Information is the Heart of the Enterprise: AIIM NE’s Annual Panel of Leading Experts and Industry Analysts

Moderated by Nathaniel Palmer, a long-time member of the ECM community and President of industry advisors Transformation+Innovation, the panel will examine the latest thinking from the leading lights and industry thought leaders, notably:

Report on the February 13th AIIM NE Chapter Meeting
“Information is at the Heart of the Enterprise”
by Arthur Gingrande, Partner, IMERGE Consulting

Ed LoTurco kicked off the meeting by introducing two of the latest members of the New England AIIM Chapter, Orbograph (www.orbograph.com) and CVISION (www.cvisiontech.com). Orbograph is a leading developer of recognition solutions for the U.S. check processing market, located in Billerica, MA. CVISION develops image compression and improved optical character recognition (OCR) software solutions for PDF that help companies worldwide better manage document imaging issues.

The panel discussion, “Information is at the Heart of the Enterprise,” featured members Seth Earley of Earley & Associates, Inc., Sue Feldman of IDC, Carl Frappaolo of the Delphi Group and Perot Innovation Lab, and Frank Gilbane of the Gilbane Group. The moderator was Nathaniel Palmer, long-time member of the ECM community, President of Transformation + Innovation, and Executive Director of the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC).

Seth Earley initiated the discussion by suggesting that the biggest problem facing our industry today is that the “velocity of change” is accelerating. Projects can’t keep up with the speed of high-tech innovation, they are obsolete by the time they are implemented and hence project lifecycles must get shorter. Sue Feldman saw technology convergence and the rate of adoption by big companies as major issues, while Frank Gilbane opined that the main problem is faulty infrastructure: the quality of operating systems and structured data bases have not yet attained industrial strength.

Carl Frappaolo rhetorically questioned the basic premise of the discussion, i.e., that information is the heart of the enterprise. Frappaolo answered that it was true, but went one step further and asked, “If information is the heart of the enterprise, then where is its soul?” He answered his own question in one word: people. Users are the forgotten element that vendors typically leave out of the development equation. The real problem is a lack of vision on the part of corporate America, which needs to adopt a user-centric perspective that is directed toward optimizing the long-term use of enterprise-based information. Defining how technology is used, he argued, is as important as the technology itself. Earley expressed his agreement with Gilbane on the infrastructure issue by wryly noting that “vision without execution equals illusion.”

Palmer decided it was time for a few questions. One audience member suggested that the velocity of change is influenced strongly by developers who, in their proverbial rush to market, prematurely release products that have been inadequately beta-tested; worse, each ECM product is built to meet a subset of multiple (and often competing) standards. The questioner went on to assert that this way of doing business promotes application incompatibility, slows down system integration, and acts as a barrier to technological progress. Moreover, the practice of “too many standards” does little to support or advance vision-based system design, and it dilutes records management best practices, which require long-term planning horizons as long as 30 to 50 years.

Feldman disagreed, arguing that multiple standards are necessary to encourage diversity of innovation and that their existence increases competition among vendors. Gilbane pointed out that working with too many standards did little to make the operating system infrastructure more robust. Earley characterized enterprise content management as a “myth”. Frappaolo contradicted his earlier position about vision-based systems design when he commented that implementing the business case now is far more important than what an installed system will look like 30 to 50 years from today. During the panel discussion, Nathanial Palmer demonstrated his expertise at keeping the session moving along briskly, reining in the speakers whenever the conversation turned too esoteric. In fact, he made a point of making certain that the last question put to the panel was asked by one of AIIM’s newer members who works in the healthcare industry. She brought the panel down to earth by asking the questions, “Just what is ECM, anyway?” and “How can ECM help me and my industry?” On that note, the session convened for their scheduled break.

In general, the second half of the panel discussion covered the evolving Internet and how it continues to change our lives and America’s economy. The following topics were covered: Wiki-based Websites (Earley concluded, “Wiki is a terrible idea that turned into something remarkably useful”); third party custodians of e-commerce transactions (Feldman says that none can be trusted yet); Best Practices (Frappaolo thinks we should take a look instead at Worst Practices); and the “Google Effect” (Feldman reported that a lot of people don’t purchase items directly off the tail-end of a Google search; instead they transact their purchases from the original host site when it’s time to buy).

Toward the end of the session, the discussion took off on a tangent as each panel member pontificated about the term “Ontology” as it pertains to ECM (“Ontology” is a term co-opted from philosophy that means “study of being”). Again, Mr. Palmer displayed his mastery at moderating the panel with some well-chosen, closing remarks.