On Information and ECM Architecture

So here I am at the 2008 AIIM Conference and it has been a busy day networking, viewing presentations and getting a feel for who is who in the Vendor trade floor. From discussions that I have had today I am ever more convinced as far as ECM Architecture goes there is a gaping hole in this part of the fabric of ECM.

Sure there are probably companies that are doing it, but over all there is not much best practice to go on, or should I say consistent and industry recognised best practice.

The best examples that I have seen of Information Architecture at work and relating to the overall Enterprise Architecture is work that has been done by Roger Evernden. Roger built an Information Framework in the 80's which is licensed to IBM. Dealing with the financial sector it non the less provides some interesting insight to Information and Architecture.

Roger has also written a book called Information First, which I have in my library and continue to refer to from time to time. My question is however, why has Architecture for Information and ECM in general not become mainstream. Well there may be some answers in the conversation that I had with Alan Pelz-Sharpe where we were talking about business analysts and the fact that a lot of these people do not have the necessary depth of skills that are required to be a good analyst. Given that information and ECM are relatively new I believe that there is just not the body of knowledge and or the people around with the experience and skills en masse to pull this all off. Therefore we will have to suffer part time players with a thin veneer for time to come.

Content, Content everywhere and not a spot to link

The issue of content silos is not going to go away anytime soon. All to often organisations start their implementation of an ECM Strategy direct to technology based on a subset of the overall ECM components, such as Web Content Management (WCM). What generally happens is that there is an articulated need for "getting the website under control" and off the web team go with a mandate to select a tool and get it in place.

• What about the context in which this tool is being place?
• How does it fit with the overall creation of content that will eventually feed into the tool?
• Who are the stakeholders, and how will they interact with the system?
• Can we re purpose content for the intranet as well as the Internet?
• Is there an Information Architecture that the tool will fit into?
• Will there be a seamless flow of information into and out of the tool?

Without a sensible map of where individual ECM components fit into the overall organisational strategy and the needs of the organisation we will continue to see point solutions managing content but providing no linking to other important and relevant information elsewhere in the organisation. Result, managed mess !

Leadership and Change Management what gives?

Change Management. It is a term that we are always talking to potential customers about and stressing the importance of, as a fundamental process to the success of any ECM based project.

But time and time again I hear from these same people, who have decided to implement themselves or with others, about the issues they are having getting people in the organisation to use the system (technology) chosen and how difficult this is.

Well it is no surprise. Change management is often spoken about in great terms, but rarely carefully considered, especially with regards the time, money and resources required to really make an impact to the organisation to change from the current mind set and work practise to the new "ways of working" that the solution provides for.

There seems to be a general understanding in organisations that change management is important, but sometimes there is no resulting commitment for what it takes to make the change happen. The best recount that I have seen of change management was the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) in the UK.

They implemented a records and document management system and key to the implementation was a solid change management process, now the emphasis is on process. At the Conference I attended the presenter that was from DTI discussed in depth how they constructed their Change journey.

This journey was planned and executed with the focus on letting the people know what was going to happen, why it was happening and what they needed to do about. The best part was where after doing all this there was then a plan to ensure that each group was ready and led through the change into the new system.

People, Process and Technology #2

So let's talk about PROCESS. As we can see from the Model that I have talked about previously, process is the heart of the the organisation and the centre of the MANAGE, PROCESS & DELIVER information flow. So we see that when ever we look to implement an ECM project or technology we are going to get involved with process, in some shape and form

Now this does not mean that we are going to put in workflow or a BPM technology. In fact if you have thought about the ECM model you will realise that managing the information is the first step to get in place, and by managing the information (content in context) you are assisting the current business processes with meaningful information that is of a better quality, which in turn will help people to do their jobs easier and more effectively.


Once you have started to manage the content effectively, you can then turn your attention to the business process itself and start asking questions such as:

• Why is our business process this way?
  Does our business process need to be this way?
• What outcome or output are we trying to achieve satisy from this process?
• What content is critical to the business process and at what stage is it required?
• What is the current format that we have, can it be simplified?
• Is there critical data that needs to be pulled from the content?
• Can we make peoples jobs easier if we simplify the format or the process?
• Can we give the customer or end recipient a more cost effective and better outcome service?

Once you have answered these question you will be in a more informed position to think and plan for any workflow improvements from a people, process and technology view. Often a simple change to the way that people interact with the information and the quaility of the information supplied can make a great difference.

