DOCUMENTmedia.com | winter.14
THE
ECM ISSUE WHY ORGANIZATIONS
CAN’T KEEP THEIR DATA SAFE
INSIDE
CLASSIFYING DATA CORRECTLY IS KEY, BUT MANY LAG BEHIND BY CAL SLEMP
EFSS:
IT’S TIME TO FISH OR CUT BAIT
A GUIDE TO THE ECM MARKETPLACE
FOLDERS MUST DIE
5 1 ’ F DS Q& A
ARGO WELLS F , IN H C CKSON AS WITH JA L AMERIC A IT P A C H, GE ERBERIC BRUCE B LABS N, DOCU O S T A W JAMES
volume 21 issue 4
Winter.14
DOCUMENTmedia.com
Features
Must Die 24 Folders Say hello to metadata and tagging By Nick Inglis
Organizations Can’t Keep Their Data Safe 20 Why Classifying data correctly is key, but many lag behind By Cal Slemp
Departments
Columns
05 What’s New 06 Masthead 08 Editor’s View 10 Contributors
in Every 12 Deliver Channel By Matt Swain
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The Rise of Inkjet Printing By David Davis
26 EFSS It’s time to fish or cut bait By Bud Porter-Roth
ECM Strategy 30 The DSF ’15 Q&A With Bruce Berberich, Jackson Chin & James K. Watson
16 Digital Communications By Tom Roberts
Connect facebook.com/ DOCUMENTmedia twitter.com/ DOCUMENTmedia linkedin.com/ company/document-media
Is Your Mobile 18 How Strategy Working Out for You?
By Richard Rosen
Guide to the ECM 32 AMarketplace
What’s the right tool? By Apoorv Durga
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Winter 2014
Features
What’s New
Why the Future Is Really Just the Past: What’s in Store for 2015 By Matt Mullen www.documentmedia.com/Main/articles/Why-the-FutureIs-Really-Just-the-Past-Whats-in-St-1539.aspx
Adobe, Microsoft and IBM Are Changing the E-Forms Market: What You Need to Know By Ray Killam www.documentmedia.com/Main/articles/ Adobe-Microsoft-and-IBM-AreChanging-the-EForms-Ma-1535.aspx
Can Reputation Overcome Perceptions? By John Patterson www.documentmedia.com/Main/articles/CanReputation-Overcome-Perceptions-1532.aspx
Get People in the Content Management Door By Laurence Hart www.documentmedia.com/Main/articles/Get-People-inthe-Content-Management-Door-1527.aspx
5 Leadership Skills of Successful Project Managers
How This $2M Success Story Will Change Information Governance to Be Business- and Results-Driven By Barclay T. Blair www.documentmedia.com/Main/articles/How-This-2MSuccess-Story-Will-Change-Information-1534.aspx
By Lew Sauder www.documentmedia.com/ Main/articles/5-LeadershipSkills-of-Successful-ProjectManagers-1526.aspx
Predictive Hiring: Getting Talent Down to a Science By Dave Smith www.documentmedia.com/Main/articles/Predictive-HiringGetting-Talent-Down-to-a-Science-1528.aspx
10 Features That Should be in Your Managed Print Contract By Edward Crowley www.documentmedia.com/Main/articles/10Features-That-Should-be-in-Your-ManagedPrint-C-1533.aspx
Content Marketing That Serves Your Customer Experience By Oliver Jaeger www.documentmedia.com/Main/articles/ Content-Marketing-that-Serves-YourCustomer-Experi-1531.aspx
Yes, Your Physical Signatures Are Slowing Down the Process By Bob Larrivee www.documentmedia.com/ Main/articles/Yes-YourPhysical-Signatures-AreSlowing-Down-the-1529.aspx
DOCUMENTmedia.com winter.2014
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president
Chad Griepentrog
publisher
Ken Waddell
editor
Allison Lloyd
contributors
advertising
[ allison.l@rbpub.com ]
Bruce Berberich Jackson Chin David Davis Apoorv Durga Nick Inglis Bud Porter-Roth Tom Roberts Richard Rosen Cal Slemp Matt Swain James K. Watson Ken Waddell
[ ken.w@rbpub.com ] [ 608.442.5064 ]
audience development Rachel Chapman manager [ rachel@rbpub.com ] marketing creative director
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Cierra Bauer Kelli Cooke
DOCUMENT Strategy Media (ISSN 1081-4078) is published on a daily basis via its online portal and produces special print editions by RB Publishing Inc., 2901 International Lane, Madison, WI 53704-3128. All material in this magazine is copyrighted Š 2014 by RB Publishing Inc. All rights reserved. Nothing may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher. Any correspondence sent to DOCUMENT Strategy Media, RB Publishing Inc. or its staff becomes the property of RB Publishing Inc. The articles in this magazine represent the views of the authors and not those of RB Publishing Inc. or DOCUMENT Strategy Media. RB Publishing Inc. and/or DOCUMENT Strategy Media expressly disclaim any liability for the products or services sold or otherwise endorsed by advertisers or authors included in this magazine. SUBSCRIPTIONS: DOCUMENT Strategy Media is the essential publication for executives, directors and managers focused on document strategies and hands-on tools for overall document management. Free to qualified recipients; subscribe at www.documentmedia.com/subscribe. REPRINTS: For high-quality reprints, please contact our exclusive reprint provider, ReprintPros, 949-702-5390, www.ReprintPros.com. 2901 International Drive Madison WI 53704-3128 p: 608-241-8777 f: 608-241-8666 email: rbpub@rbpub.com
When it comes to connecting your company’s data and operations, we can provide the missing piece of the puzzle. For over 20 years, NearStar has provided innovative products and solutions that companies need to address the most challenging print and mail, print-ondemand, and disaster recovery workflow issues. Whether you are looking to integrate new technology, retrofit legacy systems, streamline print and mail workflow processes, comply with green initiatives, or improve tracking and accounting, we have the software and consulting services to connect your business needs, data, and output. Our software, coupled with our 30-plus years of industry expertise, enables us to develop true vendor-neutral solutions that give you the flexibility to meet your business goals without having to reinvest in vendor-specific solutions. Contact NearStar today to find out how you can reduce costs, automate and streamline workflows, and leverage your technology investments to do more with fewer resources. Scan the mobile barcode to learn more about our solutions and services.
