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Technology is fueling new markets previously unforeseen. These new markets are not being created from old business models rather new models that leverage the human network.

The new models are in the middle and on the edge. On the edge being at the fringes of markets being served by the older models and buyers looking for  value at competitive prices and greatly improved experiences.  New markets in the middle represent those wanting neither the most expensive or the cheapest rather value in the middle.

A Harvard Business Article states:  Established companies entering emerging markets should take a page from the strategy of start-ups, for which all markets are new: Instead of looking for additional outlets for existing offerings, they should identify unmet needs—“the jobs to be done” in our terminology—that can be fulfilled at a profit. Emerging markets teem with such jobs. Even the basic needs of their large populations may not yet have been met. In fact, the challenge lies less in finding jobs than in settling on the ones most appropriate for your company to tackle.

Many companies have already been lured by the promise of profits from selling low-end products and services in high volume to the very poor in emerging markets. And high-end products and services are widely available in these markets for the very few who can afford them: You can buy a Mercedes or a washing machine, or stay at a nice hotel, almost anywhere in the world. Our experience suggests a far more promising place to begin: between these two extremes, in the vast middle market. Consumers there are defined not so much by any particular income band as by a common circumstance: Their needs are being met very poorly by existing low-end solutions, because they cannot afford even the cheapest of the high-end alternatives. Companies that devise new business models and offerings to better meet those consumers’ needs affordably will discover enormous opportunities for growth.

The new marketplace is in the middle yet most businesses are missing it because it is on a different canvas.

I have written about harmon.ie several times. See for example - Harmon.ie Provides Social Email to Help Drive Enterprise Collaboration Adoption. Their tools focus on increasing user adoption of collaboration tools include bringing central components of SharePoint into both Outlook and Lotus Notes. Now they have moved a step further gone mobile and unveiling the capbility to bring Microsoft SharePoint document collaboration and social interactions to the iPad – “harmon.ie for iPad, greatly extending then reach of collaboration capabilities for the enterprise. 

This makes a lot of sense as so far, more than 67 million iPads have been sold. According to Apple, 94 percent and 74 percent of Fortune 500 and global 500 companies are respectively testing or deploying iPads. For the iPad to realize its potential it must have the ability to bring in enterprise apps such as SharePoint. This is a good starting point as 78 percent of enterprises already use SharePoint, according to Forrester. To accomplish this harmon/ie has provided a secure, consistent enterprise iOS application for SharePoint users on-the-go.

Now business users can work on a presentation from their desktop, drag-and-drop it to SharePoint, and send a link to colleagues using harmon.ie in Microsoft Outlook or IBM Lotus Notes. Then, as they go on the road and can still see document updates from colleagues using their iPad. They can access the latest version of the document, edit it from wherever they are and share it with the team when they are back online. The team will receive a real-time update once the revised document is uploaded.

There is both a free version and low cost version with full features available through iTunes.  This is exactly they type of capability that is needed to make iPads a truly enterprise platform. 

Lots of people ask me what it’s like to be a data scientist at LinkedIn. The short answer: it’s awesome. Folks like Pete Skomoroch and team are building data products related to identity and reputation, such as Skills and InMaps. Yael Garten is leading the effort to understand and increase mobile engagement. And other folks work on everything from open-source infrastructure to fraud detection. Amazing people helping our 160M+ members by deriving valuable insights from big data.

I wanted to take a moment to showcase my own team. As a team, we straddle the boundary between science and engineering. We work closely with several engineering teams to deliver products that our members use everyday.

Joseph Adler is a name you might recognize from your bookshelf: he wrote Baseball Hacks and R in a Nutshell, both published by O’Reilly. At LinkedIn, he is a data hacker extraordinaire, currently focused on improving the network update stream.

Ahmet Bugdayci just joined LinkedIn this year, and he’s already on a tear. He’s working on a better approach to representing job titles, one of the most fundamental facets of our members’ professional identity. And he’s a polyglot.

Heyning Cheng is our innovator in chief. He envisions data products and does whatever it takes to hack them together. Our recruiters are especially happy to be his beta testers, and we’re working to turn those prototypes into shipped product.

Abhimanyu Lad is working on the next generation of LinkedIn search. He’s already improved spelling correction and group search, as well as building better ways to measure search effectiveness. But stay tuned — the best is yet to come!

Gloria Lau leads all things data for the student initiative. Check out LinkedIn Alumni to see what she’s been up to. Students are the future, and we’re excited to be making LinkedIn a great tools for students, alumni, and universities.

