Addressing the Information Stream: Insight Through Acuity

"Information should come to you"

Information management requires forethought and intelligence. Although some businesses try to manage and govern information through risk mitigation alone, what they really need is a dynamic way to assess and identify high value and risk information quickly, and then apply the appropriate governance.

Information acuity means uniting the best of both. It is about the ability to manage your information intelligently through heightened visibility through a combination of select cloud-based information management tools. It starts with understanding the details of your information systems profile, then identifying where high value information exists, and where potential risks reside. What takes the mapping of business critical systems to the next level is the ability to visually and dynamically map how systems are inter-related in real-time. This provides you with a simple but disciplined way to provide you with a clear picture of where to act next with the management of your business critical information.

Your company is creating content, data and information, why not take a more proactive approach to managing and governing it across its lifecycle? With this kind of clarity, you have the insight you need to take action and address areas of weakness (get rid of the ROT – redundant, outdated and temporary) and exploit strengths. Organizations with this intelligence can act quickly on compliance needs – from applying policy and retention, to refining their ability to make smart decisions via analytics and classification. This makes swift decision making possible for archiving, destruction and disposition, and information to power business process.

Business process is another fundamental element in achieving information acuity. Business processes hold the ability to transform the way a company operates and responds to their customers. This often means different things to different leaders. To a CEO it may mean developing breakthrough process innovations, and to a Chief Data Officer (CDO) it certainly means operating at the speed of information and to the CFO it definitely means gaining insight into financial performance.

The commonality between these views is that there needs to be a more adaptive and contextual way in which organizations can quickly consume, process and manage information for multiple purposes, allowing them to adapt to changing business conditions quickly –I call this “information comes to you.” Creating more efficiencies and relevancy through cloud information management services that provide embedded capabilities such as tagging for proactively applying policy and retention, social/collaboration capabilities such as subscribing to an activity stream that updates you on changing conditions of a policy or updates you on key performance indicators (metrics, benchmarks) via an analytics service that is running in the background.

Information acuity is about helping businesses making more proactive and intelligent decisions about how to better manager their information. Let’s agree to stop “boiling the ocean” and instead, take a smarter approach to managing and governing information. Let’s enable information with the intelligence that makes it more contextual. Let’s consume and apply information management services that help us focus on what’s important right here right now. Let’s help our customers make that management of information more relevant to their current business demands. Let’s help them solve their most critical information management problems. Let’s get information acuity.

I would like to thank all my colleagues in the AIIM organization and especially thank my co-panelists Lubor Ptacek (@lptacek), Rod Hughes (@roderickhughes) and Bhavani Balasubramaniam (@BhavaniB) for the lively discussions at #AIIM15. Let’s keep the Process Transformation & Information Governance & Risk Panels conversation going. 

"No Moss" with IBM ECM on Cloud

When was the last time your mobile device was not within reaching distance? 

Mobile devices and tablets have quickly become the primary means by which we conduct business and collaborate on content.

Our expectation in the use of these devices is that they will not only enable us to work wherever and whenever we want but that they will enable us to focus on the business at hand; specifically providing more opportunity for innovation and improvement in customer service. 

What better way to accomplish just that, than to add cloud to the mix.   Enabling content collaboration in the cloud is top of mind for many of our clients implementing Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems and it's "ECM on cloud" that these businesses are looking for.  

Until recently, the landscape was filled with offerings that took a bolt-on approach, which in the eyes of many creates yet again, another digital landfill.   Cloud-based content sharing that is adopted in this manner is rarely reused, and it is definitely not treated as a business critical asset.

In fact, it very quickly becomes old information, something that has been sitting around, undiscoverable and unusable.    You might say that it even starts to grow moss.   And as I wrote the prior sentence, the title of this blog and following image came to mind:

Talk about old, outdated and unused, not to mention analog!

When was the last time a pay phone was within reaching distance? 