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410 East Main Street, Lewisville, Texas 75057 972-221-4068, ext. 207 | sales@nearstar.com | www.nearstar.com
EDITOR’S VIEW
STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT VERSUS EXECUTION: DON’T PUT THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE @DOCUMENTmedia
by Allison Lloyd
s you might have noticed this year, we have been talking at great lengths about building content and document strategies—and for good reason. Back in the summer, we published an article reporting, “70% of all strategies fail to achieve desired results.” So while strategic initiatives are top-of-mind in many boardrooms across many different industries, few really know how to achieve success from such projects. Given these bleak numbers, it’s no surprise, really, that many business leaders out there approach me every year asking me to focus on building end-to-end strategies. Our publication, for all of its 21 years, has always understood that the document and content process is dependent on the full life cycle of information—no matter how that information is being delivered. Yet, it seems that organizations are becoming more siloed in their processes and strategies, not less. Back in May, a frustrated senior executive asked me, “Why aren’t people talking about how to build end-to-end strategies?” I answered him quite honestly, “Because it’s hard.” The number of organizations failing is not a fluke. It’s reality. However, if we start to dig a bit deeper into the numbers, we can begin to understand why these organizations are failing. According to Gartner, “More than 20% of enterprises successfully execute against their corporate strategies and strategic initiatives,” with some experts citing this number actually closer to 10%. The important word here is “execute.” So, why can’t companies execute well? Harvard Business Review authors Gary L. Neilson, Karla L. Martin and Elizabeth Powers report that their research shows “that the fundamentals of good execution start with clarifying decision rights and making sure information flows where it needs to go.” In other words, your strategy begins with your organizational alignment—or culture. Last time, I talked about strategic maturity where organizations must look at their core business principles, vision and mission—really, your values as a company and how these dictate your behaviors toward your customers. Even though many discussions revolve around selling your
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strategy (in fact, this was one of our most popular articles this year; read it here), success can be found first in aligning your strategy across your business units. This is actually the glue to your strategic initiative. Companies are made up of many different stakeholders, all of which hold different values, perspectives and processes. Communicating to each area of your business, engaging in open discussions around the strategy and aligning the organization from there is where the building blocks to execution really exist. I have simplified this process a lot here, but once you align your business units to your strategic vision, then you can begin to align the execution departments—how you will deliver the strategy. The reality is that this alignment is challenging. If it weren’t, the percentage of failure wouldn’t be so high. However, we are committed in our partnership with you to help find these answers together. In fact, we are so committed in this mission that you might have noticed a slight change in our publication’s name. Eight years ago, we launched our conference, the DOCUMENT Strategy Forum, as a think tank on building such strategies. Now, we too, are aligning our publication to this mission in more ways than one. I look forward to discovering the new path to real, sustained, end-to-end strategies with you in 2015!
Until next time,
CONTRIBUTORS
Cal Slemp Mr. Slemp is a managing director with Protiviti and currently leads the firm’s security and privacy solutions consulting business globally. Prior to joining Protiviti in September 2008, he was with IBM Corporation for 30 years and led their global security and privacy services team from its creation in 1998 until 2008. He has worked with clients of all sizes in a wide variety of industries providing a broad array of information security and risk management services.
Nick Inglis Mr. Inglis is a founding partner of Optismo and co-founder of The Information Governance Conference. He was formerly a director at AIIM, the global community of information professionals. He is an AIIM SharePoint Master, AIIM ECM Master, AIIM Enterprise 2.0 Master, AIIM Electronic Records Management Specialist and an IMCP. He resides in Providence, RI and is a highly sought consultant and educator nationally.
Bud Porter-Roth Mr. Porter-Roth has over 20 years of experience as an ECM consultant, with a focus on electronic document management, records management and paper document projects. Mr. Porter-Roth is the author of the following books: Document Conversion Project Guidelines, Request for Proposal: A Guide to Effective RFP Development, Writing Killer Sales Proposals: Win the Bid and Close the Deal and Proposal Development: How to Respond and Win the Bid.
Apoorv Durga Mr. Durga is a senior analyst at the Real Story Group and covers search, web content and experience management, portals, digital marketing, social media monitoring, mobile and SharePoint. He was formerly the practice head of the portals and content management (PCM) practice at Wipro Technologies, where he led clients in the development of their PCM strategies.