Monica Rogati spearheaded many of LinkedIn’s key products: the Talent Match system that matches jobs to candidates; the first machine learning model for People You May Know; and the first version of Groups You May Like. When she’s not working on our products, she gives awesome presentations.

Daria Sorokina recently joined us and is working on search quality. She’s a hard-core machine learning researcher and developer: check out her open-source code for additive groves.

Ramesh Subramonian has been focused on data efforts for our international expansion. Over 60% of our members live outside the United States, and his efforts ensure that LinkedIn’s value proposition is a global one.

Joyce Wang is a data science generalist. She is part of the search team, but she’s built great tools for log analysis and human evaluation that are finding great use across the company.

I hope that gives you a flavor of what it’s like to be a data scientist at LinkedIn — and on my team in particular.

Do you possess that rare combination of computer science background, technical skill, creative problem-solving ability, and product sense? If so, then I’d love to talk with you about opportunities to work on challenging problems with amazing people!

• Knoco stories: Making knowledge visible

Downsizing, right-sizing, layoff, restructuring, whatever word you use, accounting departments have been consistently trimming staff for decades.

Computers are taking on more and more of the daily routine.

While this is good news for cost control and efficiency, it’s not so good for accounting controls and segregation of duties.

Where you used to be able to separate incompatible functions between different staff, now there may now be only one person available.

The Controls Environment

The Sarbanes-Oxely Act (affectionately known as “SOX”) enacted in 2002, was legislation designed to reassure the investing public in the integrity of financial statements after the accounting scandals of Enron, Tyco and WorldCom.

It imposes some strict requirements on not just the accuracy of financial statements but also the control systems behind them. Those requirements aren’t going away any time soon.

In fact, the US Bureau of Labour Statistics has this to say about accounting clerical positions:

 
So, not only are accounting departments being downsized, but they are also expected to meet increasingly strict requirements.

What are companies to do?

The answer may surprise you.

Most people don’t think you can automate accounting controls, but the right technology can actually prevent employees from short cutting the internal control system and provide an evidence based audit trail that will stand up to outside scrutiny.

And the good thing is that it can be added to an existing system even if that system does not have the feature built in!

The Paper Trail

The basic building block of accounting control is the approved document.

Whether it is a supplier invoice, a customer purchase order or a government document, it follows a pre-set trail through the company’s approval process, depending on how much it is and what it is for.

For example, the purchasing manager may only approve invoices from preauthorized vendors under a certain dollar amount.

Anything from a new vendor or above his limit requires further authorization from a more senior corporate officer.

Workflow systems work on scanned images of the document and email.

The company’s rules are loaded into the software, so it can check if the document is from an approved supplier, as well as knowing the authorization limits of all of the staff.

This automation saves a lot of accounting staff time because they don’t even see the document until it has been properly approved. No more squinting at illegible scrawls wondering if that’s the new division manager’s signature or turning the documents back because they aren’t approved.

The computer takes care of all that work for you.

“He’s in Europe”

One of my first jobs in accounting was for a company with a head office in the United Kingdom.

The Vice President of Finance would let us know when he was going overseas and there would be a scramble to be sure that he had seen everything that needed to be approved.

And when he came back, there would be a stack of papers on his desk for approval.

No large transactions could be processed while he was away.

Now, workflow would really have come in handy. Regardless of where the VP is, processes don’t have to halt; everything can be approved via a computer or even a smart phone at any time, anywhere in the world.

Now, isn’t that nicer than coming home to a stack of papers in your in-box?

Okay, so I’m following up on my blog posting last week about getting ready for Momentum at EMC World. The energy is definitely building and as we prepare for what I expect to be an outstanding conference, I wanted to share a few final thoughts and suggestions.

As in past years, there is no shortage of sessions to attend – over 500 for the entire EMC World and 100+ that are specifically around EMC Documentum, xCP, Captiva and Document Sciences. Probably the best thing about EMC World is the informal meetings and conversations that we all have. People we’ve talked with in the past but maybe never had an opportunity to meet in person.

Global Partner Summit

This year, we’re holding a Global Partner Summit and we expect to host over 3,000 participants from our many partner communities. The event kicks off on Sunday with several of our executives speaking, followed  by a partner welcome reception. Monday will be the day for breakouts and this where Information Intelligence Group (IIG) partners will hear more on the IIG vision and strategy, partner awards, and much more.

Going Social

As we all know by now, leveraging the power of social media to communicate and share information is becoming a part of our DNA. A great post has been written in the EMC Documentum Community that talks about Get Social With Us During Momentum at EMC World 2012.

