During my discussion with Bill, (and reflecting back on the interactions with the audience), it occurred to me that the natural tendency is to look at information (both structured and unstructured) exclusively from within the four walls of the organization.  We also seem to frame our expectations surrounding business transformation based on the known limitations of traditional BI and view that ECM is somehow a separate, disconnected entity.  These perceptions can obviously cloud our judgment as we try to pursue the aspirational goals of the business.   To help prevent us from defaulting back to this all too familiar muscle memory, our discussion needs to focus on how analytics and ECM can (and should) be intertwined. 

There’s clearly a huge treasure trove of information (emails, documents, etc.) that organizations have yet to tap into and fully exploit.  Currently this asset is often sitting dormant within the enterprise and yet it has the potential to yield new insights on how to better serve customers and increase business performance.  The beauty of Big Data and its intersection with ECM and Case-based processes is the ability to include other repositories of information sitting outside the organization.  Reminiscent of the classic Donald Rumsfeld speech – (the “known known’s”; the “known unknown’s”…etc.), it’s the “unknown, unknowns” that often prove the most interesting and beneficial.  This is why stretching our thinking beyond what exists internally and combining it with other new sources of information can lead to new insights, correlations and perspectives that will take the business to a whole new level and/or can lead to the next market disruption.  What’s important is not only our ability to analyze information, but also the ability to quickly act on it.   Now organizations have the opportunity to be both “predictive” and “proactive”…all in real-time.

For more on this topic, check out the full interview here:

http://idm.net.au/article/009338-when-bi-and-ecm-worlds-collide

It’s interesting when talking about “business transformation,” that many of us immediately think of Business Process Management (BPM).  And for good reason considering the life’s blood of an organization is really the collection (or more importantly, the summation) of the hundreds of business processes and associated transactions that get executed every day.   Understanding this, some companies have taken the plunge by jumping into buying BPM technology and then looking for a problem to solve.  Others have cautiously watched from shore, over analyzing the merits of process improvement while competitors pass them by.  Still others have thoughtfully waded-in and are enjoying the significant benefits of process automation, yet wondering how to advance their business to the next level.   So, what’s it take to transform the way you’re doing business and significantly move the needle on performance?

To help offer a perspective on these and other questions, I recently conducted a webcast with the Process Excellence Network (PEX).  Here I covered:

• The forces driving “transformation”
• The different styles of BPM and how this landscape is changing
• The evolution and application of Case Management
• Practical case studies of how leading companies have successfully implemented case management and the value gained
• Explore how technologies like Big Data and Cloud computing are changing the face of process improvement and what it can mean for you

The feedback from this event was extremely positive.  Therefore, I thought it made sense to post it here on my blog.  You can check out the webinar here or at:

http://bit.ly/Ozs0Xi

I hope you find this session valuable and as always I’d love your feedback.

As this is a huge topic, this is the first video of a series covering the architectural elements of Enterprise Search. During this journey Jeroen will do his best to turn me into a true “Information Scientist” not only for Search,  but other information management technologies as well.  We hope you enjoy this light-hearted but informative discussion.  And as always, I would love to hear what you think.

I sat down with Jeetu Patel (CMO/CSO of EMC’s IIG Division) to discuss the SharePoint opportunities, challenges and potential solutions.  In this segment, Jeetu covers market trends, key considerations for the “New User” and how to get more value out of your existing SharePoint investment.

I will continue to discuss the innovations that are shaping the next wave of transformation in Information Management with videos, blogs and chats with thought leaders. Let me know what you think.

Please look for more videos like this as we continue to cover what’s shaping the next wave of innovation and business transformation in Information Management.

John Mancini is an author, speaker and respected leader of the AIIM global community of information professionals. He is a catalyst in social, mobile, cloud and big data technology adoption and an advocate for the new generation of experts who are driving the future of information management. John predicts that the next three years will generate more change in the way we deploy enterprise technologies and whom we trust with this task than in the previous two decades. He is President and CEO of AIIM.

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I see three primary drivers for all of the current interest in Big Data and Big Content.

