Microsoft at the ECM arena part 2

In my work SharePoint 2007 is a hot topic these days. With the release of SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS), I’m trying to get a grasp on this platforms reach into the enterprise, and the issues
surrounding SharePoint implementations.

According to the latest from Osterman Research, SharePoint is becoming the de facto collaboration platform for many organizations today and study results for SharePoint are positive The Osterman study tried to determine trends in the future use of SharePoint. Results of the study indicate that in organizations that deployed Microsoft Exchange, more than half are currently using SharePoint and 12 percent plan to deploy SharePoint within the next 12 months.

”Survey points to Microsoft SharePoint becoming a de-facto collaboration platform” Michael Osterman

This is a result based on that the platform is easy to use (and parts of) the platform becoming more widely deployed and ingrained in the work habits of end-users. And if there’s anything Microsoft knows well, it’s how to ingratiate itself with the enterprise.

On the other side the recent CMSWatch "ECM Suites Report" says that SharePoint is an ECM virus with “IT departments enthusiastically promoting the platform because the end-users and departments can install and run these small repositories themselves”. – Are the IT department scared of work and responsibility?

In their research, CMSWatch found that SharePoint is often is implemented in a ad-hoc fashion with little compliance and controls on it’s use – that’s why CMSWatc uses the term “virus”.

The difference between these two opinions comes primarily in how SharePoint is used. Fully or partly used as a collaboration tool, it’s widely accepted. As an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) tool, there tends to be a long way to go. But to help there are several third-party vendors that try to bridge Microsoft ECM gap – an example is eDRM-vendor Merido and CMS-vendor EPIServer (ElectroPost)

In use-cases content is stored and managed in the same system (DB), but the designs, implementation process and governance is different. And there are also wide spread SharePoint implementation on ad-hoc basis with no root in the organisation strategy, business plan and goals - this is dangerous.

In the CMSWatch survey they report an example of a North American bank that reported more than 5,000 uncontrolled and unaudited instances of SharePoint. SCARY!

My opinion is that share Point as a technology is supposed to support an enterprise, not drive it. Technology is an enabler. That means an organization should be carefully thinking about its business strategy and how its available resources assist that strategy.

With this in mind, governance becomes the critical success factor in a SharePoint implementation plan. Whether it’s implemented at department or enterprise level, as collaboration or a content management platform implementation strategies and a governance plan must be in place to support the content stored in SharePoint.

Any opinions on this?

Blurry products and features – ECM, WCM, EIP???

Sometimes I’m struggling to se the difference between content tools, and the lines between the families are notoriously blurry.

This seems especially case among Enterprise Information Portals (EIP), Enterprise Content Management (ECM), and Web Content Management (WCM), where I see a lot of overlap in vendors, product functionality, and marketing messages. Also to add to the confusion several vendors, due to accusations, have several overlapping product lines in the market.

An example is that if you're looking to implement Intranet-based document management, you could conceivably use any of those three types of products. Some consultancies will also try to sell you all three types of solutions, with the obligatory integration project.

My recommendation is to take a business approach to the project, and describe what solves your most pressing needs before selecting content technology, tools or platform. Describe the core of your business problem or opportunity, and then build the selection process from there. The reality is that these three different types of products have their defined strengths and weaknesses, and they tend to address different problems. By understanding what you're trying to accomplish, you can better identify the types of content technology you need.

My opinion is that the WCM products support fundamentally publishing scenarios and has the focus on semi-structured content and content delivery with employee-friendly editorial interfaces. There are also ECM vendors that claim that they have publishing capabilities, but in my opinion ECM delivery become more process oriented, and vendors often focus their solution into industry verticals such as e.g. finance, public.

Vendors also add to the confusion, and to be sure they have the best fit for the market they often market the same product for different categories of problems, and sometimes that actually makes sense. The promise of e.g. MOSS 2007 is that this toolset can conceivably play in all of these three (WCM, ECM and EIP) spaces to varying degrees, but Microsoft has different ways of getting there, and one SharePoint installation still will be implemented and used in several different ways.

Of course the solutions also overlap. For example WCM sites implemented as a ”Community-oriented” site may well look quite a bit like a "Collaboration Portal," which in turn might look like a "ECM Workgroup Collaboration" site. All in all this come down to the implementation, amount of tailoring and presentation layer of each delivery. So there is possible very little difference between the products, but on the other hand you should be aware that the tools approach your problems in different ways.