To give you an idea on what we are doing around social here is a brief overview:

There will be a Momentum Mobile App for all smartphones, ipads, and web users. Simply download it from at http://bitly.com/mmtm12.  The app will help you:

• Manage Your Schedule
• Rate the Sessions You Attend and Momentum Conference
• Navigate the Show Floor
• Follow and Join In on the Twitter Conversation #MMTM12
• Download Exhibitor Information
• Access the Momentum Social Experience Game

Another new element this year to Momentum at EMC World is

Let I.T. Ride Social Experience Game can be accessed via http://emcletitride.com (more info to the site coming soon) or through the Momentum Mobile app.Once you connect the portal with your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Foursquare accounts, you will begin earning chips for engaging with the Momentum related communities.  Examples of activities that earn chips are:

• Use #MMTM12 on Twitter
• Write on the wall, post photos, comment and/or like any of the IIG related Facebook pages and status updates
• Opt-in to receive the IIG customer satisfaction survey once per year

The Social Media Center will be located in the Momentum Lounge. There will be people there to help registration with the portal and offer further incentives. I’m told there will be a spin the wheel and iPad prize involved.

For those of you who have not checked out the EMC Community Network then you will want to do so during the event. All of our keynotes and buzz chats will be streamed live online in the EMC Community Network along with live Q&A simultaneously occurring during the keynotes. After the conference, the recordings will be made available in the Momentum Community.

Here’s the schedule  for those live streams:

• Keynote: Rick Devenuti (Monday 4:00-5:00pm PST)
• Buzz Chat: Keynote Recap w/ Live Q&A (Monday 5:00-5:30pm PST)
• Keynote: Jeetu Patel and Rohit Ghai (Tuesday 10:00-11:00am PST)
• Buzz chat: Meet the Geek with Jeroen VanRotterdam (Tuesday 3:00-3:30pm PST)

Entertainment for the Week

There’s no shortage of fun things to do while you are in Las Vegas and to help everyone get together and have some fun, EMC has planned several social gatherings that include a Grand Opening Reception in the Solution Pavilion  and the Momentum Party at LAVO Nightclub in the Palazzo Hotel on Tuesday night.

The big entertainment for the week is the Maroon 5 concert on Wednesday. If you are not familiar with their music, download a few of their songs from iTunes, and I’m sure you’ll quickly realize you’ve heard them before on the radio.

Final Words of Advice

My final words of advice is to pace yourself and make sure you have a game plan for the week. EMC has provided a number of ways in which you can stay connected with everything that is going at EMC World, as well as planning you schedule for the event.

If you can’t join us this year, but would like to follow along remotely there are plenty of ways. There will be content streaming live and you can also follow us on twitter - @EMC_Documentum, @EMC_Captiva, and @EMC_DocSciences. You can also follow us using the hashtags – #emcworld and #MMTM12.

I will be posting periodically during the week and you can follow me on twitter – @bgalusha. Hope to see you there!

There was a recent article in Forbes about my long time virtual friend, Gautam Ghosh. Titled, Social Media Thought Leader: India's Gautam Ghosh by Shel Isreal, it goes into many of the great things Gautum has done over the years in this space. Before I get into details about the article, I want to note Gautum is a great practitioner of the golden rule of social media: reciprocity.

Shel notes all the achievements that Gautum was accomplished including being on every short list of top social media influencers globally despite being in a country that has been slow to pick up on social media compared to many others. Shel also notes that, “in 2005, Ghosh achieved the dubious distinction of being the first person on the Asian continent to speak to me via social media. While it was a thrill for me, by then his blog had already connected him with people in about a dozen English-speaking countries.”

I was actually one of those as I interviewed him in 2004 for my book on business blogging along with his country companion, Dina Metha. By then Ghosh’s blog, now called Talent and Social Business was voted as the third most popular in India. He generously notes our conversation for my book in his conversation with Shel. Every since then we have stayed in touch. Gautum was always quick to notice anything I did and responded which naturally motivated me to do the same.

Currently, Gautum has joined the head of Microsoft India to become involved in BraveNewTalent, a London-based community platform service firm that is growing rapidly on a global scale attracting a stellar list of clients including L’Oreal, IBM, McAfee and Starbucks. Shel quotes Gautum, “BraveNewTalent hosts communities where people and organizations share knowledge and experiences, organized by professional topics and serves clients as a social media hub – bringing in content from other sources like Twitter, blogs or YouTube.”