Information Assets and Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management? Is it real can we achieve delivery of this great mythical statement. Well I believe that it can be achieved through effective and coherent information management. Here goes the theory; Knowledge is tacit, it is shared and generally created either through personal or shared insight and is based on the use of, and / or, the creation of information. Information is data that has meaning and context.

Knowledge has a half life. Now the time of the half life I cannot express in numbers only in words. The length of Knowledge's half life is reduced as the number of people grow where the base information used has no control or validity.

For example if I send a document (information) to one other person via e-mail. We may create insight based on our communication and collaboration. But I then send that same document (uncontrolled) to another person the value of knowledge decreases, as the information is now loosing context based on its loose distribution.

The distribution of information in an uncontrolled fashion is like the game of Chinese whispers where the original meaning gets warped through the filters of the mind as it is passed from one person to another, without reference to the original source. Of course on the electronic world there is the added problem that the the original information is now in multiple copies spread across e-mail in boxes, and doused across multiple file servers.

What we really need to do is to capture the knowledge as "information" so we can provide consistency to the conversations and raise the value of the information assets. Knowledge is useful as long as people retain it and use it. But collectively it is more useful if I am able to distill the knowledge into useful information that increases the value of my information bases.

In the translation from knowledge to a more explicit state of information there is always a loss, as you cannot capture the pure insight from the mind. But even if we assume that we loose half of the knowledge acquired, we should be able to raise the overall information asset base by a factor "x" above what is was before.

So good information management is a key to the creation of knowledge and is essential to the ability to capture new insight at a value that increases the overall information asset base.

To get to the place where we can raise the level of Knowledge throughout organisation, we must first get a view that information is a key asset that needs to be managed.

You need to manage the information that is feeding into and being created by the Knowledge processes across the organisation. This is where PEOPLE interact with content in the MANAGE, PROCESS and DELIVER part of the ECM model. By getting controls in place we are able to capture and transform knowledge to information and retain its value so we can add to the overall information asset base of the organisation.

People, Manage & Technology plain old EDRMS?

Taking the combination of People, Manage and Technology, and assuming content that is primarily office documents (Word, excel, PowerPoint and e-mail) then this part of the model can be related to plain old electronic document and records management.

Not rocket science, but at the same time a fundamental piece of the overall ECM puzzle. It is probably one of the areas that is the easiest for organisations to churn out and RFP for but the hardest to get right because of the effect that the technology has on the people that need to deal with it.

Rule #1, never underestimate organisational change! Rule #2, refer to Rule 1.

What always disappoints me in the RFP process is that no matter how much you warn that Change Management is paramount there seems to be a general lack of real appreciation for how much is necessary for the organisation. It's like telling my daughters to eat their vegetables. They know it is the right thing to do but just do not want to do it. So to do organisations approach organisational change. Dealing with people is messy and time consuming, and some think it is far better to ram in the technology and deal with the issues later.

I have recently seen one organisation that is out for tender where the existing DMS system has a couple of hundred thousand documents in the DMS system but 2TB of other stuff in the file server. Maybe they are all JPG's and MP3 files? I think not.

This picture is really wrong but is reality. By nature if the "system" is too hard to use people will work around it and default back to the old behaviours. EDRMS is fine and good and useful, but know why you are doing it and make sure that change management happens well before the technology hits the desktop.

ECM Model

So in the previous post we talked about ECM and created some definitions. In this post I would like to address a pictorial view of ECM within a model that I use to describe ECM and the various relationship components.

As you will see in the diagram the outer box is the domain of Business Strategy and Operating Plans. Here is where the organisation has a reason for being and will have outcomes that it is trying to achieve.

Within the box from the top is the People, Process and Technology component. Note the direction of the arrows in the diagram they are important. This show us that People interact with Process and that the role of technology is to support the process that the people are interacting with. This vertical view is broadly the organisation in three boxes.

Next we look at content and the "flow" of this through the organisation. Note that are are three phases of the content, Manage, Process and Deliver. Note the arrows again. You cannot deliver the content unless it has first been managed and processed. You cannot process the content unless it has been managed. Again we see that technology support the flow of the content and that people at the top are the ones that interact and make it all work.

We can draw some basic assumptions from this model.

• People at the top are the most important.
• For any ECM deliver technology is only one-third of the overall solution.
• Any ECM solution delivery should be top down driven, starting with people first
• For any enterprise approach process is in the heart of the solution