EmTAG survey reveals shifting priorities

The survey conducted by AIIM's (Silver Spring, MD,

http://www.aiim.org/tradeshow) Emerging Technologies Advisory Group (EmTAG) at this year's AIIM Conference revealed some changing and some entirely new priorities.

The 1997 survey asked respondents to pick the three technologies they expect to have the most impact on their businesses. The respondents stated that Web tools (52.8%) and workflow (50%) would have more impact on their business in the coming year than document management (43.5%). Last year, when asked to identify high-impact technologies for the 1996 survey, respondents gave document management priority over Web tools and workflow by 7% and 10% margins respectively.

Analysts Kathryn Beaton, Tom Dale, Jaimie Popkin, Jack Scott, Dave Yockelson and Zoellick generated the survey questions, while Clark Brady of Eli Lilly (Washington) conducted the survey and Bill Zoellick analyzed the results.

While document management may not portend the greatest change in business processes, according to this year's survey its impact remains significant. The emergence of the Web--and all the changes it brings--is pulling along many other new and suddenly more important technologies. That is broadening and destabilizing the market.