Biographical Information
Andy Moore
Editorial Director
KMWorld Specialty Publishing Group
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Andy Moore is a 30-year publishing professional, editor and writer who now concentrates on business process improvement through document and content management. Moore is the publisher of KMWorld Magazine and its related online publications as well as the Editorial Director, KMWorld Specialty Publishing Group which is responsible for the "KMWorld Best Practices White Papers." Moore oversees their content in addition to writing the opening articles for each of the white papers in the series. Moore is based in Camden, Maine, and can be reached at andy_moore@kmworld.com
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It may not be a strictly scientific finding, but nobody argues that only about 1% of businesses are FULLY prepared for e-discovery. 1%—that's statistically zero. Sure, there are the regulated industries...
I've been writing these opening articles ("overture essays," we call them, somewhat pretentiously) for many years now. And increasingly, when I approach the prospect of digging down into a subject we've covered before—such as this one, business process management, or BPM—there's a moment when I think: "What else can be said about this subject that hasn't already been said?" And I'm always wrong...
I can't remember the first website I ever saw. But I bet if you saw it today, it would be hilarious. I don't need to tell you that comparing today's Web* to that of eight years ago is like talking about pre-Cambrian turbellarian worm fossils (don't bother looking; there aren't any). But did you ever wonder how the Web became so advanced, so quickly? I did. So I called up Larry Bowden. Larry's the vice president of the "portals and mashups" (really, no kidding) division of IBM. He's a big-deal guy, an old acquaintance, and he took time out of his busy schedule to school me about Web content management (WCM)...
There has always been a partisan divide among proponents, and critics, of know-ledge management. On one side of the aisle, there's a primarily vendor-driven insistence that "knowledge management" is the sum of a series of technologies, somehow mashed up and desktopped in such a way that the management of corporate know-how is "automated," and the result is the seamless transfer of information in all its forms among the minions that trudge through the door every morning. On the other side are the intellectual snobs who insist "knowledge cannot be managed." They'll concede that certain content management and analytics tools might smooth the pathway for "information management,"...
This year is the 400th anniversary of New Amsterdam, now more familiarly known as New York City. In 1609, Henry Hudson, an Englishman sailing for the Dutch East India Company, made the first exploration of what is now New York harbor and of the majestic river that today bears his name, laying the foundation for the Dutch claim on the area. His voyage of discovery led to the creation of the Dutch West India Company and ultimately to the founding of New Netherland, including its trading post at the mouth of the river—New Amsterdam...
Paper is not sexy. First of all, it's flat—no curves! And it's thin—no muscles! Don't even get me started on the fact that it's mostly white. It doesn't even have that certain allure of danger ... unless you count paper cuts. So how come every information manager I've ever known (and I've known a lot) always tells me, "We've got to deal with this paper!" "We're overwhelmed by all this paper!" And my favorite, "We have to tame this paper beast!"The paper beast is still alive and well, after all these years. Despite almost two decades' worth of effort to automate paper-based business processes of all kinds, it might be a little surprising that the issue of "paper" is still on the minds of knowledge managers and business executives...
"I love you ... You love me ... We're best friends like friends should be..."The Barney theme song haunted me for years. My kids—like most kids—were Barney robots, and parked in front of the tube every morning to see the purple dinosaur frolic meaningfully in his carefully diverse neighborhood. And every morning, at the 28:30 minute mark, my two kids would coming running into the kitchen screaming, "Mommy! Daddy! The song! The song!" And we would dutifully drop whatever we were doing and come to the TV to sing along with them...
Scads of words have been written about "enterprise search," "knowledge management," "information access," etc. In fact, I am responsible for a scad or two myself.And, of course, it makes sense: When 90% of the information your company possesses is in the form of unstructured text files and email, plus more-or-less formal formats (contracts, PowerPoints, legal documents and marketing material, etc.), it's painfully obvious that tools to access that content will emerge as key components of the knowledge-worker toolset.
But what HASN'T been covered quite as well are the text-mining and analytic tools that exist to find content—and the many relationships between content objects—that are not yet part of the average, daily knowledge worker's regimen.The way it's often been put is this:SEARCH is useful when you know basically what it is you're looking for. A specific email... a contract for a specific deal...
I went into this month's article research cycle expecting doom and gloom reports from the edge of the economic cliff. After all, when companies are laying off thousands upon thousands, and financial institutions are circling the drain...