Ghosh predicts that the new professional classification of social recruiting, emerging in the enterprise will follow the same migrations that marketing and communications professionals are following today. This is a move from transactions to relationships and trust. He also notes that forward thinking companies will be “engaging talent communities and giving to the community before they think of getting returns.” I could not agree more. The use of communities is on the rise in every space and I see recruiting as no exception.  There is more in the article so I encourage you to read the whole article. 

One of these has got to be my Muse!?!

Yeah. I know. I missed posting the other day. I spent a lot of time creating and writing the first post for a new blog I created for a client. Have you tried to create an engaging and useful blog site for a Dry Cleaners? I believe I can (and have begun to) do it, but it ain’t a walk in the park, if you get my drift. Besides that, my muse decided to take a little vacation. I’ve been talking to it a lot lately, trying to convince him/her to stick around for extended periods of time, but I don’t always seem to get through to her/him.

Anyway, I suggested I would write a bit about why I’ve made the – perhaps – dangerous choice to mix my personal blogging in with my professional blogging. Actually, though I haven’t as yet done so, I plan on mixing in political blogging and, come to think of it, I’ve pretty much tipped my hand when it comes to religion . . . though I may yet have some surprises in store.

I have elsewhere discussed my purpose for starting this particular blog and why I named it Systems Savvy. I’m not exactly circling around to what my original intention was, as my plan is a bit broader than what I originally set out to do. What I am doing, however, is not only recognizing the systemic nature of the physical world, or that of the economy, society, and the entities that form bonds that keep things going, but also of my own life; me as a system and me as a system embedded in larger, more complex systems.

What I’m getting at is I am not defined by any one aspect of my life. I have diplomas to signify my completion of particular courses of study, but my education has been continuous and diverse. You can’t define me with a couple of initials at the end of my name. Neither can I be defined by any of the numerous positions I’ve held over the years at literally dozens of companies, some of which I either owned or was a partner in.

I have some pretty well-defined political and religious beliefs. Some might call me opinionated . . . but they’re clearly assholes  . Regardless, none of my “beliefs” or opinions are set in concrete. I like to think I am both intellectually curious and doctrinally malleable. I strive to be scientific in all that I do and in all my thinking about what makes the world go ’round.

Me and my evil twin

I have a personal logo I designed, at the suggestion of Ross Dawson, that seeks to represent my philosophy to some extent. It consists of a pair of head-shots of me – one positive, the other negative – juxtaposed on top of the yin yang symbol. This represents my knowledge of the dialectic; the tension and resolution of opposite tendencies in the world and in human relationships.

All to say . . . I have presented myself as a compartmentalized, semi-one-dimensional person for most of my life. This is what was asked of me and what I gave in the belief it was necessary to survive and thrive. I still believe it worked fairly well for me and probably does for most people in today’s political and social climate. I have no intention of continuing along those lines. I’m still struggling for the right voices to use to present my stories, but I am bound and determined to present what I believe my life has been about and the direction I intend for it to take in the time I have remaining.

Two days ago marked the second anniversary of my retirement from Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne. I’ve been reconciling myself with the reality that life wasn’t going to proceed along the path I had expected for an awful lot of years; learning to deal with the changing circumstances. I’ve been on this path for a while and expect to constantly refine – and redefine – it as time goes by. I have my moments of despair, primarily over wondering if I’m going to be able to replace the income I lost as a result of my retirement but, for the most part, I’m having a ball.

Stay tuned if you’re interested. I do want to be read. However, a large part of my impetus for doing this is my desire to leave a trail for my children to follow in understanding their father and why he did what he did. Having become a first-time, adoptive father at the age of 55 (and again at 59), I have no illusion that I’ll live long into my children’s adult lives. This is just in case I don’t get to have the conversations with them I’d like to.

Clay Shirky is one my favorite writers on digital publishing. Whenever I run across one of his articles, I read it twice and I usually wind up agreeing with him even if I object at first. But one of the points that I have not come around on is when he says:

Publishing is not evolving. Publishing is going away. Because the word “publishing” means a cadre of professionals who are taking on the incredible difficulty and complexity and expense of making something public. That’s not a job anymore. That’s a button. There’s a button that says “publish,” and when you press it, it’s done.

link to interview

There is definitely some truth here. The publisher’s role of gatekeeper to availability has been reduced as the technical barriers to getting content from producers to consumers have eroded. I don’t need a printing press or a distribution network to make my content available. I can post a message that the world can see by sending an SMS from a cheap cell phone. But that doesn’t mean that anyone is going to absorb the message. It will probably be lost in the stream. My content is only going to be received if it is good, the right people are paying attention, and it hits them at a time and in a format that is useful to consume and share.

