said than Done (Docuware)

Marketing Automation - Snake Oil, or the Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread? (CMSWire)

Industry Labels Make Better Verbs than Nouns (M-Files)

Complying with the GDPR Requires Pragmatism and a Pinch of Courage (Docuware)

My Graduation Advice: A True Digital Workplace or a Computer Museum? (Docuware)

The Upside-Down World of Content Management -- AGAIN (Microsoft)

Data is the New Oil -- Especially in Oil and Gas! (M-Files)

Moving from Traditional ECM to Intelligent Information Management (M-Files)

Why You Need an Inside-Out Approach to Content Management (Box)

The Digital Workplace is Flipping Content Management on Its Head (CMSWire)

A Modern ECM Strategy Means You Must Walk and Chew Gum at the Same Time (M-Files)

The Why? The How? And the What? - of Document Management (Docuware)

In case you missed some of my short-form Tip Sheets, here's a full list. Happy reading!

The Next Logistics Wave - Digital Trucking

3 Keys to Your GDPR Compliance Strategy

4 Guaranteed Ways to Create a File Migration Mess

5 Reasons to Get Serious About the "Last Mile" Problem

Misplaced Data Quality Priorities -- Document Processing Accuracy vs. System Performance

4 Reasons Why the SaaS Revolution Needs a Unified Content Strategy

Logistics Means More Than Moving Physical Stuff Around

What if Your Search Was Better and More Encompassing?

6 Key Transportation and Logistics Challenges Facing All Companies

Automation – What Are You Waiting For?

4 Things You Need to Know About the Real World of Multiple ECM Repositories

Disruptive BPM for Disruptive Times – 5 Key Requirements

4 Ways ECM Turned Out Differently Than We Planned

5 Key Challenges in Improving Supplier Relationships

5 Reasons Improving Data Quality Should Be a Key Priority

4 Workplace Changes That Should Drive Your Collaboration Strategy

5 Hidden Security Vulnerabilities in Your Antiquated Capture System

6 Reasons You Need to Focus on the “C” in CRM

5 Reasons Building Information Modelling (BIM) is Important

3 Strategic Choices Facing HR Professionals

4 Workplace Changes That Should Drive Your Collaboration Strategy

7 Key Changes in Content Management

6 Tips on Asset Lifecycle Information Management

4 Things You Need to Know to Build a Sound EFSS Strategy

3 Questions to Ask About Content Creation

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

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

4 Tips to Prepare for the European GDPR

5 Faces of Information Chaos

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

7 Tips to Create MORE Information Chaos

8 Key Benefits of an Enterprise File Sync and Share Solution

What Does High Value Content Look Like?

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And my keynote from AIIM17...

"The World Turned Upside Down" is an English ballad, first published in the middle of the 1640s to protest the policies of Parliament relating to Christmas.  Parliament believed the holiday should be a solemn occasion, and outlawed traditional English Christmas celebrations.

Fans of the musical Hamilton will recognize the tune in another context.  After Battle of Yorktown in 1781, “The World Turned Upside-Down” was the song played by the British band as the British and Hessian troops marched out to surrender, the last major battle of the American Revolution, signifying the end of the British era in the Colonies.

In 2007, SharePoint began the long process of turning the world of ECM – Enterprise Content Management – upside down. 

This is what the ECM landscape looked like in 2007:

• The focus was on automating content intensive, complicated, mission-critical processes within departments at very large organizations.  Think check processing in banking, or forms processing in insurance, or the new drug application process in pharmaceuticals.
• Solutions were complex, custom and expensive and purchased by business buyers.
• And most importantly, solutions were difficult to use and required LOTS of training.  But that really didn’t matter because “users” were limited to a handful of “documents” and “records” and “process” specialists within organizations.

Up until 2007.

While it was technically released at the end of 2006, in 2007, SharePoint (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, or ‘MOSS’) began to redefine the ECM industry around general knowledge workers rather than document “specialists” and leveraged Microsoft’s presence with IT staff. The ECM industry was in the process of being turned upside down, although at the time few realized it. In the early days of SharePoint MOSS, I asked a group of leading ECM providers what they thought about SharePoint.  The almost universal response was, “Well, I don’t know what SharePoint is doing, but it isn’t what we do.” 

After about a billion dollars in sales in what seemed like record time, the ECM industry recognized that the world had indeed been turned upside down, and ECM players refocused around working with rather than against SharePoint. 