There is no better source to start your thinking about Big Data and Big Content than the 2011 IDC/EMC Study, Digital Universe: Extracting Value from Chaos.  Per Digital Universe: “The world’s information is doubling every two years. In 2011 the world will create a staggering 1.8 zettabytes. By 2020 the world will generate 50 times the amount of information and 75 times the number of ‘information containers’ while IT staff to manage it will grow less than 1.5 times.”

Driver #1 — Clearly something must change if we are going to manage exponentially increasing volumes of information with finite resources.

Now there are some that will say, “Well that surely overstates the problem before us because the information in the Digital Universe must surely be personal information — not the kind of information that organizations are concerned about.” However, per IDC, “while 75% of the information in the Digital Universe is generated by individuals, enterprises have some liability for 80% of information in the Digital Universe at some point in its digital life.”

Driver #2 — There is information management risk to organizations associated with how they manage this torrent of information.

To make things even more complicated, all of the information being created by individuals has organizational value in that it provides an outside-in perspective on the organization.  If mined effectively, this information can create market opportunities and first mover advantage for those that understand what the mass of data is trying to tell them. (For a great post on this, see Bill Schmarzo’s Enterprise Information Meets the Digital Universe.)

Driver #3 — There is organizational value and insight that will be gathered by someone with the right tools, techniques, and vision.

As we built Systems of Record in our organizations over the last three decades, we focused first on getting structured data under control.  By structured data, I mean all of the hard data that neatly fits into the rows and columns of a database.  For many organizations, the journey to get this information under control is largely complete (although far from perfect). 

The second half of the Systems of Record Journey focused on getting the unstructured information in our organizations under some semblance of control.  This journey started first with mission critical processes and the documents associated with them, and later expanded to a broader focus (driven largely by legal and compliance concerns) on creating strategies and systems to govern a broader body of unstructured information.  This journey is largely incomplete for organizations, although significant progress has been made.

Enter the world of Big Data and Big Content and Systems of Engagement.  As we expanded the focus of our information management goals from cost reduction and risk mitigation to value creation, these Systems of Engagement — engagement with partners, with employees, and with customers — dramatically expanded the volume, velocity, and variety of information that must managed.

As a result, Information Professionals in our organizations are being asked to sort through two largely inconsistent priorities — and keep the lights on at the same time.  First, they are being asked — for litigation, risk, compliance and sheer storage cost reasons — to get rid of everything that doesn’t need to be kept.  Second, they are being ask to preserve — at least temporarily — vast volumes of Big Data and Big Content in order to analyze this massive digital landfill and extract value and insight.

On the “risk” side of the equation, the volume of information coming at us is making it clear that manual information retention and disposition processes simply extended from the world of Systems of Record will no longer suffice. Aside from the sheer enormity of the task, a lack of clarity about what content is valuable is the main obstacle, along with the fear of getting it wrong and a sense that there is no immediate ROI from getting rid of outdated information.

The reality in most organizations is that traditional approaches to information disposition are a joke, and it’s not for lack of effort. It was never realistic to assume that knowledge workers would assist in manually classifying documents according to a complex records retention schedule, and it is equally unrealistic to assume that we will manage the fire hose of data and unstructured ephemeral social content with the same degree of records rigor that we applied to retaining a life insurance policy for the life of the policy holder.

But big data is more than managing information-related risk. Organizations are increasingly realizing that there is value hidden away in their digital landfills. McKinsey (Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition, and Productivity) believes that big data can create significant value for the world economy, enhancing the productivity and competitiveness of companies and the public sector and creating substantial economic surplus for consumers.

The core difference between the “high-value per byte information” in Systems of Record and the new “low-value per byte information” generated by Systems of Engagement is that this new information tends to have value in the aggregate or as it is interpreted rather than intrinsically. In other words, it is easy to see the value in storing a document or a piece of data that documents a specific transaction or process. It is more difficult — and it has been too expensive in the past — to do so with vast quantities of digital flotsam and jetsam that have value only as they are aggregated and analyzed.

We now can finally get at the long-standing vexing problem in analyzing unstructured information, the lack of metadata. Advances in semantics, search, and content and text analytics are now making analysis of large amounts of unstructured information practical for first time. Improvements in our ability to generate “data about data” are revolutionary and will transform the way we look at vast quantities of unstructured information.  In addition, for the first time, natural language processing and visualization technologies are moving the analysis of all of this data and information from technical back rooms and into the executive suite.