So if you are looking for a way for your organization to securely manage and collaborate on trusted content from anywhere, across any device, delivering better business outcomes, then I invite you to learn more about IBM Navigator on Cloud.

The Content Collaboration Stream: Bringing ECM, Social & Mobile Together

Olympic Rain Forest Stream
"Ride the content collaboration stream with social & mobile"

The way we work has changed. Today we use mobile devices as a primary means of collaborating for business—and we expect to use these devices to do work anytime, anywhere. At the same time, we are increasingly using social tools for work, connecting with colleagues, partners and customers in new ways. And through all of this, we are generating tremendous amounts of content, most of it unstructured. But are you leveraging the knowledge and expertise used to create his content?

To make the most of these new approaches, we need the right tools.   And not just for accessing content anytime, anywhere, but also for managing it in the context of the work we do. Employees need to quickly discover the content they are looking for beyond traditional enterprise search.   For most, locating the information is just the beginning.  What is more important to the collaboration process however, is the context around the content – who authored it, how many downloads there are and is the content commented on and liked by the experts in the community. Searching for content is no longer good enough. Businesses need to tap into the right knowledge and expertise of the individuals, communities and broader organizations – with out that, you are wasting your time.   Collaboration is more than just a word; it is something that has evolved because the way in which we consume content has evolved.   Why has that happened you ask – because of the volume of content generated has evolved to the point where the speed and accuracy of search by itself is no longer good enough.

If we are limited by how quickly we discover, interpret and determine both relevance and accuracy of information, then the value of collaboration begins to diminish. If we can’t interact with both the people and the content from any device or operating system, then we are weakening collaboration even further.

Fortunately, IBM® ECM solutions such as IBM Content Navigator and Connections Enterprise Content Edition are designed to address these goals. Content Navigator is powerful user experience and platform that enables you to access, collaborate and manage content regardless of device, platform, and operating system.  It’s open standards framework enables businesses to quickly extend the robust out-of-the box capabilities to integrate with existing systems and create custom applications for any industry.

From social collaboration on enterprise content, to external data look-ups and validation within the content collaboration process, to accelerating the intake of claims after a natural disaster via secure mobile content management; IBM ECM has what your business needs.

I hope you’ll join me at IBM Connect 2014 in Orlando, Florida, in January to learn more about the IBM ECM products and solution. I’ll be giving a talk on January 28 at 3 p.m., in the Walt Disney World Swan ballrooms 3 and 4, titled “Bringing The Enterprise Content Management Experience To Social and Mobile” along with John Murphy, vice president of Products & Strategy at IBM. We’ll highlight how Content Navigator and other IBM ECM solutions are connecting people to the right content and driving insightful, efficient business processes.

• Visit the IBM Connect site for more information
• Visit the IBM Content Navigator product site for more information
• Visit the IBM Connections Enterprise Content Edition product site for more information

Follow us on twitter:
Cengiz Satir: @csatir
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IBM ECM: @ibm_ecm
IBM Connect Conference: @ibmconnect

Content Should Come to You

Managing content is not file sharing, nor is it collaborating on a document that has been dropped into a team site for publication. For too long, many thought and still think that content management is about an individual, team or group of users chasing the information they need to complete a document and subsequently a project. People, organizations and businesses spend too much time weeding through incoming information for critical answers they need - right now. Valuable details that exist with and surround the content are not linked to the people, knowledge and expertise they need to reach.

What if instead of going after the content, the content and related information came to you? At IBM, we have done just that.  As the industry leader in Social Business and Enterprise Content Management, it should be no surprise that IBM is once again on the "bleeding edge" -doing something that no other vendor has done to date.  Don't take my word for it, see what Gartner and IDC are saying in their latest reports

What we have done is created and delivered a product called Connections Enterprise Content Edition, otherwise known as CECE.  CECE brings social networking and enterprise content management (ECM) together into one tightly integrated product offering. It is a single, people and document-centric content system that enables businesses to interact with and manage content using social queues. These queues (or constructs) are embedded into the repository so users can take advantage of them regardless of the experience they use the most - mobile device, browser or desktop.