The important thing to remember in the context of the current changes going on in the ECM space is during the first phase of the revolution, the frame of reference was still “traditional” ECM – content intensive, complicated, mission-critical processes within departments at very large organizations.  We tried to force all of that unruly and ad hoc knowledge worker content into a “traditional” ECM frame.  We tried to do this by putting additional content management solutions on top of SharePoint.

Knowledge worker content was still somewhat of an afterthought to supposedly “real” ECM content.  The fundamental assumptions for how we viewed content management remained those of “traditional” ECM.  The bias within the broader ECM community was still focused on those who needed to record content rather than those who need to work with content on a daily basis.

Fast forward to 2017. 

After a decade of radical change in consumer, mobile, and cloud technologies, we are on the cusp of a second revolution, one that truly will turn the content world upside down.  Forrester’s division of the content space into Transactional Content Services and Business Content Services reflects the revolution that is underway.

Forrester believes that transactional content drives high-volume customer-focused processes. In my terminology, this is the world of “traditional” ECM.  This is separate and different from business content.  Business content “includes familiar formats such as office documents, spreadsheets, email, and multimedia. The content may be formal (with structured templates or forms) or informal (created ad hoc)” and is directly tied to the experience of knowledge workers on a day-to-day basis.  

Businesses are looking for people-centric, simple processes allowing for a balance between personal management capabilities and organizational management requirements.  It is here that the future of content management is being defined.

Microsoft defines the stages of a modern content strategy as follows:

• Create -- Create, collect, and share the documents you need to get your work done.
• Coordinate -- Structure your teamwork and work together, using co-authoring, metadata, groups, taxonomy, and collaborative tools.
• Protect -- Manage compliance and reduce risk with life cycle management, information architecture, auditing, rights management, and eDiscovery.
• Harvest -- With efficient enterprise content services, use analytics to drive discovery, gain more control over content, and take more attuned actions which lead to better decisions.

While the Create/Coordinate/Protect/Harvest terms are Microsoft terms, they do reflect eight fundamental forces of disruption that are turning ECM upside-down once again – for real this time.

1. The user experience in creating and sharing content is central to every follow-on content stage.
2. Documents and content must be “born” managed – with fundamental content management metadata baked in at creation rather than bolted on.
3. Metadata driven policies are increasingly critical to guide a piece of content from creation to archive and disposition and how it is throughout this lifecycle.
4. Increasingly complex – and often contradictory – industry, legal, and government requirements increasing the need for a coherent information governance strategy.
5. Organizations are demanding on premise, cloud, and hybrid solutions that work interchangeably.
6. Privacy and security strategies are being redefined around what a document is rather than being based upon the devices upon which it is viewed.
7. Users are demanding the ability to disaggregate content capabilities and to be able to buy and consume content management capabilities by the drink rather than buy the gallon.
8. Process owners want to control how day-to-day processes are automated, and organizations want sanity and consistency in how this is done.

All of which points to yet another upside-down flip in the content management space.  This time, it’s a revolution truly originating with the needs and requirements of individual knowledge workers.  It is also a revolution that I think will ultimately redefine not only the world of business content, but also how transactional content is managed. Reevaluating traditional “legacy” ECM implementations in business content terms – rather than the other way around – will ultimately turn the ECM world upside-down.

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Interested in the Current State of Information Management?  Get an Executive Summary of our latest market research study - free!

After watching this "Look Back at AIIM17" video, it’s hard to believe that more than a month has passed since we were in Orlando. And yet, the keynotes, sessions, festivities and fireworks feel like they took place ages ago. The sheer energy rush and euphoria that characterizes a gathering of the tribe like ours has already been replaced with a “back-to-work” resoluteness. After all, we’ve got work to do, to develop the ideas exchanged and the promises made.

The term “Logistics” conjures up images of complicated supply chains, and the Rube Goldberg-esque complexities of summarizing, rationalizing, and reporting on them in an intelligent way.  

First, the good news.  According to P&S Market Research, the global digital signature market is expected to increase to $3.3 billion by 2022, growing at a CAGR of 31.5%.  That’s billion with a B.

The bad news is that despite the long-standing and well-documented benefits of digital signatures, many organizations are still lagging behind.  According to recent AIIM research, 65% of organizations say they are still signing on paper. 

[Note:  This is a guest post by Andrew Wells and Kathy Chiang. Andrew Roman Wells is the CEO of Aspirent, a management-consulting firm focused on analytics. Kathy Williams Chiang is VP, Business Insights, at Wunderman Data Management. They are the co-authors of Monetizing Your Data: A Guide to Turning Data into Profit-Driving Strategies and Solutions. For more information, please visit www.monetizingyourdata.com.]