I am always a little dubious when marketers update the way in which we refer to time-honored traditions. A recent case in point would be how "search" has become "information access." Why is that an improvement? Another one that MIGHT fit the category would be "customer experience" as a euphemism for customer service. Except that I think it is not. Here's the thinking: "Customer relationship management" implies...
Any frank discussion of business investment in this climate HAS to acknowledge the elephant in the corner: the economic crisis in the US and abroad. And sure enough, this month's discussion topic—enterprise content management (ECM)—did just that. Even though there is plenty of reluctance...
In some ways, we were way ahead of the curve. We've been talking on these pages about the challenges of locating, retrieving, indexing and presenting electronic information in the event of litigation—also known as "e-discovery"...
Sixty years ago we did not have the Internet. We did not have client-server computing. We did not have mainframes, by and large (and LARGE is right!). We did not have workflow, automation or iPods, either. But we HAD business process management. Cats like Deming and Drucker were already thinking, writing and acting...
Once upon a time there was a records manager, who managed records. And there was an IT group, who managed archives. And there were knowledge workers, who carried out their daily jobs. And there were legal officers, who made sure all the above didn't get the company in trouble...
Knowledge management has always had an identity problem. With its unclear business objective and vague value proposition (for many business leaders, at least), KM has had an uphill climb to respectability for years.
We USED to have a joke around the office. Whenever one of us had a question we couldn't immediately resolve, someone would inevitably pipe up, "Hey, let's start a wiki." It was dripping with sarcasm. We are self-righteously skeptical of buzz terms, especially one as silly as that—"wiki..." I mean, come on...!
I should be more careful about what I hope for. I've been "covering" the financial services industry in these pages for five or six years now. Every year, I've sat at this desk, and looked into the white expanse of the word processing "new blank document" screen and wondered: What the heck do I know about the financial services industry?
"Why can't it be different this year? Why can't something happen that would give me a hook...
Dan Carmel is an enthusiastic guy. White-tent evangelist enthusiastic. We were talking—mainly HE was talking!—the other day about the latest emerging trend in, well, just about everything that a business does on a daily basis.
OK; that's a little overblown, I suppose. We were actually talking about "software as a service," or SaaS as they insist on acronyming it. (I want someone to explain that upper case/lower case thing to me someday.)
Dan is CEO of SpringCM. SpringCM could best be described as a content and document management software vendor, I guess. But there's a lot of those. Dan's company has a twist. A big twist. It specializes in delivering its customer applications over the Internet in a hosted environment...
I entered into this relatively newly amalgamated area of "governance, risk management and compliance" (inevitably acronymned "GRC") with a false understanding. I assumed that compliance was what you had to do, governance is what you should do, and risk avoidance is what you achieved if you did the first two things correctly. That, I have learned, is only sort of correct. But sort of not. Which should come as no surprise to anyone who has read these columns, nor to me. I should know better. I never get it right the first time.
Seems that whether it's managing content for business purposes, or managing regulations for compliance purposes, or even managing disaster recovery for business continuity purposes, a "risk-based approach" is all the rage...
In these days of diminishing stature for the US on the world stage, it's nice to hear we're still number one at something: "The US leads the world in terms of disclosure, largely because they legislated early and quickly following the Enron debacle, providing a new level of transparency in government."
The speaker is Glyn Williams, CEO, Onstream Systems Ltd., and as a New Zealander and international businessperson, has tacit permission to remark on the US's world stature from a relatively outsider position...
There was too much good material emerging from this month's roundtable, so we've included it here. . . .
I decided to conduct my usual monthly interviews a little differently this time. I sent out a series of "essay questions," with the certain expectation...
There's more! The full transcripts of the Enterprise Search interviews can be read here.
"Dynamic and engaging." "Effective and friendly." Paige Mantel, vice president of product marketing at Interwoven, is describing the best of today's e-commerce Web experiences. But she could be describing herself. Paige is charming and knowledgeable, and has a clear historical perspective on the growth and current domination of Web-based customer service through her history with one of the early leaders in Web content management, Interwoven...
Imagine my surprise when one of the interview subjects for this month's focus on enterprise content management—and a vendor whose website includes that term fairly prominently—flatly stated: "enterprise content management is a myth..."