CECE connects your business users and knowledge workers to content across their professional social network. It brings relevant information to the user.  You can link natural language tags to content that is managed by an enterprise-class repository and content system—a repository that happens to interpret comments, likes and downloads. These social elements generate a contextual intelligence that turns ordinary content into content that proactively seeks out the right user, team and community. Include the ability to proactively follow the desired information (people, communities, teams & content), and businesses now have the context and ability to act instantly to updated posts and comments. Employees can also view business- critical content through different lenses, such as by likes and downloads. All of this can be extended to broader ECM products and solutions and thus improve your ability to manage risk and help ensure information security.


The title of my blog is and will always be Smarter Content Streams, and if you did not know why I gave it that title, you most certainly do now.


Best Regards,


Cengiz Satir 
Program Director, IBM ECM
twitter: @csatir

The Game Changing Experience Platform for Content and Case…from IBM

This is a question and answer blog with Cengiz Satir, Program Director, IBM ECM, and Michael Green, Senior Offering Manager, IBM Case Manager.  A great conversation where these two subject matter experts talk about the importance of businesses having a strategy that delivers a content and case experience independent of device or platform.

Every organization today is looking for ways to improve the overall efficiency at which they operate. In the “always on” world that we live in, it should be no surprise that businesses are looking for more than just a content user interface. They are looking for a consistent content experience that enables their entire business to interact with and manage content regardless of the browser, device, or platform. Equally important is the ability for a business to seamlessly access and manage content coming from different content sources, providing them with the ability to leverage content more broadly in solutions like case management.

Michael to Cengiz:

Q. I keep hearing this term “experience platform”, can you elaborate on what the IBM ECM team is doing in and around this strategy that is being characterized as “game changing”?

Cengiz:

A. IBM Content Navigator is both a HTML 5 content experience and a development platform that offers organizations the flexibility to use a single out-of-the box user experience to address advanced document and content operations across desktop applications such as Microsoft Office, mobile devices including phones and tablets, and of course their web browser(s) of choice. This consistent content experience is also the vehicle that delivers a platform for developing custom applications and integrating with IBM and/or third-party solutions, hence the term “experience platform".

Michael to Cengiz:

Q. So Cengiz, would you say that this Content Navigator experience platform is a strategy that will help businesses realize rapid adoption for both content and business specific applications like Case?

Cengiz:

A. Again, the key here is that IBM Content Navigator is an HTML5 content experience that also includes a set of reusable components along with a consistent modeling layer. This enables the entire ECM portfolio of products and solutions, our customers, and our partners to leverage out of the box functionality, as well as to quickly build apps that service a variety of business needs. In fact, some of the new capabilities now available as part of the latest Navigator release showcase integration points around mobile with IBM Worklight, secure file transfer with IBM QuickFile and of course case management with IBM Case Manager.

Michael to Cengiz:

Q. Before you start asking me questions about the exciting Case Manager release built on top of Content Navigator, can you elaborate further on the new mobile and secure file transfer capabilities?

Cengiz:

A. With the latest release of Content Navigator we have updated our native iOS application for iPhone and iPad. The new app will be available shortly for download from the App Store and includes some great features, like the ability to add new documents from the camera or external apps, capture documents for batch processing via IBM Datacap, create searches for content, and now enables IBM Case Manager on your mobile device. New in this release, IBM Worklight is included with Content Navigator. Worklight provides organizations with an advanced mobile application development toolkit for creating native, HTML 5, and hybrid applications for iOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone. Also shipping with Content Navigator is IBM QuickFile. This integrated secure transfer and sharing experience enables files from IBM ECM to be securely shared both inside and outside the organization by any IBM ECM user.

Cengiz to Michael.

Q. Let me turn the tables on you Michael. Can you tell me how the Content Navigator experience platform will positively impact knowledge workers using IBM Case Manager?

