An Entirely New View of ECM
It’s about Discipline and Practice; Not Technology

This is the kind of thing that captures the attention of senior-level people. It’s not longer a defensive technology gambit; it now has serious repercussions to the top line.

“The C-level suite now understands what content management is, mainly because the definition is mature,” says Theresa. “It’s not a brand new thing. If you asked me in 2007 (which I probably did!), the understanding of ECM among executives would have been negligible. But the intrinsic value of content has grown, especially because of the degree we rely on electronic content. And it’s not so much the content itself, but the method of delivery,” continues Theresa. “We are becoming accustomed to ‘always on/instant delivery.’ A few years ago we were willing to receive that contract via FedEx. Now the consumer marketplace has created an expectation of immediate gratification, and we’re only going to see an acceleration as the next wave (of workers) enters the workplace.”

Who’s In Charge?
I realize at about this point that our conversations are veering into an area I can’t quite fathom. Each of my guests has described an organizational shift in which the executive suite, the technical departments, the various lines of business AND the legal groups are all, somehow, speaking a lingua franca and patting each other’s shoulders like it’s a Friday happy hour at TGIF. How is it that this unnatural mating between executives and technical geeks and the legal wonks has become so commonplace?

Then I remembered a few columns ago (you read them all, correct?), we talked about this phenomenon taking place: that “liaison” technical people are being assigned to sit in various departments’ warrens and act as translators and sometimes advocates for those departments’ needs and wishes. And at the same time, legal people are also being re-assigned to departmental roles, in order to watch over the herd, so to speak. The idea is that a trained person who lives the life of a departmental guy can better describe the objectives to another person who sits “over the fence.” Kinda makes sense to me.

“I haven’t seen that so much,” says Corrine politely. “But I HAVE been joking lately about ‘who’s the IT shop? Is it the marketing group? Or the IT group?’ And even though they’re both speaking a technical language, they have no idea what each other is saying. I think all companies would LIKE to have liaisons like that, but with this economy, it’s been difficult.

“Now, it seems the economy is starting to pick up,” she continues. “It’s now going to become a matter of priority—what’s the strategic value to the company to leverage business with IT in a different way?”

Is content management being embraced because they’re scared, or because they want to derive value, I wonder. “I think it’s more on the value side,” insists Theresa. “I haven’t seen the scare factor come into it, but I keep waiting for that ‘Enron’ type of event to cause a major change. It’s kind of confounding that it hasn’t happened yet. I think the rise of content management comes more from the value perspective: How can we compete? What do we have? How can we use it better and more efficiently? How can we maximize the work we’re getting from a reduced workforce? People now have to do more with less, so whatever value you can squeeze out of existing resources—and content being one of those—the better,” says Theresa.

“We trust our legal departments to be risk-averse and process-oriented, and as a result, they’re not very provocative and they’re not controversial,” says Chris. “If you want to achieve change, you need someone who’s willing to stick their neck out and take a risk. Not saying anything against the legal department, but the lawyers are not the ones who should be doing that. We should trust the people within the business units to do that. I’m not saying legal shouldn’t be at the table. I just don’t think they should be at the head of the table. They need to be tech-savvy enough to understand what’s going on, and not just shut it down out of fear. We have seen enough of that.”

Corrine adds, “Personally, when I come into work, the legal ramifications are not on my top-10 list. But I understand that there needs to be someone who watches over this. Whether it’s a formal ‘legal liaison,’ who comes in and tells people what to do... I’m not sure that’s going to be very well taken.”

OK. So much for my theory. But it’s clear that organizations are viewing their content in new and provocative ways. Read the following pages to see if you agree. I know this particular KMWorld White Paper has changed the way I think about enterprise content management. See if it has the same effect on you. Talk to ya later.