Per AIIM’s Big Data: Extracting Value from Your Digital Landfill, over 70% of organizations can envision a Big Data or Big Content use case that would be “very useful” or “spectacular” for their organization. Case management and BPM applications become far more effective as the hidden customer intelligence in digital landfills is added to the equation. Big Data opens up new ways of modeling risk and failure prediction, analyzing customer churn, and analyzing web and web advertising effectiveness. 

So where does an organization start? 

I think a great place to start is with the following ten recommendations from AIIM’s Big Data report:

1. Ask blue-sky questions of your business such as “if only we knew…” or “if we could predict…” or “if we could measure…”  Consider how useful that might be to the business before thinking about how it can be done or at what cost. 
2. Play those questions off against the data you already have, data you could collect, or data that you could source elsewhere. 
3. Include in your thinking structured transactional data, semi-structured logs and files, and text-based or rich media content. 
4. Incoming communications from your customers, outbound communications to your customers, and what customers (or employees) are saying about you on social sites can all be useful for monitoring sentiment, heading off issues and analyzing trends.
5. Consider high volume streams such as telemetry, geo-location, voice, video, news feeds, till transactions, web clicks, or any combination of these.
6. If your content is currently digital landfill spread across disparate file shares and content systems, consider how this could be rationalized prior to any big data projects.
7. Content access for both search and analytics, and if necessary, content migration to dedicated big data storage, can be facilitated by unified data access products.
8. Don’t be tempted to rush into in-house developments or specific point-solutions without considering wider, more universal analytics platforms.
9. Consider SaaS and cloud deployment as a faster way to acquire experience and focus activity.
10. Big data is much more about the breadth of the analysis and the insights that can be achieved than it is about the size of the data and the underlying database technology.

Big Data, Big Content, and Analytics use cases and successes are clearly in their early stages.  But they are coming.  And soon. Organizations need to make sure that they are prepared for the deep water of Big Data.

Looking for more information on Big Data?

Looking for more information on Taxonomy and Metadata?

Look for more videos like this as we continue to cover the innovations that are shaping the next wave of business transformation.

The Macro Trends

To answer this, we need to first understand the forces that are shaping our work patterns and overall expectations as users.  For all intents and purposes, we have all become the “New User” (e.g. across all demographics – not just GenY/C).  We are all more mobile and social than ever before and have become very comfortable interacting with Cloud/SaaS-based applications. We are using an average of 5-7 different devices and are very active when it comes to sharing content in our personal lives (pictures, videos, music, articles, etc.) with family and friends.  To avoid the traditional limitations and frustrations of email, we’ve been using tools like Dropbox and other cloud-based services – and consequently have grown accustomed to the ease and flexibility of sharing information.  In my household, we’re constantly accessing and sharing content with one another and across our different devices  – even the grandparents have enthusiastically joined in (proof that the “Greatest Generation” has joined the ranks of the New User).  It simply doesn’t matter where we are or what devices (iPads, iPhones, Android, iPod Touches, etc.) we’re using to access and share information.  It’s this seamless and frictionless experience that we’ve all come to expect –creating a new usage pattern commonly referred to as “Sync and Share.” 

The Challenge

However, when we go to work it’s a completely different story – the experience we’ve grown to expect is pretty much non-existent.  Think about the shear frustration (and sometimes stark terror) when we’re under the gun to send or get access to that critical presentation (especially when dealing with 3^rd parties) – and then find out that the file is too large to send/retrieve in email.  We then find ourselves scrambling to set up FTP sites or breaking files up into manageable chunks  - while our deadline mercilessly and quickly draws closer. It’s at those moments when we realize one of the key benefits of Sync and Share and challenge the organization to allow us to have the same experience at work as we do at home.  However, we’re reminded (by IT, and rightfully so) of compliance rules, IP sensitivity, and other regulatory requirements stipulating why our corporate knowledge must be protected. 