Michael:

A. IBM Case Manager 5.2 is a mature release with a lot of new features –some of which are because it has incorporated Content Navigator as its UI framework. One of the key benefits knowledge workers will see in 5.2 is the ability to initiate real ad hoc processes using a built in tool. This will finally put the power of decision making into the hands of the decision makers, so that is a big win for knowledge workers in that they benefit from adoption of the Navigator experience platform which extends seamlessly to the feature rich robust capabilities of the full Case Manager experience.

Go here for more information on: IBM Content Navigator and IBM Case Manager

Work The Way We Live

With our tablets, smartphones and laptops, content is available 24/7, anywhere. We devour it and produce more than we can consume. How did we manage ten years ago, or even five years ago? The internet was available then, however wifi was not everywhere. We did have cell phone devices with some built-in intelligence, but they were not persistently connected to business content, with one exception – email.  I think we all know the story around email – e.g. the “file share” reincarnated. Not the most efficient, or cost effective way to manage content.

So how did we access information, and collaborate, or even more importantly, how did we know the information we were trying to manage was accurate and trusted? If you consider the previous thought, I think we might conclude that often times we did not know we had the right information or even the right version, let alone accessing it securely from a mobile device.   Ask yourself this question – how easily can you and your colleagues access and share information critical to your productivity and company’s performance? Can you effortlessly tap into valuable content, locate expertise across the world and share your materials with a broad community—from an iPhone, or iPad at an airport?

The use of smart devices and social applications has certainly contributed to the explosion of information, but what it has also contributed to is the growing trend that points to businesses rapidly adopting the social and mobile ways in which we create, consume and manage content today.  The ability to manage content in the context of the work we do is now an expected user paradigm.    Following a document, person or community, and the ability to see who liked and downloaded content –is the new “norm".   Just think if you could access, create and manage content in that manner, but do it in a way that is trusted - Social Content Management from IBM 

Mobile ECM, What you should be thinking about...

The Flow of Content: "Always On"

A Q&A Blog with Cengiz Satir, Program Director, IBM ECM, and Ian Story, Senior Product Manager, IBM ECM talking about the importance of businesses having a seamless user experience for content management regardless of how, when and where content is accessed, managed and collaborated on. 

Ian: 

Q: In the “always on” world that we live in, it should be no surprise that businesses are looking to incorporate mobile content access and management as part of their broader enterprise content management strategy.  What do you think are some of the key obstacles most organizations have encountered to date?

Cengiz:

A. Security is certainly one of the first things that comes up, but what we hear more often from customers these days is that the user experience has to be simple and consistent with how their users access and manage content from office applications and from the web. Without that consistency, people from both IT and the business know they will have an uphill battle with training and the adoption of any mobile content application they may decide to deploy.  It is for that reason, that IBM wanted to provide an out of the box UI for mobile that mirrors the office and web content experience.  The beauty here is that with IBM, there is nothing else to buy or install when the customer is utilizing the content products offered by IBM ECM.

Businesses can no longer afford to separately purchase a set of capabilities that differ across the desktop, web and mobile.  At IBM we get that, and we think our approach is one that businesses have been waiting for, for a long time.

Cengiz:

Q: How is IBM addressing the needs of today’s mobile content platform? (e.g. iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Symbian, etc.)

Ian:

A: In addition to having a native iOS application, at IBM, we have the benefit of having an amazing HTML5 user interface - IBM Content Navigator. And because we took this “open” approach to accessing content management, many of our customers can and do enjoy managing content via their smart device of choice. Further, IBM Content Navigator is not just a user interface, it is also a development platform, and we provide examples of how to build your own mobile applications, regardless of platform, using IBM Content Navigator, for instance in the Redbook for the product.  For those of you who don’t know, an IBM Redbook is an easy to read “how-to”publication that provides guidance regarding installation/implementation and often includes sample code.

Cengiz:

Q. Is there a mobile content management strategy that can deliver both rapid adoption of content applications and extensibility for business specific application needs?