Back in the days when publishing was technically hard, we tended to fixate on the mechanical part of publishing. The capital required to acquire printing and distribution capabilities served as a barrier to entry, but it wasn’t the only one. Another barrier was having an attentive audience. This meant painstakingly building trust by offering reliable, useful, and/or entertaining information. The elimination of the technical barrier reduced the up front expenditure to get into the publishing game, but you still need to do the legwork to stay in it. We tend to discount the effort that “internet celebrities” invest in building a brand. Many of these people are driven by passion so it may not feel like a job, but it is a lot of work.

I agree that publishing as a big, monopolistic business is dying. You can no longer get fat and happy as a middleman because the playing field is so dynamic and everyone has a chance to displace you if they do a better job. But even as we see big media companies in crisis, publishing is emerging as a discipline within all organizations. I am sure you have heard the phrase “all companies are publishers now.” Corporate publishing has transformed from adapting paper sales collateral to the browser to executing a multi-faceted, multi-channel content strategy to inform and engage audiences on and off the website (email newsletters, mobile apps, Twitter, Facebook, Google, Stumbled Upon, LinkedIn…). Companies employ content managers, graphic designers, social media experts, SEO experts, and analytics specialists to understand, serve, and appeal to an audience as publisher traditionally would do. Collectively, this field is called “Marketing Operations” and it represents a lot of work — especially if you are operating in several languages and in many markets. This is what I do at Lionbridge.

Pushing the “publish” button but may seem easy but it is just a small step in a much larger process to build and reach audiences. Prior to the publish button, there is planning around placement, timing, and what kind of formats to target. Perhaps adding a graphic or interactive application would help get the point across. These decisions should be based on the analysis of other content initiatives. There is work to get the content into the CMS (it often originates somewhere else), tag it for SEO and targeting, and instrument it for analytics. There may be a nee to test the content on different devices. There may also be the need to localize the content for different markets. After clicking publish there is work to gain visibility through social networks and email newsletters. Good bloggers know what I’m talking about and have been doing this for a long time. Large corporations are just learning about it. Then there is multivariate testing and analytics, tuning for search engines, and possibly purchasing ad words. Lastly is taking all that you have learned and applying it to the next iteration through the publishing cycle. Do this continually and consistently and your customers will love you and your prospects will notice you. Do it badly and your competitors will periodically check in on your website just to make sure that you are still in business.

So, Clay, publishing isn’t just a button. It may be losing its importance as an industry but it is becoming increasingly important as a discipline within marketing organizations for all industries. That “cadre of professionals” still exists, it has just refocused from getting something public to getting something noticed. And it took a new job in the marketing department under the title “marketing operations.”

One positive effect of transparency in the public sector is that it gives city and county government an opportunity to assess current practices and make needed changes. Given the increase in public records requests and the scrutiny from the White House on down to the local level, there is no doubt constituents want more access to public records while government expectations increase.

To tackle this situation, let’s say that your government entity decided to use anenterprise content management (ECM) system to digitize records and now wants to:

• Meet public record requests efficiently
• Track formal requests
• Implement these practices with a reduced staff

Here’s how you meet these goals:

Satisfy public requests fast and efficiently using ECM 
Those of us who work in government know that we have divisions, departments and offices – with many different and often separate areas – that do the work every day. But to our constituents, we are just “the state,” “the county” or “the city,” and when they request public records they do not see the divisions we created behind the scenes. In fact, the documents they request are stored and maintained by many different staffs and offices, which presents difficulties in identifying, locating and assembling the documents that meet each request.

This is the problem with physical paper files – government pays to create, file and store documents and eventually destroys them. It’s time to digitize these records and eliminate the costs associated with paper documents to speed up and improve the tools at your disposal to retrieve and assemble public records.

With an ECM solution, digitizing records and storing them is shared by the entire government entity, which means searching in ONE place to find them. This is a big effort, but it has significant benefits in terms of long-term cost savings and efficiency in meeting the requests of our citizens. As we reassess seemingly everything in this climate of budget and staff reductions, the method of storing and retrieving public records needs analysis and fortunately, the answer has already been proven in government with ECM.