To address this issue, we’ve used “shared work-space” tools to set up secure environments to share content.  However, this approach has shown to have limitations given the complexity supporting such environments (setting up VPN access, setting up and maintaining Users and Groups, etc.).  In addition, these tools don’t natively allow you to manage and control content once it gets to mobile devices – nor do they easily synchronize content across all devices and environments/repositories as changes are made.  This hardly creates an environment and experience that’s seamless and frictionless.

As a result, many have begun to bring consumer Sync and Share applications (Dropbox and others) into the enterprise –often ignoring or consciously accepting the inherent security risks created by such tools.  Just like a scale, when more weight is given to user productivity, the lack of enterprise controls creates more risk for the organization.   In addition, these tools often introduce another new repository/silo/infrastructure – adding further complexity to managing to a single “source of truth” (i.e. record).  What get’s created is yet another copy of “the truth” which challenges IT and/or users to keep it all synchronized. On top of all of this, these tools lack the enterprise pedigree of proven performance and scalability (along with the aforementioned security issues) to meet the demands of today’s highly regulated industries  - creating another technical nightmare and risk for IT.  This hardly creates an environment that’s seamless and frictionless – or in this case…even secure.

The Solution

As a result, a tremendous void has existed in the market where organizations have had to make tough choices between user productivity and ensuring corporate compliance/trust.  This is where Syncplicity comes in.  Simply put, Syncplicity eliminates the whole “Productivity versus Trust” debate – by providing both.  It provides an incredibly simple and intuitive experience to share, collaborate and keep content synchronized across all environments and devices – with the enterprise-class performance and security that companies require.  This is achieved through several key capabilities:

1. It’s a Cloud/SaaS offering providing anywhere access
2. Seamless User Interaction – uses existing file folder structure – no need to manually drag and drop content. It provides online and offline access at all times, to all files, folders, versions,  and sharing content without size limitations
3. All content is managed in place – providing seamless and automated synchronization across everything (repositories and devices) – no need to create a separate repository/”space”/infrastructure to enable the sharing of content.  This ensures a single, consistent document of record, every time.
4. Enterprise-grade mobile access – providing access to every file you need  from virtually any device (iPad, iPhone, Android – and now even Kindle Fire)
5. Provides IT with the controls to govern internal and external data access and safety policies – including file and folder sharing restrictions, retention policies, device and location restrictions and remote wipe options.
6. Enterprise-level security and reliability – providing complete access control  (including Single Sign On and 2-factor authentication), full data encryption (AES-256), military grade security certification (SAS 70 Type II, PCI DSS, DoD 52220.22, NIST 800-88) and complete data durability (99.999999999%, multiple data center and geographic distribution)

Final Thoughts

This is perhaps one of the most exciting and significant announcements that EMC’s IIG Division has made in quite some time.  Now more than ever, the power of ECM can be easily delivered to the masses (internally and externally) without the complexity and limitations of the past.  Users can truly have anytime, anywhere, and any device access in a seamless, frictionless collaborative experience. At the same time, IT has the controls and the enterprise-class performance and security necessary to protect the organization.  Looking forward, the potential for this offering is amazing.  With Syncplicity there’s the potential to deliver a class of case-based applications that deliver a new dimension of speed, service, and simplicity to customers, partners, suppliers and employees.  So, what’s the key to this transformation?  No longer is productivity and trust mutually exclusive.  Finally there’s a solution that delivers “Sync & Share” that CIO’s trust and “New User’s” love.

For more information and perspectives on Syncplicity, be sure to check out the following links below:

• Press Release: “EMC Acquires Syncplicity”
• Blog by Jeetu Patel : “Productivity and Trust, No Longer Mutually Exclusive”
• Blog: Never Talk When You Can Nod (by Andrew Chapman): “IIG’s Acquisition of Syncplicity for Sync and Share. What’s that all about then? “
• Blog: Big Men On Content (by Lee Dallas): “Syncplicity – EMC Buys Into Sync and Share”

Look for more videos like this, as we cover the technologies and strategies that are creating the next wave of business transformation.

You can access the full interview via the link below:

http://youtu.be/_W6ROLIU49I

In addition, you can also see the session from BRT’s Matt White on their Accounts Payable solution (including demo):

http://youtu.be/s3RC3s7OBJA  

As always, I would love to get your perspectives on these and other related topics to keep the conversation going.