Ian: 

A. Again, the key here is that IBM Content Navigator is an HTML5 UI with reusable components.  This enables our customers and partners to leverage out of the box functionality, as well as to quickly build apps for any platform. As mentioned above, our Redbook for Content Navigator walks you through how to reuse these components to build mobile apps for other platforms.  Beyond that, we also have IBM Worklight, which is a fantastic cross platform development suite, and business partners, customers, and of course IBM ourselves, are using this to solve problems and build customized apps that can be deployed to a number of platforms. 

Cengiz:

Q.  Ian, I understand that not long ago you were a customer of IBM’s. Coming from the customer angle can you comment on the importance of this seamless, smart and secure approach that IBM is taking with Mobile ECM?

Ian:

A.   Absolutely, for over a decade, I was an ECM customer, not just of IBM, but using competing ECM products as well, in industries as diverse as manufacturing and financial services. From a customer’s point of view, whether I’m scanning supporting documents with a mobile device at a branch, or looking up an equipment maintenance manual on the shop floor, I want consistency in the experience – I don’t want to have to build out different configurations for web, office and mobile.  I don’t want to manage different apps, different permissions, train my users on different interfaces, setup different servers, etc.  This applies to all my ECM systems, not just IBM, and it is this seamless, smart and secure approach to managing content that IBM delivers that saves me all these headaches as a customer, even if that content happens to be in a legacy, non-IBM, repository.

Cengiz:

Q. What are some of the other ways customers can extend a mobile content platform of this nature?

Ian:

A: In addition to what I just mention above, at IBM we have mobile-ready APIs, including REST APIs for content, process and capture, that allow you to build any app for any device or platform you want, even if you don’t use our toolkit, user interface, or development tools.  We provide these tools to make your life easier, but we also insist on following industry standards, from REST APIs to HTML5, JavaScript and CSS3 for our UI – so even if you don’t use what we provide out of the box, you don’t have to learn some proprietary technology to do what you need to do with your content. 


Ian:

Q. And Cengiz, just to close out the conversation on mobile ECM – do you feel there is a natural synergy in and around how content is being consumed today, e.g. social elements such as likes, tags, comments, following, etc.?

Cengiz

A. Today’s modern business world is highly competitive, and because of that, we are always looking for new ways to maximize our investments, while delivering innovative new products and solutions to our customers.  The balancing act of addressing business and IT challenges while staying competitive is something all companies struggle with.  At IBM we think we have a visionary approach that is the key to helping organizations overcome those challenges and turning them into opportunities.  

At the end of the day, success comes down to an organization’s ability to consume, produce and manage content in the context of the work they do - regardless of how, when and where they are in the world.  And being able to deliver trusted content to business users in a contextual, social manner is directly related to an organization’s ability stay relevant and competitive.   At IBM we have taken our visionary approach to content to a whole new level by embedding social constructs into the repository.  

The ability to intuitively deliver new and previously unrealized insights into the activities, projects and content that we work on daily is a tremendous advantage for organizations and businesses.  By “intuitively deliver” I mean the ability to bring trusted content to you wherever you are through social tagging and following – the ability to instantly see updates to content from people that have the right expertise.  And the ability to see who has commented, liked and downloaded provides another degree of insight to business content that is not only innovative, but a necessity for businesses going forward.  The delivery of contextual feedback provides instant access to accurate and relevant information, knowledge, and expertise on the work you are doing right now– your business critical content.  Long story short, tightly integrated social elements in concert with a consistent user experience across mobile, web and the desktop is just what everyone has been waiting for and we are happy to be the first to accomplish this.

Knowing that you can access content securely is no longer good enough.  Organizations want trusted content access from smart devices, but more importantly they are demanding consistency across mobile, web and desktop. If you want to hear more on this topic, please attend this webinar hosted by AIIM’s President, John Manacini and co-presented by Cengiz Satir, Program Director for IBM ECM and Ian Story, Senior Product Manager for IBM ECM.