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APPLICATION ARTICLE
Including Customers With Vision Trouble Using Accessible CCM Communicating effectively with your customers is important for brand loyalty and high Net Promoter scores. This is es pecially true when the information contains time sensitive, confidential, personal, financial or health information that your customer needs to act on. A communication that might come to mind is a bill from a credit card company, healthcare provider or your mortgage statement, insurance policy or cell phone bill. For Maggie, the Director of Compliance for a midsize Bank in the United States; making sure customers are able access their critical communications from the bank is one of her primary responsibilities. As many around the U.S. and Canada are finding out, accessi bility for customer communications isn’t just about making sure the bill is delivered to the customer; it is also of primary impor tance to make sure the customer can read it and interact with the statement. Maggie has had to give this a lot more attention in the past year. On one hand the customer dissatisfaction of not addressing alternate and accessible formats was becoming a brand loyalty and customer service issue. Then there was also the trend of many financial institutions making it into the news due to the large settlements levied against them for non-compliance to Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) legislation. Maggie knew addressing customer needs around accessible customer communications was becoming more and more im portant, but her bank was still trying to make sense of how to achieve accessible document formats with their current work flows and systems. To date, her bank hadn’t yet had an issue with accessibility compliance, but she knew that is was just a matter of time; she did not want to become one of the stories on the news where they talk about millions of dollars in lawsuits or settlements due to non-compliance with laws like ADA. As Maggie did her research on the internet and in different trade journals, it seemed like the only thing she needed to provide her customers to be compliant with the accessibil ity regulations was what people were calling a “tagged PDF”. There were more specific descriptions about PDF/UA & WCAG 2.0, but she wasn’t sure what that meant or how a PDF/UA document would be created. However, from her reading, the tagged PDF seemed to be the easiest and cheapest solution. However, she wasn’t sure if it was the right solution. Then she came across an on demand webinar that discussed business documents and how to meet the accessibility needs of the visually impaired. The webinar not only spoke directly to
Maggie’s fears of non-compliance, but also offered clear and concise action that could be taken to meet current legislature. The overview of the legislature was helpful to put everything in perspective, but for Maggie the real piece-of-mind was in the description of the different types of content ranging from printed content to documents prepared and delivered online or via email. As the picture started to become clearer, the methods for reaching people via these different channels also became clearer. Maggie had always thought of Braille as one of the only solutions for those with vision trouble; the webinar changed her view as she began to understand that there were Large Print formats, Audio CDs, e-Text and Accessible PDFs (PDF/UA) that could be added to the solution possibilities. Her next step? Contacting Crawford Technologies and speaking to one of their Document Accessibility Solution experts. Does this story sound familiar? If you are looking for the re quirements for providing accessible documents then join the on demand Crawford Technologies webinar on Implementing Accessible Documents in Your Workplace. Click here to: View the Webinar Download the Document Accessibility White Paper
sales@crawfordtech.com www.crawfordtech.com
A H
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Fast-evolving tactics for customer communications, outsourcing and bill payment adoption
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onsider this: Americans will receive more than 24 billion household bills and statements this year and make 15 billion household bill payments. InfoTrends research, including our “State of the Customer Communications Market Survey,� on
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businesses (senders) and consumers (recipients) in the United States (US) tracks how these delivery and payment markets are evolving. At a high level, our research continues to suggest that business expectations for paperless delivery adoption always exceed realized gains. Despite the efforts of bill and
statement providers to move customers away from receiving paper-based communications, consumers still cite that they value the physical document as a hard copy archive and as a reminder to pay. While many payments have moved away from paper, InfoTrends estimates that only 23% of
bills and statements will be delivered as “paperless” this year. Many discussions around document delivery are focused on paper versus paperless; however, it is much more than that since the number of delivery and payment channels has expanded dramatically. For instance, when a communication is delivered as paperless, the customer may want to access it via the web (desktop, mobile, smart TV), via a mobile app or within an email or email attachment—not to mention that his/her preferred source of interaction with the communication could be through a third party, such as a bank, digital mailbox or other non-bank consolidation service. Needless to say, this market is more complex today than ever before. From a document outsourcing perspective, this complexity is driving net new wins from mid-sized enterprises that lack the internal resources to keep up with these changes. There has also been several very large customer communications print outsourcing wins in the US over the last 18 months. For instance, American Express, Fidelity and a top five bank made the decision to close their in-house printing operations and move to an outsourced environment. Compared to other global markets where customer communications print outsourcing is mature— such as Australia and the United Kingdom (UK)—there remains significant opportunity for outsourcing
service providers in the US. While some of the deals are strictly for outsourcing of print services, other enterprises are asking for support with managing creative services, optimizing for all delivery channels, customer onboarding, data analytics, as well as inbound interactions like the call center and household bill payment. On this last point, household bill payment trends are of particular interest to InfoTrends as it relates to the digital mailbox and broader bill consolidation
customers to centrally receive and pay their bills. While these attendees were interested in the bill payment component of the discussion, the implications of broader bill payment adoption via consolidation services for document design, presentment and broader strategy are significant. With the complexities that come with advances in the customer communications market, it is critical for enterprises to focus on optimizing customer experience across channels. By 2018, we expect that 37% of bills and statements will be delivered as paperless—with significant growth in customer demand for alternative digital access beyond a desktop-friendly viewing experience. In the enterprise drive to improve the digital experience for customers, however, note that we expect the other 63% of bills and statements will still be printbased. This means that it is important for enterprises to continue to invest in improving on and optimizing the printed communication as well. For enterprises to keep pace in this fast-evolving presentment and payment market, expand your customer communications strategy to include new channels, optimize every channel and outsource where you lack the resources or drive to make these changes. O
By 2018, we expect that 37% of bills and statements will be delivered as paperless— with significant growth in customer demand for alternative digital access beyond a desktop-friendly viewing experience. channel. Whether the payment process is managed by an outsourcing services provider or within the enterprise, our view is that where customers pay these bills will have a greater influence on where they prefer to receive them— which will directly impact the senders of these customer communications. In fact, InfoTrends recently led a session at Money20/20, an event for emerging payments and connected commerce, on the digital mailbox and household bill payment. Few of the 400plus session attendees would likely be DOCUMENT Strategy Forum participants; however, they gravitated toward the concept of the digital mailbox as a customer destination and a driver for
MATT SWAIN is a director for InfoTrends and responsible for driving global research and consulting initiatives in the customer communications and document outsourcing markets. He is also a frequent speaker at industry events worldwide. Follow him on Twitter at @SwainfoTrends, or for more information on InfoTrends research and advisory services in this area, please contact scott.phinney@infotrends.com.