So my recommendation is that you should build a good specification and business case that has a good fit with your overall business objectives, and then figure out which type of tools that provide the biggest near-term value. This mean that you should specify and describe what type of need(s) and scenario(s) you're addressing, and the key objective in the specification is that you carefully outline what you're trying to achieve with which types of content. A little analysis here can save you a lot of time and money at later stage.

Portal acquisitions - Will there be synergies or is it greed?

After several attempts by Oracle to acquire BEA, the two companies entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire BEA. By acquiring BEA oracle will now have four portal products and I guess that the Oracle management need to make some tough decisions – they can’t bring all products to the marked. I also question the overlapping developement and engineering efforts.

Oracle has already announced that they would continue supporting BEA products after the acquisition. The situation could become quite interesting for portal customers though, as Oracle would find itself in possession of four different portal products:

• Oracle Portal
• Oracle WebCenter
• BEA WebLogic Portal
• BEA AquaLogic User Interaction (formerly Plumtree)
  

The product lines significantly overlap and I will try to give a quick description regarding overlaps:

• BEA AquaLogic and Oracle WebCenter both focus on integration and SOA, and can offer good web application development toolkits.
• BEA WebLogic Portal and Oracle Portal bring to marked strengths in role and object based portals with focus on personalization and segmentation, and can offer a platform for self-service applications
• All four portals offer only average CMS and DMS functions in comparison to other special ECM and portal vendors

Oracle aquired BEA with overlapping products, this bring Oracle into a position where they have to support 4 product lines with a oversized engineering and support team. In my oppinion Oracle should merge with a company with complementary products (WCM or ECM), this would make sense and would bring synergies.

Therefore I struggle understand Oracles acquisition strategy, and I miss to se the synergy, and as I see it – ”two plus two is still equalling...just two”.

If any se this different please bring me wisdom ☺

Microsoft at the ECM-arena part 1

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 is Microsoft newest contribution to the ECM arena. The key Microsoft marketing message is that they now have many of the capabilities needed to offer ECM and Portal projects. Microsoft also claims that MOSS includes a "out of the box" development platform for developing rich collaborative web-applications.

Is MOSS a viable ECM alterative, or just a sales and marketing message from Redmond. Before reading further please look at CMSWatch 12 predictions for 2008, regarding MOSS (http://www.cmswatch.com/Feature/172-2008-Predictions). CMSWatch claim that MOSS now enters the valley of disappointment because there is a mismatch between marketing and sales message and customer ECM-project reality. I’m currently studying the MOSS platform, trying to gain knowledge and experience for so to help organisations to implement MOSS with a high success rate.

My opinion is that the success criteria for MOSS are the same as for any ECM-projects, and organisations disappointment (claimed in CMSWatch) could well be that the project group fail to specify the project, manage level of expectations and build viable business cases. Advice: DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE BUSINESS SIDE OF AN ECM-PROJCET. How to build a ECM-business case

I would also be happy to start discussions and knowledge sharing with other ECM/MOSS professionals or communities.

In one of my next blog-spots I will try to describe MOSS from my personal ECM-point of View.

Focus on customer interaction (e-service)

I predict that increasing competitiveness and focus on innovation and revenue growth are forcing B2C and B2B organizations to align and optimize customer interaction and service delivery. Moving from Content Management (ECM) to e-service is a shift from information delivery (content delivery) to customer interaction. In this paradigm shift I see that channels need to be aligned and integrated with common underlying workflows and business rules .

Why is e-service essential
Customer service has historically been the domain of phone based contact centers and e-mail based communication. However organizations of today must treat a wider spectrum of customer contacts points with a wider palette of contact points for the customer. Organizations need to align and develop multiple communication channels to capture every potential customer (prospect) and interact with existing customers.

Typically an e-service mission statement could be: “Increase sales and customer satisfaction by serving partners and customers better by unifying enterprise applications, information and business process delivered cross the web”

I mean that E-service is essential because organizations need to:

• Improve customer intimacy and customer loyalty
• Enable cross-sales and up-sales of products
• Turn prospects into clients
• Enable customer feedback for service and product development
• Moving customer service points upstream
• Enable customer web based self-service
• Enrich and coordinate knowledge management from several customer contact points

All this leads to a more efficient flow of information through the value chain, which again should lead to an increase in revenue.

