As we start to think about #AIIM15, I thought I would ask a number of our sponsors a few identical questions in order to get an understanding of how they see the future of our industry -- and let those of you attending start to think about your own questions to ask them in San Diego. Here are the three questions I'll ask:
Alan McMillen, CEO of Repstor, says user adoption of new systems is key to a successful digital transformation.
What are the three biggest challenges you see your customers facing while trying to “Embrace the Chaos”?
1. User Adoption of organizational content systems
According to AIIM, the top reason for ECM deployment failures is user adoption, and top of the list of user adoption issues is persuading users to manage and share their information within an ECM system. We see this all the time with our customers – the information systems team has implemented a “shiny new ECM system” that, unfortunately, no one uses. ECM systems can be complex. If our customers are going to successfully “Embrace the Chaos,” organizations will need to think about the User and put their greatest emphasis on encouraging users to adopt their ECM systems.
2. Consistent filing and saving of emails and content
Managing emails as records has topped the AIIM survey charts for many years as the most important issue for records managers. People are particularly bad at filing important emails. The huge issue here is that a high proportion of litigation revolves around emails, as well as important contractual elements between customers, suppliers, and, indeed, employees. However, given the already onerous task of working through the daily inbox workload, most employees will skip the important step of pulling off the important ones, and filing them in the SharePoint, ECM or RM system.
3. Finding intuitive tools that make managing content in multiple locations easy
For many organizations, SharePoint is only one of the document repositories in use. File shares are still used extensively, especially for work-in-progress, and many organizations will have one or more legacy systems, particularly for formal records management. Providing a single point of search and access across these repositories is important for knowledge recall and decision support, and will also encourage appropriate filing behavior if each system is easily and consistently available.
What do you see as the three most important trends related to Information Management facing organizations over the next 18-24 months? What will be different in our industry two years from now?
1. There will be an uptake in Office 365 for all sizes of organizations, commoditizing storage of information, and how organizations manage information. Previously smaller and medium organizations couldn’t afford to move to the Microsoft platform for full ECM, but now there is a large incentive for them to do so, right now they aren’t quite sure how to take advantage of this, but this will develop over time.
2. Managing information in multiple systems will present a challenge for organizations. With over a quarter of companies having 4 or more types of repository, organizations will be faced with managing content in legacy repositories and avoiding big bang migration. There will be a demand for tools that link up multiple internal systems and present both the old and new systems with the same consistent interface and functionality.
3. User adoption will continue to be key. Given that budgets continue to be restricted, organizations will seek to maximize their investment in current systems by selecting tools that are easy to use for the end-user and help them to better manage their information, minimizing change management costs.
What are the three most important things attendees should know about your company?
1. Repstor is in business to inspire enterprise ECM adoption. Repstor provides products for managing content easily within document management systems that users will adopt by making them intuitive and familiar.
2. Repstor products make it easy for people to file, save, and access content regardless of the content system the information is stored in. Multiple systems can be accessed in parallel.
3. The latest addition to our product line, Repstor custodian, enables your standard SharePoint/Office 365 document management system for case and matter management. All of the key common Case and Matter Management activities are completed in the familiar Outlook user interface.