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I
n the last issue, we focused on some macro trends in the transactional market in North America based on in-depth surveys we recently conducted with large third-party transactional operations and corporate transactional providers and buyers. Now, we take a closer look at the operational details based on our surveys. It’s no secret that high-speed inkjet printing has flourished in the transactional market. We find dramatic evidence of this in our surveys conducted in recent years. In 2009, when inkjet was beginning to establish a firm foothold in the market, slightly more than one-third of the transactional output reported by respondents was printed on inkjet presses. Five years later, that percentage has jumped to well over half of the output. Inkjet has dramatically changed transactional production. High-speed, roll-fed toner presses have traditionally been used for black-only output and for overprinting
black variable data content onto preprinted shells, which typically carry a company logo or masthead. The practice is cost-effective but fraught with overhead related to stocking and handling preprinted rolls, which can quickly be rendered obsolete. Inkjet presses have made a big impact in overprinting and opened the doors to increased use of dynamic, full color to enhance documents and cross-sell services. Three years ago, nearly two-thirds of the output produced by respondent companies was overprinted; in 2014, that percentage is down to about one-third—a dramatic change in relatively short order. Not all of the overprinting has transitioned to color, but a sufficient number has made this switch to reduce blackonly impressions by about 20%. In our most recent survey, respondents indicate the top three trends they see in the market are the adoption of full-color printing, the migration to electronic delivery and “white paper factory” solutions, which
are designed to eliminate preprinted forms with single-pass inkjet solutions. Electronic diversion, postal issues and the rise of inkjet will continue to exert the biggest impacts on the market in coming years. Among respondent companies planning to acquire digital printing equipment in the coming year, the largest percentage plans to acquire continuous feed inkjet equipment; slightly less than one-fifth are considering cut-sheet inkjet equipment; and well under 10% are planning to purchase black-and-white continuous feed or cut-sheet, toner-based presses. Although the transactional market will continue to contract, it remains a large
and important print market. The decline in First-Class Mail has slowed as the economy has improved, and many households continue to prefer transactional documents to be printed, even if they are also delivered online. We expect transactional volume in North America to decline by three to four percent annually over the next five years; the decline in transactional mail pieces will be greater than the drop-off in transactional print volume
due to continued consolidation of mailings. O DAVID DAVIS is a director for INTERQUEST, a market and technology research and consulting firm in the field of digital printing and publishing. Its most recent study of transactional printing, “Digital Transactional Printing in North America: Market Analysis & Forecast (2014-2019),� is available. For more information, contact INTERQUEST at 434-979-9945 or visit www.inter-quest.com.
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T S R I F R E D I S N O C O T T A H W
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S N O I T A C I N U oberts R m o T By
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he world is getting more and more connected; the baby boom generation is rapidly embracing the use of technology; and mobile devices are outnumbering traditional PCs and laptops. In fact, IDC predicts that by the year 2017, 87% of connected device sales will be tablets and smartphones. These undeniable trends should be informing your customer experience and customer communications strategies today, not tomorrow. Given the large investments that many firms have made in traditional document composition platforms, or what Forrester calls document output for customer communications management (DOCCM), it’s only logical to try to leverage these platforms to bring together a consistent, cross-channel customer experience. If you are considering digital first, you may be thinking about the implications that it has for both your internal organization and for your customers. Many digital initiatives are driven by a desire to improve the overall customer experience that is being delivered. Yet, one of the issues often faced is that there is a lack of clarity within the organization over who is truly responsible for the customer experience. Perhaps there’s a chief customer officer, or the chief marketing officer has ownership, or maybe it’s ownership by committee. Regardless, you must develop a common vision of your desired customer
experience and ensure your communications are aligned with that vision. Firms are wrestling through their mobile strategies and are at different levels of maturity and implementation. Mobile communications and delivery of content to mobile platforms will drive, perhaps, the biggest change within your digital communications plan. Using responsive design techniques can help address form factor differences, but you should also think through how you’ll deliver content through “apps.” The traditional document container is no longer the only, or even primary, method of communicating with your customers. An additional consideration you’ll have to address is to simplify your template inventory. Ask yourself if you can deliver the experience you want for your customer across all the channels they desire using an old, bloated and inefficient set of document templates. I’m certainly not suggesting that you jump to “digital first” before you’re ready, but you’d better be thinking about it now, because your competitors are. Start planning today; the future will be here before you know it. O
TOM ROBERTS has more than 20 years of experience in business technology. He serves as a principal consultant at Doculabs, where he develops strategic plans to help organizations use ECM technologies to achieve their business goals. Follow him on Twitter @tomroberts72 or email troberts@doculabs.com.
CONSIDER THESE FIVE KEYS FOR ENSURING THAT YOUR DIGITAL MESSAGES SERVE YOUR CUSTOMERS THE WAY THEY WANT. SIMPLE: Speak in plain language, minimize the legalese and don’t try to do too much within a single message or document.
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CONCISE: Be brief but comprehensive. Attention spans and patience in the digital world is far different than in the print space. Long-winded digital messaging will frustrate and turn away customers.
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TIMELY: Customers expect their data at their fingertips when they want it. Multiple days for delivery doesn’t cut it anymore. It starts upstream in your admin systems, but the pace of communication in the digital space is much quicker. ACCURATE: You can’t reach your objectives if you’re delivering the wrong data or message, even if it is concise and timely. Your message, your data and your offers need to be accurate. Nothing will lose you credibility faster than delivering the incorrect data.
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CONSISTENT: Finally, you’ve got to be consistent across messages and channels. Coordinate messaging across lines of business or geography, but ensure that customers are getting a consistent experience regardless of channel.
