Portals, Content and Collaboration – The Future of ECM?

I attended Gartner’s Fall Portals Content and Collaboration Summit in LA earlier this month. Unfortunately, the Hollywood sizzle seemed to be missing from this event, even though it took place just across the street from Creative Artists Agency’s impressive new headquarters. Perhaps it was because the event was located in the basement levels of the Hyatt Century Plaza that caused us all to feel a little squeezed? Although, I must say the rest of the hotel has been wonderfully updated.

Maybe the issue is that the whole PCC concept might be getting old. I got the sense that many of the leading edge businesses, which have aggressively adopted PCC technologies, were busy doing just that – building and using them, instead of attending the event. Those organizations that did attend seemed more like the late adopters, still gathering information and waiting to see what the general consensus about ECM was going to be.

It’s also possible that Gartner’s somewhat artificial separation of the Web Innovation Summit from the PCC Summit had forced web developers to choose one venue vs. the other for budget reasons. I personally don’t know how it’s possible to separate Web 2.0 technology discussions from those about content management, collaboration or portals. In fact, it appeared that Web 2.0 applications, practices and case studies were getting the most attention at PCC this fall anyway.

The ECM market is evolving rapidly, and I know the folks at Gartner recognize this. However, its not just because of Microsoft and SharePoint. While SharePoint IS the tidal wave driving change in the ECM market, the market itself is quickly moving in new directions. Collaboration in particular is migrating to many new places on the web. (Are you having trouble keeping track of all your communications services?). My iPhone is rapidly gathering content sharing applications which connect to new web services – probably causing me to become an ECM rogue.

I’m not sure what’s going to stop this? Corporate policy? Probably depends on where we work. It’s also possible that the whole concept of ECM will need to get updated. (Just when everyone was beginning to understand it). Maybe the common content repository is more of an illusion than we expected? OpenText has some new ideas about using federated policy management against multiple content repositories that might help… Hopefully, Gartner will inject more web innovation into PCC next year before the event starts feeling more like a Lotus Notes conference.

Get off the Email Treadmill and Loose Weight Too!

Do you go to work to read email? Hopefully not, but how much time do you spend at the office reading mail - 20%, 30%, more? How much time do you spend looking for things other people sent you in your email? Is it possible that half your days are consumed this way? I’m trying to change these statistics for myself, particularly when I’m at the office. After all, what’s the point of commuting to work if we’re not going to interact with others in the real world?

I’m not against email or electronic collaboration. These tools are invaluable to my mobile work style, but I’ve been abusing email for too long and the consequences have become significant. I yell nasty things at my email client because I waste so much time looking for file attachments that seem to have disappeared altogether. I get even more frustrated just waiting for email searches to complete – usually without the results I’m seeking. Oh, and please don’t talk to me about “inbox full” messages. Grrrr!

Technology analysts earn lots of money advising big companies about how to manage these kinds of email problems. Some recommend trying to better understanding email usage behavior, categorizing identified patterns and then considering alternative methods, or technologies depending upon collaborative needs. Others suggest evaluating inbox contents and performing radical content hygiene – kind of like a deep dental roots cleansing. Ouch!

I’m sure there’s practical benefit to many of these approaches, but I’ve got a couple simple suggestions of my own you might want to try. Yes, one requires document management, or ECM software, but it’s not difficult to do. Here’s how it works. Stop sending email attachments and replace them with Web URL’s (links) instead. Some studies suggest that over 50% of all email storage is consumed by email attachments. Of course, you’ll want to get your co-workers, partners, etc. to do the same to get the full network benefit of this change. (OK – that’s the harder part).

How does this work? Most all ECM products offer support for WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning) which is an extension of HTTP. Basically, this means that any document or file stored within the application has its own unique address – one that you can share with others as a link. Better yet, WebDAV provides a host of collaboration tools, like version control that make it easy to work together with others on the same documents so that you can see each other’s changes, etc.

Some of the more sophisticated ECM solutions have developed email plug-ins that allow you to easily reference a stored document without even leaving your preferred email client. Xythos offers a good example of this type of integration whether you use a web or desktop mail package, or even shuttle back and forth between desktop’s and operating systems like I do.

The best of these email/ECM integrations will turn your old email attachment behaviors into automatic content publishing even if you select the paperclip or insert a photograph from iPhoto. That can be powerful. Not only is a big burden eliminated from email servers, but those files also become easier to categorize, search, re-use and even protect according to compliance policies. Oh, and did I mention that you can always change access rights to linked files that you've shared? Try doing that with an email attachment.

So, what was my other recommendation? Try limiting your use of email while at the office. I know there’s plenty of stuff we do that benefits from having an email record, but how many other times could we simply get up and walk across the office to discuss issues or ideas? How about an old-fashioned in-person meeting or lunch with clients where you can watch reactions that don’t always transmit through email? (OK – Light on the lunch or the title theme of this post won’t work).

Seriously, I still like email, but I refuse to use it to share files anymore. So please don’t try and send me any more email attachments. If you don’t have access to an ECM system of your own try www.xythosondemand.com. It’s free for 30 days and doesn’t cost much after that. I bet if you do co-workers will thank you for not filling up their in-boxes and maybe they’ll even walk over to your desk and say so!

Web 2.0, SaaS and ECM – Is there a connection?

We hosted a web conference about these topics earlier this month and about 100 participants registered for the event. Attendees were asked to respond to a short poll regarding their current use of collaborative technologies and while this may not be a surprise to readers, almost half reported that email remained the primary collaborative tool used to work with others both outside and within their office. This reminded me once again that while terms like Web 2.0 and SaaS appear over-used in our industry there are still many organizations that haven’t yet tried today’s new collaborative tools and may not even be aware of the simpler ways to begin doing this, such as using software as a service. 

While businesses scramble to keep track of email in this age of increased compliance requirements enterprise content management, or ECM solutions can appear daunting given their history of lengthy deployments and costly integrations. The introduction of consumer-friendly Web 2.0 interfaces that facilitate collaboration beyond email and capture vital content in the process might just be the solution that will please employees and the organizations they work for. Software as a service represents a radical new way to deliver ECM to departments or smaller businesses that haven’t had easy access to the technology before. Taken together, Web 2.0 and SaaS could create a tipping point which finally gives ECM its chance to succeed.

We invited business managers from Volm corporation to explore this topic and discuss how they’re using Web 2.0 and SaaS to tackle their email and content management challenges during the seminar. Listen to the podcast to learn more about how Volm is improving how it collaborates and better serves the needs of customers like Dole Food Company, General Mills and others.

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