I recently dove headlong into the subject of litigation readiness and the role that electronically stored information (ESI, in that world's parlance) plays in it, especially in light of the "new" (more than one-year-old now) Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
Here's a shocker: There was a time when knowledge management wasn't very well accepted. The early proponents—self-described "global, big-picture" thinkers—made a critical strategic error. By overloading the significance of KM with visions of utopian "transparent organizations" and "corporate agility," they gave the reigning executives of the day the perfect exit route...
By that headline, I do NOT mean that the media/entertainment companies are no longer interested in managing their digital assets... completely the opposite is true! And I don't mean to single out Disney... any media, entertainment, news and publishing business whose products ARE rich media—movies, video, music, Web content—still relies on very complex, very specialized digital asset management (DAM) systems to conduct its daily work...
For the world's largest, highly regulated industries—pharma, financial services, food distribution—managing business records to comply with regulatory requirements is just a day at the office. It's another Thursday; no big deal, been doing it for years. But corporate scandal, and (let's face it) predatory litigators have pushed the demand downward and outward.
I need a new cliché. Because I am SO tired of the “10 blind men describing an elephant” story that I could plotz. But the problem is: it’s SO right for describing the market’s apparent conception of customer relationship management (CRM). I had a nice chat with Pete Strom the other day. Pete is general manager of Consona CRM, which is the division of the company that drives the KNOVA and Onyx products. Consona is a relatively new name for the company...
Once upon a time, anything labeled “enterprise search” got attention. I actually saw people adding the words “enterprise search” with magic marker onto their signage at trade shows.
Smoothing the Abstraction
How a Component Approach Simplifies Publishing... and Makes it Cheaper, Too!
Lots of people have written about the inevitable assimilation of “technology” into “application.” The best example (thanks, Paul S.) is in the 1993 Don Norman book “The Things That Make Us Smart.” In it he talks about how, in the 1920s, you could order from the Sears-Roebuck catalog an electric motor. Then you could buy various attachments...
I'm not certain when it happened, but sometime when I was not looking, someone stole the World Wide Web. I swear I didn't take my eyes off of it for more than a minute, but when I looked again, instead of the Web, there was a... take your pick: television station... record store... book shop... call center... sales channel...
Pushing The Document Up The Value Chain
About 11 years ago, a group of us were starting to ask ourselves whether all this "information management stuff" might have a greater purpose than merely to store information in a file server somewhere. That maybe—just maybe—information could be applied to the type of work and to the level of decision-making taking place in business at such a famously accelerated pace. And in providing that information to the right person at the right time, the promise of a truly knowledge-based economy could be realized. In the 10 years since ImagingWorld became KMWorld magazine, we've tried to address the discipline (practice? theory? religion?) of knowledge management from each of its well-known constituent components—people, process, technology.
A lot of people I meet from “the real world”—at cocktail parties, kids’ sports events, community activities—have a really hard time grasping the abstraction of information management from that of what they do on a day-to-day basis.
The roots of digital asset management (somewhat distractingly and sometimes amusingly shortened to “DAM”) are firmly planted in the media/entertainment and the print/publishing marketspaces. Movie studios and newspaper conglomerates, international news agencies and advertising movers-and-shakers—these were the first types of organizations to embrace digital asset management. As a result, it should be glamorous and exotic—as Paris Hilton would say: “It’s hot.”
Well, OK, I guess. I have yet to find a deep well of hotness, but I WILL say that DAM is leading the way toward a fantastic vision that goes way beyond the mere information management and content delivery that we know today.
Movie studios and television production groups use DAM to manage their intellectual property and their production processes. In that sense, DAM is sort of exotic. Imagine being able to search for a certain word spoken in a movie soundtrack (“search: Rosebud”), or sort a server full of video clips by “girl,” “guy” or “horse.” It really starts to get into Star Trek territory.
Once upon a time, saying the words “knowledge management” was the fastest way to get thrown out of a meeting. And not only would you be ejected, you would never be invited back.
To be “compliant” can mean a dozen things. Regulated industries and government are accustomed to being regulation-driven; that’s a Thursday for them.
Set the scene: It’s 1995. You’re the executive officer—president—of the Hooverville First National Bank. It’s your basic hometown-type bank...about 15 branches, all in medium-size towns of, say 20,000 people; the strip-mall and housing development sort of towns. You manage about $100 million in assets. Not big, not small...Hooverville-sized.