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By Richard Rosen
HOW IS YOUR MOBILE STRATEGY
WORKING OUT FOR YOU? The impact of mobile on business-client interaction 18
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Today, more than ever, having an effective mobile strategy is key to effective customer communications. Mobile devices have become a way of life for consumers to get content, read mail and stay in touch with friends and acquaintances. In fact, 50% of Internet traffic today is now performed on mobile devices, and 80% of this mobile Internet activity is performed using mobile apps. These stats are remarkable given the relatively short life span of smartphones. Every one of our daily activities is converging to our smartphones, and pretty soon, almost everything will be accessible on your smartphone. Even wallets, physical credit cards and keys will be passĂŠ. Smartphones have already replaced, or are replacing, independent devices for listening to music, taking pictures, physical tickets to get on a train or plane and health monitoring equipment. Keeping up with technological change is always a challenge, and supporting multiple platforms is complex and expensive. Not only is technology ever-changing and complex, but customers behave differently, with their own preferences for how they want to interact with companies they do business with: website, social media, apps and email being the big four. As part of the answer, companies are turning to mobile apps. Leaders are now looking at turnkey mobile engagement
platforms that: can link up all content from across the different platforms and bring it together in one centralized location; monetize the app via location-based directories, as well as clickable banner advertisements to promote supporters; connect and engage with supporters on a time- and/or location-based manner and touch them via rich push messaging (i.e., video, map, interactive link, etc.), geo-fencing (messaging them when they cross a certain perimeter) and with iBeacons (low-energy Bluetooth transmitter allowing for indoor/close proximity messaging); and allow customers to easily pay their bills and get the latest news conveniently and seamlessly from their mobile devices. Mobile apps should be a component of any business’s communications strategy. While mobile apps may, or may not, lead to increased paper suppression, done right, they can make for a better customer experience and leverage investments already made in your website, social media and customer analytics. O
RICHARD ROSEN is the chief executive officer of The RH Rosen Group, a firm that provides solutions to help businesses improve processes and customer communications. Contact him at RichR@RHRosenGroup.com or visit www.rhrosengroup.com.
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Why Organizations Can’t Keep Their Data
CLASSIFYING DATA CORRECTLY IS KEY, BUT MANY LAG BEHIND BY CAL SLEMP
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data isn’t the lifeblood of an organization, it is, without question, a critical component in its success. Analogous
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to the role of water in a hydroelectric plant, data powers an organization, pumping “fuel”—through information,
knowledge and insights—to virtually every company function. It, therefore, must be managed—and managed well. With the recent plethora of cyber attacks and data breaches, prevailing wisdom suggests companies are working diligently to “get their houses in order,” but findings from Protiviti’s “2014 IT Security and Privacy Survey” suggest otherwise. There are numerous data management and security policies organizations should have in place to help
prevent data loss (for example, information security, passwords, user access, incident response, etc.). Remarkably, this year’s survey results show across-the-board decreases in the number of organizations that have these policies in place. Most of these policies are required in some form in order to comply with various government and industry regulations. Thus, organizations potentially face significant liability, along with security risks, by not having these policies in place.
Our survey findings also indicate that there is an increase in the number of organizations that lack a data classification scheme. A look at these findings reveals significant gaps between top-performing organizations and other companies. Some organizations may lack definitions of their sensitive data and, consequently, fail to make meaningful progress in formalizing a scheme and policy. It’s important to note, though, that these definitions do not need to be perfected in order to begin categorizing data effectively. Effective data classification, without question, is difficult to achieve. Companies should strive to simplify their approach where possible, which will enable greater progress and success with these efforts. In our study, we continue to see a relatively small percentage of organizations that have a detailed data classification system in place, which involves stratifying the importance of data types and applying appropriate retention periods to each type based on regulatory and legal requirements, as well as industry or company-defined standards. Such a system becomes more critical every day due to the growing volumes of data organizations are accumulating. An essential practice in effective data management and security is a comprehensive classification system that provides a clear understanding of how the organization is managing all types of data—whether sensitive, confidential or public. The survey also uncovered that the percentage of organizations that retain all data and records without a defined destruction date has nearly doubled. Retaining all data and records without a defined date to discard and destroy is not only inefficient and costly but opens the organization to significant security risk and liability. The greatest effects of large-scale, high-impact breaches are felt in organizations that hold on to large volumes of data that they no longer need. Put simply, “If you don’t need it, don’t store it.” Similar to last year’s findings, in one out of four organizations, management
2 There are two data classification approaches every company should employ. A data classification scheme: The groups or categories under which data is classified (for example, personally identifiable information; sensitive, health and confidential identifiable information; and non-sensitive and public information).
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A data classification policy: The guidelines dictating how, when and where the organization— including, but not limited to, all employees, functions and third parties working on behalf of the organization—classifies, manages and secures its data.
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is viewed to have limited or no understanding of its sensitive data and information. Given the risks and liabilities this information poses if not managed properly, these findings continue to be surprising. There are striking differences in the findings among top-performing organizations (for example, high levels of board engagement in information security risks and all core information security policies in place). Clearly, these best practices are driving a much greater understanding of the organization’s sensitive data and information. O
For more information on Protiviti’s “2014 IT Security and Privacy Survey,” visit www. protiviti.com/itsecuritysurvey.
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FOLDERS
MUST
DIE Say hello to metadata and tagging By Nick Inglis
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It is time to end our love affair with folders.
