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CONTENT MANAGEMENT
...continued
PrintIT
asks Doug Miles, Director of AIIM Market
Intelligence, why readers should attend
AIIM Forum UK 2015
PrintIT:
Who should attend the AIIM
Forum UK?
Doug Miles:
The AIIM Forum covers both the
‘Why?’ and the ‘How to’ of information and
content management, and will prove useful
to business decision-makers, operations
managers, technical implementers and those
who we might call information stakeholders.
Most departments run on documents
and content – HR, Finance, Procurement,
Operations, R & D, Legal – and so most
business managers need to understand
how paper-free processes can speed things
up, how poor access and isolated silos can
slow things down, and how poor practice in
records-keeping and governance can get you
into trouble.
PrintIT:
Will visitors learn anything they
don’t already know?
Doug Miles:
Yes! The challenges of
information management haven’t changed,
but the opportunities from the latest capture
automation, cloud deployment, mobile
access, analytics, case management and
smart business processes are enormous.
PrintIT:
If information management is
continually evolving, what are some of the
main areas of interest in 2015?
Doug Miles:
Multi-channel capture and
digital mailroom are key solutions for
those faced with big in-bound customer
communications. Automated classification is
taking over the filing task from humans, and
in doing so, cleaning up the redundant ‘dark
data’ and improving searchability of the rest.
Content analytics plays its part here, but
can also feed big data initiatives to provide
deep business insight. Mobile access to
content and processes is hugely important,
and the argument rages between on-premise
content management systems and cloud-
based collaboration platforms. Meanwhile,
information governance is emerging as a
combination of compliance, security and
knowledge value enhancement.
PrintIT:
What advice would you give
someone who knows they need to
do something to improve information
management in their organisation, but
doesn’t know where to start? How can
they bring clarity and relevance to the
topic?
Doug Miles:
It’s important to identify
that there are two sides to information
management: the risks and the
opportunities. Different businesses, and
different management teams, may be
driven to act more by one than the other,
but taken together, the business case can
be greatly strengthened. Often there is
a win-win situation. Getting paper out of
processes and managing documents and
forms electronically will speed up response,
improve searchability and enable remote
access, but it can also mould compliance
into the process and improve business
resilience. Providing defined collaboration
tools and content sharing within and outside
the business improves project outcomes,
surfaces innovation and reduces errors, but
it can also support potential litigation and
manage IP security.
PrintIT:
Once they have registered to
attend AIIM UK Forum, what should
visitors do preparation-wise to ensure
they get maximum value from the event?
Doug Miles:
Go to the AIIM website at www.
aiim.org and take advantage of our many
resources and best practice guides. They are
categorised by business issues, not technical
products. There are also short tutorials and
videos. We are also running pre-conference
training sessions on ECM and on Information
Governance the day before the Forum.
PrintIT:
If you were a visitor, what criteria
would you use to judge whether your time
at AIIM Forum UK had been well spent?
Doug Miles:
Business change and
competitive innovation require energy,
commitment and above all confidence.
If what you see and hear at the Forum
strengthens your resolve to pursue change,
gives you some insight into the many
possibilities for improvement, and some
business contacts to help you start your
journey, then your time there will have been
very well spent.
Why you should attend
the AIIM Forum
outside the realm of these kinds of
structured processes, along with a
revolution occurring in how, where,
and when knowledge workers do
their jobs. Even among the current
users of ECM technologies, 52%
believe that within five years, ECM
systems will be an undifferentiated
part of the IT infrastructure.”
ECM trends
A second new AIIM publication,
The Content Management 2020:
Thinking Beyond ECM Trendscape
Report
, based on input from 56
senior executives in companies
like Microsoft, IBM, Adobe and
Box, highlights trends shaping the
future of content and information
management.
Its analysis shows that the
following trends will be in play by
2020 and should be at the top of
enterprise technology planning
agendas now:
n
New approaches to privacy and
security;
n
Ubiquitous broadband
connectivity;
n
Bottom-up rather than top-down
innovation;
n
Lots more virtual and distributed
work;
n
A shortage of ‘connective’ and
analytic skills among IT staff;
n
A shift in how technology is
purchased from multi-year capital
expenditures to current year
operating expenditures; and
n
Increased regulation of the cloud
by national governments.
Mancini believes these trends
will have a significant impact on
ECM, ushering in a new era for the
technology.
He said: “Organisations have
always wrestled with how to manage
the intersection of people, processes
and information, and over the past
15 years we have called this set of
technologies Enterprise Content
Management, or ECM. But that time
is almost over and we are entering
a new era of ‘ECM’ that will more
accurately reflect the changing
landscape.”
The
ECM Decisions
report is free
to download at
org/ecmdecisions
.
The Content
Management 2020: Thinking Beyond
ECM
report is free to download at
.