Track requests efficiently with automation
With pressure to complete requests within legal requirements and standards, tracking formal public records requests evolved from paper to spreadsheets. Manual systems were put in place to track when the request arrived, who’s compiling records, who’s requesting them, when they are due, etc. However, these manual methods can be eliminated – along with the extra work of logging entries – byletting workflow automation route requests, time their fulfillment, compile the documents into packets, redact confidential information and even send electronically to the requestor. Staff is notified of new requests and those in need of immediate attention. That way, deadlines are easily met without worrying about fines or other penalties for noncompliance.

Utilize self-service options for 24/7 constituent access
Now that your records are available in a digital format, you can utilize self-service options provided by an ECM solution. For more casual searches – things like board agendas and minutes, contracts and court documents – records can be made available through a search function on your website. With more formal requests made like those under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Sunshine Law, an electronic form on your website easily collects these requests, reducing phone calls to your staff while providing 24/7 options for requestors. Then, E-Forms automatically route through your review and fulfillment process with timers to ensure that no requests slip through the cracks and all needs are met within legal timeframes.

The neat thing about moving to digital records for transparency reasons is that it lets you see through the paper to support public records efficiently and conveniently while expanding the services you offer constituents. Now that’s getting more done with less!

I have known about AppFusions for some time and respect the vision of their leader Ellen Feaheny. I spoke with Ellen at the most recent Lotusphere and they have been working on a number of integration tools. Recently AppFusions announced a partnership with iRise^®, a provider of enterprise visualization solutions to allow for simulations of Atlassian JIRA and Confluence to speed enterprise software development.

I have been familiar with the power of software visualizations for some time and have interviewed a number of venders in this space. It can be a transformative breakthrough for both software development and the creation of related training. iRise visualization gives users the ability to create visual prototypes of new software projects that look and act just like the real thing, before a single line of code is written. The technology lets stakeholders and target users “kick the tires” on new applications, including mobile apps, and give feedback while it’s still easy and less costly to make changes.

iRise Simulations for Confluence

With iRise for Confluence users can embed iRise visualizations directly within Confluence pages, enabling others to interact with and comment on live, working simulations without leaving the page. Through live simulations, vague textual use case descriptions are strengthened and quickly understood, saving endless hours of design time and confusion between engineering and product teams. Here Is a video on how it works.

iRise Simulations for JIRA

With iRise for Confluence users can easily link to and preview working iRise visualizations from any JIRA issue. Associating JIRA tasks with simulations naturally speeds development. There is no faster way to understand an “agile story” or use case than through a live simulation. Here is a video on this integration.

The demands that stem from the exploding use of such mobile platforms such as the iPhone and the iPad in business—often referred to as "the consumerization of IT" have put many organizations under intense pressure to create business applications for stakeholders who expect to take their apps with them wherever they go, and who are quickly irritated by even small usability flaws. iRise’s patented software visualization technology helps companies and government agencies meet these raised expectations of elegant design and ease of use. I think that this type or visualization or simulation is a capability that has come at the right time to help unlock what might have been a huge cost and time bottleneck for IT.

"Productivity is a measure of the efficiency of production. Productivity is a ratio of production output to what is required to produce it (inputs). The measure of productivity is defined as a total output per one unit of a total input."

Hello! Samantha McCollough from iDatix here and today I am joined by Steve Weissman, a consultant at the Holly Group and an information management professional.

Samantha McCollough: Thank you for joining me today Steve. To begin, can you please overview some of the topics that need to be addressed when discussing information management?

Steve Weissman: Sure. One of my favorite subjects, in fact!

For me, so many of these conversations start with the technology. We tend to chunk the world up into BPM and ECM and ERM and all kinds of other M’s, but for me, that’s sort of backwards because it really has to start with the business need.

Pretty much everything that I do and everything that we’ll talk about here I hope, I expect, will be looking to start with an understanding of what the business problem is that you’re trying to solve and then mapping the technology tools into that from there.

You’re really talking about business rooted decisions beyond even the problem set. First you have to determine what you want to do, and how you want to do it, even whether to do it. Investing in new information technology can be painful; can be costly in terms of time and dollars. Maybe it’s possible that you don’t want to do anything or do anything grand right now because you know that there’s something coming down the pipe in terms of a merger or acquisition or new investor or something, so you want to just bide your time.

Of course, there’s a cost to doing nothing, also. It’s sort of the devil that you know, but you’re not getting all the efficiencies that you might get if you just stand pat. So there are tradeoffs.

Do you want to buy something? Do you want to build it yourself if you’re a big shop and have lots of skills? Maybe you want to outsource it.

And whatever the “it” is, it’s going to have some sort of an impact on the way your people work.