W
e love folders. They are our digital comfort food. We can create them with ease; we can add to them; we can nest them. In our organizations, however, they become cumbersome to manage, make it difficult to find content and create artificial barriers between similar pieces of content. For all of these reasons, it is time to end our love affair with folders. Folders can be structured in four ways in the enterprise. They can be aligned to the organizational chart, which is most often the case. In this model, folders are present along division and department lines and the like. Folders, too, can be structured to align with roles so that, for example, accountants all work within a similar folder structure. They can also be structured along document types so that reports all end up grouped together. The fourth option for structuring folders would be some
combination of any of the aforementioned three options. All of these options, however, place a limitation on users. If the folder structure is established along the lines of the organizational chart, a user will likely not be comfortable navigating outside of his/her department or division. For example, the accountant in department A would have a difficult time validating his/her work against an accountant in department B. Likewise, this would be the same for sharing by department if the folder structure is established along a document type arrangement. There are options for avoiding these types of issues today through the use of metadata and/or tagging. A flat file structure that leverages metadata can arc beyond typical boundaries to provide more value to users. Filtering by a “department” metadata field could give a user a departmental view of content, much like an organizational chartbased folder structure would. Filtering metadata by document type would provide a view much like the document type folder structure. The filtering and sorting of metadata can provide more to users than a simple folder structure. It is true that some systems are achieving this already through the use of “virtual folders.” Vendors, who sell systems that have these types of virtual folders, are already leveraging metadata to create folders that don’t actually exist in order to provide alternate ways of viewing the content in the system. Users, by combining multiple fields of filtered metadata, can expand the
findability of relevant content rather than being forced into a rigid folder structure. By way of example, let’s say there are two folders—one for department A, and one for department B—each with a similar report. The two users leveraging those reports would never serendipitously learn of each other’s report without leveraging search. Users search for items that cannot be found, not for content that they know how to browse to or for content that they could find. It is through these unseen connections between content that additional value is created in the organization. An additional way of enhancing the post-folder view is through the use of user-generated content tags. Tagging is a way for users to loosely group content together by associated words and phrases. By combining both the less rigid metadata model and the non-rigid tagging model, users are given more flexibility in serendipitously finding related content and leveraging that content for the betterment of the organization. In addition, tags and metadata can be utilized to learn from the user population (i.e., their vernacular, their shorthand, their phrasing, what they find to be important) through the use of logging. If a particular phrase is being used for tagging on a regular basis, it may be fruitful to explore that particular phrase further to see how it may be encompassed within the formal enterprise taxonomy. This can help to improve findability of content through filtering and sorting, as well as improving search. Folders create artificial barriers in our content, at best, and confusion, at worst; yet, they are what we are comfortable in utilizing. With the technology at our disposal today, it is time to let go of our folders and move towards the serendipitous finding of value in our content through the better utilization of both metadata and tagging. O
To contact Mr. Inglis, follow him on Twitter @nickinglis or visit infogovcon.com.
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EFSS IT’S TIME TO
FISH OR CUT BAIT By Bud Porter-Roth
As we begin to close the year out and assess what happened in the enterprise file sync and share (EFSS) world, let’s look at a little history to gain some perspective and possible future directions.
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new technology of document imaging was essentially born in the early 1980s, because of optical disk technology— that is, we had a “relatively” cheap medium to store large files on, and even better, the medium was write once, read many (WORM), meaning it passed as a legal replacement for paper. Within several years, there were a number of vendors getting on the bandwagon, but they struggled with an ever-changing technology, customer wariness and very long sales cycles. As expected, many of these vendors filed for Chapter 11, merged with other similar vendors or were purchased by a larger vendor. In the early to mid-90s, it was pretty grim to be a document imaging vendor. Nevertheless, a new technology arose on the tails of document imaging. Electronic content management (ECM) and workflow allowed a system to manage office-type files, such as Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, PDFs and other office document types. In the early days of ECM, these systems only managed office documents—not document images— and remained as separate systems. Again, due to a rapidly changing technology, long sales cycles, high prices and adoption issues, the early ECM companies began to struggle, and their fate was to be purchased by larger companies or simply go out of business. For example, PC DOCS (a leader and innovator in the field) was purchased by Hummingbird, which was then purchased by OpenText. Documentum, a leading competitor to PC DOCS, was purchased by EMC, and FileNet, one of the original document imaging companies, purchased Saros (another early leader) to add the document management product to its existing document imaging product line. FileNet was later purchased by IBM. Why was this happening? Because many of these companies were really not doing well financially, their products were either too broad or too narrow, price per seat licenses were astronomical, products were becoming more and more complex to justify the prices, customers were still feeling the burn from failed document imaging systems, workflow was oversold and underperformed and the “technology” was just too unstable and continued to change and evolve at a rapid pace. Many customers began to back off from their vision of an enterprise system, and in reality, very few companies ever achieved a true enterprise system with one vendor. Is this beginning to sound familiar? Today, we have a strikingly similar situation with the cloud-based sync and share companies in that the technology is rapidly changing,
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vendor products are not clearly differentiated (does the average company know the difference between Box, Dropbox and Huddle?), customers are very cautious and the customer base is not replacing their enterprise-wide legacy systems but, instead, buying at the department level, which means sales are for 10 seats, not hundreds or thousands of seats. For the most part, EFSS sales are still at the “try and see” stage, and a company may bring in multiple EFSS solutions in different departments to see which one the users like best. Think of the leading EFSS companies and their claims that they are in 90% (or more) of the Fortune 100. What this really means is that one group, or person in one department, may have purchased five licenses for Dropbox, but Dropbox counts that as a Fortune 100 customer. For example, I know of one Fortune 100 company with 200 licenses for a leading EFSS vendor. These licenses are for one department, and of
the 200 licenses, only 30 are actually being used. Another Fortune 100 company has all of the major legacy systems but also has adopted several EFSS systems at the department level—10 seats here, five seats there. Some EFSS vendors may also be counting the “free” version of their software as a license in a Fortune 100 company, which is very misleading when trying to analyze the market and establish a baseline. While the EFSS vendors are claiming to do well, most of them are private and/ or venture capitalized, which means their actual revenue numbers are hidden until they go public. Press releases make it sound like the EFSS community is going gangbusters, but the real story may be that the EFSS community is experiencing the first signs of a struggle for market share and revenue. While no one has a handle on this, there are at least 100 EFSS-type companies, with one
analyst firm reporting the number to be around 1,000. If we look at some of the peripheral goings-on in the EFSS community, we begin to see a familiar and emerging pattern. In this fast-moving, very competitive vendor landscape, EFSS vendors cannot remain static and expect to make it. EFSS vendors should review the history of our document management community and learn from the mistakes we made 20 years ago (and continue to make). The original EFSS model is a breath of fresh air in our community—hence, the reason for its rapid growth when compared to the legacy ECM vendors. Emulating a failed technology is not the answer. However, making connections to other best-in-class applications is. O
To contact Mr. Porter-Roth, follow him on Twitter @BudPR or email him at info@erms.com.
