Why document management is suddenly sexy again

Ron, the impact made by smartphones is also increasing profile, this has been our focus at www.exsafe.net, access to documents all the time, leave the lappy behind!!!

I like it! I was thinking about this exact topic the other day and how confusing it is. The same can be said of KM. Also, don't forget about Excel. As much as CIOs would like to get rid of Excel, it will never go away. There are gaps between enterprise apps that are easier and faster to fill with Excel because it is easy to use and everyone knows how to use it. There are vendors (Boardwalktech is one) that connect desktop applications like Excel to back-end data environments. This would fit into the new category you just made up, "Business content management."

I work for a large OCR company (ABBYY) and we are getting contacted daily around the world about mobile data capture and what solutions we have that can turn a smartphone into a scanner. Look at the top 100 apps in the business catagory in the Apple App store, half of them are dealing with manageing documents.

Your idea that different departments have responsibility for "content" is critical to understanding why ECM is an empty term...except to marketers of ECM software!

Very few documents in the enterprise actually make it to the web. Companies need to be aware of the flow of documents (and knowledge) in order to build usable DCMs and web CMs.

I really like the clear way you describe the various categories - of whatever you are talking about: various forms of content, or the various elements of website-creation. And, I really like the clear formatting of the "print" style-sheet. Here's my comment: I also really like the content of the previous comments! But, they don't print with the article. Suggestion: Could the back-end folks modify that to give readers the option of printing comments when printing articles?

Thanks for the comment. I think Excel is just one more type of business content document. I agree though that it's very popular and firmly entrenched and probably not going anywhere for a long time.

Mobile phones are definitely changing the way we interact with content. That's probably the subject for another column one of these days.

Ron

I think one thing we have to be worried about and aware of is that we don't want to return to the days of siloed content. This would be a mistaken reaction to the problem. I think it's useful to think of content management in the terms I described in the post, but I also believe that there needs to be a way for these different systems to communicate and share content as needed. (Yet another column idea).

Thanks for the comment.

Ron

Steven:
Thanks for your thoughts and your kind words. I'm not sure how our content management system handles this type of information, but it's likely that you have stumbled onto a limitation of our system.

Thanks for the comment.

Ron

Don't forget transactional content management. These are situations where content and documents relating to specific transactions like invoices, transcripts, applications, etc...need to be captured and managed.

I agree that while siloed content definitely isn't the goal, but I think Enterprise Content Management should focus on "enterprise content" not just on some types of content that happen to live in the enterprise. AIIMs definition of ECM is definitely lacking since it focuses primarily on unstructured content. As we move more and more toward a structure world and social media tools start to shift the focus away from email, we're going to need to focus more on Enterprise Information Management, than ECM.

Just my $.02

--Sean
http://www.intranetexperience.com
http://www.twitter.com/seanrnicholson

Sorry, Ron.. have to disagree here. In my books Document Management has always been sexy.

I guess I just hadn't noticed it before. I always saw it in a frumpy nightgown, but hey, each to his own. As Seinfeld once said, "Not that there's anything wrong with that." Thanks for your comment, Cheryl. :-)

Ron

Hi Sean:
I guess I see transactions as records. You usually have to save them and manage them, but you can use XML to programatically share these documents across different enterprise systems of course. Lots of times these documents cross categories. They aren't always static, which is another reason to avoid those silos at all costs.

Next week I'm writing about silos I think.

Thanks for your comment.

Ron

We see clients achieving 30% productivity gains, redirecting staff away from non-revenue producing activity, and toward marketing and revenue generating actions. ECM allows 'business redefinition'. Micr-ecomionic arbitrage is definately sexy - always was and always will be.

PS - Its raining in Seattle.

I've always thought document management was sexy - especially web-based! Think http://www.eBridgeSolutions.com

Thanks for a great article.

As a digital archivist and former records manager, I am aghast that A: That Records and Information Management has just been re-discovered by Technology types (we have been dealing with the challenges of new information formats for 5000 years) and that B: We don't need a new name, the problem is that the records and archival principles hold sound the proliferation of new names and half-baked new approaches is the problem. AAArgghhh!!! Recordkeeping is still around and our approaches to the increasing challenges of electronic and digital has been developing the last 50 years the problem has obviously that the people doing the 'T' in IT haven't been listening to us 'I' professionals when going off and designing systems that create and 'manage' content without building in the recordkeeping functionality upfront. I'm glad you've discovered us again happy to contribute. P.S. Hate the term Document it is too limiting digital object I think is more descriptive, i.e. the intellectual entity that constitutes the content bit stream plus the contextual metadata

Take a deep breath, Steff. Nobody just rediscovered you. We're simply dealing with semantics here. I think any of us who write about ECM in general recognize that record keeping is a key component of the activity.

Thanks for your comment.

Ron