You go to the annual banker’s convention in...I don’t know...St. Louis. The keynote speaker is mesmerizing...and scary. He says: “Branch banking is over! Branch banking is dead! ATMs will rule the world! Automation will replace retail banking! The world as you know it is kaput!” And you start planning your next career as a goat-milk farmer.
I'm sitting in the press "lounge" at the AIIM show in Philadelphia, thinking about imaging. I'm somewhat sheepish to confess that I haven't thought this much about imaging since this time last year. Sitting in the press lounge. At AIIM.
But that's not because imaging has diminished somehow as a viable marketplace. It hasn't. Nor should it suggest that there aren't still many opportunities for business managers to benefit from automated document capture. There are. And it should not indicate that I haven't been paying attention to imaging as a technology and a business solution. I have.
It's just that imaging has—at long last—fulfilled its destiny. It has disappeared into the everyday.
I used to address a lot of audiences at imaging conferences. There was a story I always told that, I thought, profoundly represented the reality of imaging versus its promise. Stop me if you've heard this...
Dissecting the Public and Private Sectors ”Have To” vs. “Want To” My question was simple: What are the main differences between the ways the public sector—government agencies, administrations, defense organizations, civilian agencies—deploys technology solutions versus the ways its private, commercial counterparts do it? My initial guess was spelled out in the title of this article: There’s “Have To,” and then there’s “Want To.” I took this basic premise into two conversations this month—one with Jan Rosi, president of TOWER Software North America, and one with Steve Papa, founder and chairman of Endeca.
Finding the Center: A Records Application to Rule Them All
If you’ve been paying attention, you might have picked up a little bit of Spiderman mythology hovering over what we now call “enterprise content management.”
Making the Best of Web Self-service
Understanding Language and Intent Leads to a New Age for Customer Service
I usually make it a rule for these interviews: No inside baseball. I’m normally much more interested in the so-called 50,000-foot view...how customers perceive their business needs and how these various KMWorld-y technologies can address them. Or how buyers organize themselves...
I've always had a nagging underappreciation for the whole business intelligence thing. I'm just not that into BI. In the first place, BI is always trailing the trend, not spotting it. BI reports are really, really good at telling you what already happened. They're kinda crappy at telling what will happen next. On top of that, they're also undemocratic. Your run-of-the-mill BI tool is like rocket science to most users, so most users don't get to play with it. So, as a result, well-meaning business managers have to go to the one guy's cubicle who knows how to work the analytical tool, and ask "May I have a report, please?" It's like that scene in Oliver. It's sort of pathetic. Worse, then, BI reports are b-o-r-i-n-g ... all squiggly-line graphs that look like yesterday's Dilbert cartoon. . . .
“The only things that are certain are death, taxes and that some guy from Nigeria wants to put $10 Million US into your bank account. And if you're smart enough, you can skip the taxes part. . . .
BPM May Have Become a Team Sport, But Who’s the Coach?
Business process management (BPM) has long been the domain of the line-of-business managers who directly benefit from process automation initiatives. Stands to reason; efforts to create efficient business processes logically emerge from the groups who are commissioned to either (a.) save money; or (b.) do something better; or (c.) all the above. But that very inducement to effect change at a department-by-department pace has led to many problems for information technology (IT) staffs. And they haven’t always taken kindly to it.
“Our customers believe they have a knowledge problem. They just don’t see it as a knowledge management problem.” Eric Stevens from Hummingbird has just identified the key challenge facing the entire knowledge-based economy… including both the users and the marketplace that serves them . . . .
“Collaboration” is one of the big knowledge management-mantra words—this is a list
that also includes “sharing,” “capturing” and even “delivering” knowledge. When
industry gurus talk about KM, you can bet “collaboration” isn't far behind. So how
come it's so hard to write about. . . ?
Not that long ago, the only “records management” I knew anything about was alphabetizing my Monkees LPs. And I am not alone. Records management (RM), once the domain of a specialized, trained population of information experts, has intruded into the mainstream with unexpected and disruptive consequences . . .
This is a summary
Reporting from Lotusphere '99, KMWorld editor-in-chief Andy Moore says that Lotus Domino R5 both departs from and enhances Domino's position in collaborative space.
Posted 27 Sep 1999
I have been wondering about this trending in the BPM marketplace: the increasing emphasis on using business process management tools in a manner that's more suggestive of a predictive and strategic planning role than a workflow or process tool...