TRENDS TO LOOK OUT FOR
1
Smaller EFSS companies will get bought by larger, mainstream companies. For example, Syncplicity was purchased by EMC Documentum. Expect to see more of this as the smaller EFSS companies run out of cash and larger companies buy them for their customer base.
2 3 4
EFSS companies will embrace the channel and begin selling to channel partners, which will broaden their sales footprint. Box announced deals with AT&T, and Office 365 is sold through a number of large resellers, like Verizon. EFSS companies are beginning to “integrate” with competitors to gain market share, e.g., the recently announced integration between Dropbox and Office 365.
Add functionality via application program interface (API) connections. Box has a wide variety of apps that it can connect to, as well as other apps connecting to Box. For example, Box can have its own tab on the Salesforce toolbar, and DocuSign can connect to Box as an internal service. Box has also introduced e-discovery with Guidance Software. Expect to see more and more of this type of integrated functionality in the near future.
5
Add specialized functionality that other vendors do not have to differentiate your product from others. Several EFSS vendors have concentrated on security and have developed a platform in which documents are controlled independently, such that document access can be rescinded in XX days or the ability to print/forward the document is limited. Other vendors promote such application enhancements as video conferencing, an instant messaging (IM) service, a virtual whiteboard or project management-oriented applications.
6
Purchase other companies, and integrate their unique technology into the product. A good example of this is Citrix purchasing ShareFile in 2011 and, most recently, buying and adding RightSignature to its product for electronic signature capability.
7
Some early “limits” have now become table stakes and include unlimited storage and very large file size limits for uploading and downloading. Vendors, like Microsoft Office 365 with OneDrive, have the deep pockets to win at this game, but many smaller vendors may find this is not a sustainable business model.
8
Move toward a hybrid model instead of a pure cloud model. The notion of a hybrid model really goes against the pure cloud model, removing many of the cloud-only benefits. However, many vendors are seeing this as a customer demand and will spend valuable development time and resources trying to present themselves as hybrid cloud architecture. Instead of developing hybrid technology, vendors need to demonstrate that data is absolutely safe in the cloud, and for many companies, cloud-based data is actually safer than on-premise data.
9
Feature creep. Many EFSS vendors are under the mistaken notion that “more is better” and that to compete with OpenText or Documentum, they must add more ECM features, like workflow. Please reread the above second paragraph—the big ECM vendors were never that successful. Why were they all bought? ECM vendors made their products so complex that very little of the product is actually used. Think 80/20 in which only 20% of the product is used by 80% of the users. EFSS vendors, don’t give in to feature creep—reread number four.
10
Application-specific orientation. The early ECM vendors learned that most businesses want the vendor to have a product that is specific to their business—insurance companies want an insurance application; banks want a banking application; and manufacturing companies want a manufacturing application. That still holds true today. EFSS vendors are just now beginning to understand this concept and beginning to position their products within vertical markets. Expect to see more of this and EFSS vendors with specialized products that address markets like healthcare, insurance, etc.
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THE
ECM E M STRATEGY DSF
‘15
Q&A
Editor’s Note: It’s no surprise that organizations are looking at their information management and enterprise content management strategies—especially in this age of information overload. Yet, these strategies aren’t as easy as they might seem. To help companies overcome some very real challenges, we sat down with three of our speakers at the upcoming DOCUMENT Strategy Forum, to be held on May 12-14, 2015 in Greenwich, CT, for their perspectives on content management strategies.
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JACKSON
CHIN JAMES K.
WATSON BRUCE
Q:
For your customers, what does a content management strategy include?
BERBERICH A: Q:
What are some of your biggest challenges in executing your content management strategy?
A:
The complexity of our company is our largest challenge. There is a unified focus that is critical to concentrate on, but each data holder and their competing requirements are key items to build on. So that the process does not stifle the process of growth, we consult and partner to find compliant and effective solutions.
Q:
What companies do you admire the most for their innovative content strategy approaches, and why?
A:
I am impressed at the way both Amazon and Google have focused on and capitalized on the entire content management strategy— expanding and leveraging Big Data capabilities and related offerings. The way that information is leveraged is a key to the growth of our information management efforts.
BRUCE BERBERICH is the records and information management leader of GE Capital Americas. Mr. Berberich will be speaking on information management program design and implementation at the DOCUMENT Strategy Forum in Greenwich, CT.
What we’ve learned from our work with a wide range of clients is that a “content management strategy” can’t be just a high-level vision statement with lofty business outcomes you’re looking to achieve (i.e., improve productivity, increase customer retention). The strategy has to articulate the specific business impact you expect to achieve from doing a better job of managing content. And it does have to be targeted; you can’t boil the ocean. We help our clients identify specific business areas to start with and identify specific targeted areas where the wins are big, as well as areas where the wins can be quick, too. We help the client define what they’re going to take on but also what they’re not going to take on. Finally, we get our clients to spend time thinking about the money. Recognize that an enterprise content management (ECM) initiative is going to have to compete with all the other projects and programs. We help them calculate the cost and benefit of their ECM initiative and tee that up. We make sure to tie the ECM strategy into corporate priorities.
JAMES K. WATSON is the founder and CEO of Doculabs, a Chicago-based strategy consulting firm that works with organizations to help them improve the way they manage information. Mr. Watson will be speaking on business case development at the DOCUMENT Strategy Forum in Greenwich, CT.