Some recommendation in the shift to e-service:
If you build a unified customer interaction experience you need to align the organization, processes and toolset. It is important not to let current structures, policies and business-as-usual thinking slow migration to a unified customer service model. With this in mind you should:

• Describe and model it's current or selected customer interaction points – this will be the basis for understanding potential challenges and the basis for the GAP-analysis
• Perform the GAP-analysis and implement changes – mind that the solution to cover the GAP may not lie in technology.
• Build a solid, single and broad technology platform to support e-service initiatives. The platform should consist of cross channel information sharing, workflow, and a unified customer model.
• Consider technology consolidation – don’t try to integrate old systems into one platform for e-service. Move the company away from single customer point solution and implement a standardised platform with a modular and standardised presentation layer, the latter to ensure future flexibility.
  

ECM Project – Building a business case

Before you start ECM-projects Return of Investments (ROI) objectives need to be in place. The ROI calculation needs to contain elements of cost savings and revenue growth. If not many decision makers (managers) will be reluctant to give approval for your ECM-project.

In this blog-post I will try to give some advice regarding ROI calculation, so that you will be able to successfully start new exiting ECM projects.

Many decision makers intuitively believe that implementing Information Management solutions bring financial growth through process efficiency, improved information management and enhanced customer interaction. Given this audience it is important that the ECM-team plan a well documented approach with realistic measurable goals presented as a business case. With the business case in place you bring to the table the right and aligned level of expectation between decision makers and your ECM-team.

Often when business cases fail there are:

• Lack of alignment with the organisations strategy and key business drivers
• Failed to identify how ECM-technologies enable processes to run more efficiently and effectively

To provide some ideas for a business analyse you should look at the following key dimensions:

• People and staffing
• Process and process management
• Culture
• and technology

You should investigate the cost drivers and benefits in each of these key dimensions. For an overview I enclose a table with highlights business case dimensions

Conclusion
All ECM projects should have measurable value propositions and business cases developed. The business case must comprehend a holistic view of the organisation, that include both internal and external analyse of the environment the organisation operate in.

Use the ECM-business case to:

• Align the level of expectation between decision makers and the ECM-team
• Alignment of goals within the ECM-team
• Measure and adjust solution after delivery
  

Implementing an ECM-business case there are two critical success factors:

• Alignment with the organisations strategic goals and business driver
• Process discovery and mapping with focus on efficiencies, reduced cycle times, quality, reduced rework, customer interaction
  

So the success criteria is to implement a holistic business case that ensures that the ECM investments contributes to the organisations strategy, goals and tactical objectives, and also provide a mechanism for evaluating and measure the ECM-initiative through its lifecycle.

ECM trends

In this blogpost I will try to collect some of the trends in ECM solutions and ECM delivery.

The new trend is that enterprises are seeking ECM solutions that:

1. Support content initiatives that drive revenue or increase customer satisfaction
2. Support the migration form information driven content to transaction driven solutions (e-service)
3. Support content initiatives that support one content engine with multiple distribution channels
4. Enable business users to own the structure, management and delivery of content
5. Support open and modular delivery standards
6. Support role based content delivery – same content source delivered in multiple channels (inter, intra or extranet)
7. Support IT consolidation and architecture needs

As enterprises continue to place greater focus on the customer experience delivered in multiple channels the enterprise should be able to build and maintain teams that take responsible for the web customer experience. The production and delivery of the web customer experience is clearly a business line function, not the responsibility of IT, but several IT organizations have been slow to get the news and adapt to new working requirements’. The optimal team is a cross functional team anchored in information technology, business development and management.

ECM a tool for enabling revenue growth

Since early days of information technology the dominant role viewed from management has been to look upon IT as a major driver of cost efficiency. This has been the case even as companies deploy advanced web based systems and applications with unprecedented levels of functionality. We are now in a paradigm shift where IT will be the basis for business development and revenue growth.

This is not to say that the mandate to improve cost efficiency will fall away. Reducing operational costs remains among the top imperatives for executives when the discussion shifts to IT investment. But for CEOs in particular, a more important technology objective is to help improve information and knowledge management, and another major imperative is to help the firm ”respond quickly to market changes”. This leads to that many managers are turning to innovation in business models - how they develop, produce, sell and deliver products and then to drive revenue growth. This leads to that IT strategy and web-capabilities become more closely aligned with the company‘s overall business objectives. It is critical to align IT more closely with companies’ business goals and overall strategy.