So there’s a big component of change management to be talked about as well that has very little directly to do with technology, but more to do with how people react to the technology.

How they embrace or don’t embrace the new ways that they’re going to have to work or the new interfaces they’re going to need to deal with.

I’ve long had this bumper sticker in mind that says, “It’s psychology, not technology.” And certainly in terms of user adoption, it is.

Things like mobility.

The psychology now is such that many people want to use and are using their own personal technology for business purposes. And there are whole rafts of information, and decisions to be made and obtained, about how to manage that. Because if everybody’s using a different smartphone, you’ve got multiple devices, with multiple operating systems, how do you secure them? How do you not drive yourself nuts to make sure they have the latest and greatest software you need them to have?

It’s just like managing a fleet of PC’s, but worse. Because at least in the past, companies bought their own fleets of PCs. And most of them aren’t now buying smartphones for their people.

So, long winded answer, long winded way of saying there’s lots of issues to be talked about that we’re really best served starting in the business context, not the technology. That’s sort of why I’m here.
 

SM: So how do these issues impact business, what are the reasons that people turn to technology in the first place?

SW: The obvious reasons are efficiencies and cost reduction and all the happy adjectives that we hear so much about at the conferences and read in the trade press.

But again, for me there’s a big element in trying to guard against leaping in feet first without first looking into the water to see what rocks may be there.

Technology is really great, but like anything else, if you use it for the forces of good, you win. If you don’t, you lose. It’s a nod to the Avengers, which opened this past weekend, I guess, speaking of the forces of good.

What often gets lost in the rush to technology or in the hype surrounding technology is that automation for its own sake is rarely a good idea. You may have processes that work largely because you’re used to the way they work and all the little quirks and foibles associated with them.

If you were to automate that, all you’re doing is making those inefficiencies work faster.

And you may well find yourself with even bigger problems because you haven’t addressed the underlying causes of issues, of inefficiencies, of lag between the time one process ends and the next begins.

You may find the whole thing breaks down because now you’re pushing more and more information through that process faster than it can handle it.

So taking that conceptual step back to begin is just so important so you don’t end up automating the chaos, basically. You want to understand what’s broken before you fix it. And I can tell you- and will tell you over the weeks to come- stories of people who have really just done the opposite and really paid the price for it.

 
SM: Now that we have underlined the importance of the business aspect of information management, let’s go ahead and cover a bit of the technology: BPM, ECM, etc.

SW: You can buy BPM.

You can buy ECM and all the other M’s.

And I’m not saying that that’s a bad thing, but really they’re best considered business practices.

The practice of managing business processes. The practice of managing enterprise content. There are tools to be bought and deployed to facilitate those best practices, and to make them real.

And it’s so important to start with the nature of the business problem you’re trying to solve and figure out the best way for your company, in your industry, in your geography sometimes, because there are different laws around the world that have to be complied with.

What really is the best way for you and your organization to be working?

The little sing song here is what we’re really after is to try to help people work better and work better together.

So there’s a whole process piece to this puzzle as well as a collaboration piece, and of course, the obvious one which I didn’t mention just there, is the economic piece.

Where you have to balance all these three major factors and figure out the practices that are best for you, and then go find the technology that may carry the same label, but find the technology or mixture of technologies that are really going to help you fulfill those best practices and have it come out the way you want it to come out.
 

SM: Now that you have enlightened us with all of this great information, how about you tell us all a bit about your background and how you came to be so experienced in information management and business?

SW: Oh, yeah. What’s the expression? Sometimes wrong, never in doubt.

No, I’ve been an industry analyst and a consultant in the information management spaces, depending where you want to count from, at least since 1990.

I did start young, that’s true, but it goes all the way back to the first electronic form that I saw. That was 1990, which is one reason I start the counter there.

And the electronic forms vendor that I was talking to said, “No, no, no. This is an electronic form.”

And I’m like, “Yeah, but that data your capturing in this form, doesn’t it go somewhere? I mean, your clients are capturing it for some purpose, right?”

And they’re like, “Yeah, maybe.”

So, really early on, it seemed clear to me that all these different technologies that have since emerged separately and then come together, they exist because they’re trying to solve a particular business problem and enable particular business processes. And all of those processes run on the strength of their information.

Looking at it more holistically became one of my watch words right from the get go. I’ve worked in the industry and as a consultant and all those fun things like so many people in this kind of chair do, but that’s been what’s tied it all together. What it’s allowed me to do with my clients is not to have to redefine the world every time a new technology revolution comes along.