Q:
Successful strategies boil down to the people who use them and carry them out. In your opinion, what are the leading characteristics of companies that are successful in user adoption over those that fail?
A:
Test and learn; take calculated risks; and fail early. Understand that you can’t put a return on investment on everything. Consider the classic project approval process that asks you to write a business case. The problem is, sometimes, you don’t know what you don’t know. Successful companies— Google or Amazon, for instance—are willing to invest in research and development. Not all of their bets pay off, but the ones that do tend to be home runs.
Q:
How do you see the proliferation of information transforming your role in the enterprise, the business owners you serve and the overall success of the business as a whole?
A:
I see my role as one that helps executives to see the value of content and information—helping them see content as an asset, as opposed to the stuff you have to do to get the work done. It’s a role that helps them understand that you can leverage that content for insight, for predictive analytics or to know more about our customers. We collect a lot of information on our customers just in the course of providing services. Imagine being able to use this information to help identify other potential services they might need. Not everyone sees the value of this information just yet. My role is to help show the value. O
JACKSON CHIN is senior vice president of business architecture services at Wells Fargo Wealth Management. Mr. Chin will be speaking on improving processes through information management at the DOCUMENT Strategy Forum in Greenwich, CT. DOCUMENTmedia.com winter.2014
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ATO GUIDE THE ECM
BY APOORV DURGA
MARKETPLACE What’s the right tool?
nterprise content management (ECM) is broad enough technology to touch multiple areas within your enterprise. Enterprises turn to ECM technology to reduce costs and bring information overload under control. Indeed, with digital information mushrooming faster than most enterprises can manage it, ECM projects have become a cost of doing business. Then, the question becomes: Which ECM technologies and suppliers offer the best fit for your circumstances? We will look at how to slice and dice the ECM marketplace in order to select the right tool for your needs. This approach is based on Real Story Group’s Real Story Group’s “ECM & Cloud File Sharing” research and our experience with a large number of customers who have undertaken product selection initiatives. We define two categories in the ECM marketplace: The first being traditional ECM vendors who provide a whole range of services around document and enterprise content management—which includes two sub-categories of major ECM platforms and simpler document management (DM) products. The second category is cloud-based file sharing and sync (CFSS) services that excel in lightweight document management, collaboration, sharing and sync services. These two might appear as separate marketplaces, but you’ll find considerable overlap of services between CFSS vendors and ECM vendors. CFSS vendors have built traditional DM capabilities, like version control, while DM vendors have built or acquired cloudbased file sharing, sync and lightweight collaboration services. Nevertheless, these two categories of tools tend to address different types of use cases. In particular, ECM/DM vendors are more suitable for advanced and complex scenarios. Standalone CFSS tools, on the other hand, make sense for many simpler scenarios. In fact, they score better than full-fledged DM tools in terms of ease of use and the fact that you can get an implementation running without too much of system integration work.
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HERE ARE THE MOST COMMON BUSINESS REASONS TO APPLY ECM TECHNOLOGY To bring order to the ever-increasing volume of electronic documents.
To reduce the amount of paper documentation within the organization.
To re-engineer business processes and increase efficiencies.
To meet new legal or compliance requirements regarding the management of information.
To provide more standardized means of gathering and distributing data (e.g., via forms).
To support business continuity requirements.
Once you have decided the right category of tools for your needs, the next step is to identify your business use cases or “scenarios.” Explicitly or not, different products target different use cases. This is usually because of the product’s initial incubators or customers wanted it for those use cases. The product might have broadened its scope as it matured but, most often, the initial roots are still visible. For ECM, Real Story Group (RSG) has identified the following common scenarios: enterprise content platform; basic document life cycle management; process and case management; cloud file sharing and sync; high-volume imaging; information governance; and document-centric collaboration. To be sure, business scenarios are abstractions. Though your needs may not reflect any one of these precisely, it is likely that you will find some resonance in one or two scenarios or in some hybrid combination of scenarios. However, this, in itself, is a very good starting point for a product selection exercise. In our vendor evaluations, RSG matches vendor suitability to these scenarios. It turns out that some vendors fit well into multiple scenarios; most scenarios fit multiple vendors, while some scenarios, alas, are still not well matched by any supplier. Once you build an initial shortlist based on categories and scenarios, you should undertake an in-depth evaluation of features provided by these products and how they stack up with your requirements. While there are many
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ways to describe the functionality, based on our research, we recommend two broad areas: The first is the functional business services, where you’ll find a range of core features underneath any ECM offering. The key services RSG evaluates are document management; document collaboration; records management and archiving; business process management and workflow (including case management); e-forms; imaging and scanning; mobile access; and file sync and offline. Second, we look at technology services that are more horizontal, technical features, which are most relevant to information technology (IT) and system admin folks. The key features to consider here are architecture; integration and extensibility; application development;
To obtain more value from costly investments in content. To more consistently communicate to employees, partners and customers.
administration and management; cloud services; and security. No two ECM implementations are exactly the same, and so, a product that works well for one customer may not be the best product for your needs. In order to find out the best “fit” from among the panoply of products out there, you need to follow a structured approach for product evaluation. First, do your research. Then, progressively filter out irrelevant options until you are left with three or four products that offer the best match, and then, test carefully from there. O
For more information on Real Story Group’s report on “ECM & Cloud File Sharing” product evaluations, visit www.realstorygroup.com/Reports/ECM.
THE MARKET PLACE ECM PLATFORMS
DM PRODUCTS
SYNC AND SHARE
Alfresco EMC Documentum Microsoft SharePoint Nuxeo Platform OpenText Oracle WebCenter Content HP Autonomy
OnBase by Hyland SpringCM M-Files EVER TEAM
kiteworks by Accellion Box Citrix ShareFile Syncplicity by EMC Oxygen Cloud Workshare