Because the interesting and sad truth is, our business processes are largely our businesses processes, and they haven’t changed that much going back even centuries. But the tools, of course, are dramatically different.

So understanding and staying true to the business problem allows you to view all the new cool stuff through the proper lens, which is, “What’s this going to do for me,” instead of looking at it going, “Oh, something shiny. Let’s chase it.”

So I speak. I write. I run training classes. I actually created the videos that are online through the AIIM International Association website for their new certification program. I mean, I’m all over this stuff.

Nothing makes me happier then to see people do this well and do this right. In a previous consulting life, I ran an awards program that ran for fully ten years, because it was just too cool not to take note of what people were doing.

So I’m thrilled to be able to talk to you today and to the listeners going forward and help them get as much value as they can out of their information and the systems that they’re putting in for that purpose.
 

SM: One last thing Steve, you have been emphasizing the importance of looking at your business needs first, and the technology second. Clearly, organizations need to be looking into their specific wants and needs prior to selecting any particular solution, yes?

SW: Well here’s the perspective check. We do that much when we buy refrigerators or microwave ovens, because you don’t go in the store and look at a microwave oven and buy it because it’s red or green.

But you’re there for some reason-because you need it to be a certain size, a certain power. With a fridge, do you want the in door water or not, and that’s a function of the process of quenching your family’s thirst.

It sounds really silly, but if you’re going to do it for a $500, $600, $800 refrigerator, why wouldn’t you do it for a multiple tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of information system. It just doesn’t make sense to me to do it any other way.

And so, when you look at it that way, it’s like, “Yeah.”

So that’s why I’m here. I want people to understand, “Yeah.”
 

SM: Thank you very much Steve, we clearly have a lot to cover! I am excited about sharing the secrets of these topics with our audience.
Coming up, I know you plan on covering “why doing nothing can cost you everything”, a topic I can’t wait to hear you discuss.

SW: Thank you!

Be sure to join us in the coming weeks as Steve Weissman covers topics such as “why doing nothing can cost you everything”, “Defining Processes; don’t just make an electronic version of the same bad process” and “how to get buy-in”.

You might also like:

A Brief History Of Process – From the Industrial Revolution To Today	Battling the Paper Addiction-3 Ways to Help Employees Detox	ECM…who actually uses this stuff?

Here is a book that I recently put at the top of my business reading list thanks to a suggestion by my Merced Group partner, Catherine Shinners. She posted an excellent review, Social Business for Executives. As she opens her review with the comment, “Understanding how to derive repeatable business value from collaborative community is an important senior management skill to master.” There is more and more evidence coming out about the value of social business. Many of you are familiar with the McKinsey studies that provided concrete quantified benefits (see for example, How social technologies are extending the organization).

Here is a book that gets senior managers ready for the next evolution in business: The social organization. The basic premise of the book is “being a social organization goes beyond experimenting with social media technology tools—the "provide and pray" approach. In fact, it's not about the technology at all.” The Social Organization: How to Use Social Media to Tap the Collective Genius of your Customers and Employees, is published by Harvard Business Review Press and written by Anthony J. Bradley and Mark P. McDonald of Gartner.

Now I would say there is a little bit of technology to consider (see for example - Maybe Enterprise 2.0 Is About the Technology – but this title was more provocative that meant to be taken literally. I do agree with the need to focus on the business side if you want to be successful (see for example, Putting Social Media to Work).

As Catherine notes this book is indeed about putting social business to work in larger enterprises. She quotes the authors, mass collaboration, in their definition "is a large, diverse group of people pursuing a mutual purpose that creates value..yet...who act independently to contribute open and complementary information" and thereby becomes a "collaboration community that enlists the interests, knowledge, talent and experience of everyone along its value chain to create results that exceed those possible using traditional process and small-group collaboration"

Senior management engagement and leadership is essential to make this work. First, she notes that senior management is essential for “ensuring that a community is mobilized around a business relevant purpose.”  This is the key starting point that is often missing when new technology is implemented. She also notes that senior management is required for “bringing the results of the collaboration community into relevant business processes.” I have never seen a successful knowledge management for that was not business process aligned and this is even more important with social business (see for example, Integrating the Interactions with the Transactions).

Catherine reviews the very interesting case of CEMEX, the Mexican producer of concrete that was already creating huge profits through advanced use of technology in their business processes in the early 2000s. I had occasion to do a small bit of work with them during this pre-social business era and was very impressed. It is not surprising that they picked up on mass collaboration. You can see Catherine’s blog post for the case and the six basic principles for a successful cycle of mass collaboration.

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