ECM Briefs

Last month, we joined Microsoft in its Partner Pavilion at the AIIM 2007 Conference & Expo to demonstrate our business and industry-specific ECM solutions for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Office 2007. This year’s conference, held at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center from April 16 – 19, featured exhibitors from over 425 companies and attracted more than 25,000 business and technology professionals from around the world.

The AIIM conference program included pre-conference workshops, keynote presentations and 14 tracks addressing the needs of business and IT professionals as well as compliance and records managers. Attendees heard from vendors, industry experts, and their peers on a wide range of topics that looked at the evolving information management industry; the business impact of the technologies; and some successful implementations and best practices.

While at the conference, we were able to meet with many of our customers and partners as well as other conference attendees. Here’s some of what we saw and heard at conference sessions and on the Expo floor:

There is a lot of confusion in the marketplace about what ECM means. As the industry is shifting, and as new players come into the market and older players are consolidating, what the end user and the business owner really want to know is: ‘What’s in it for me?’ ‘What is the right software for my organization?’ ‘Regardless of the technology choice I make, where am I going to learn how to deploy successfully?’

The sessions that focused on how to develop a strategy, elements of success in ECM deployments, best practices and change management plans seemed to be the most popular. Attendees heard some consistent messages by the presenters including: a clear business strategy with well defined objectives and metrics to measure success is critical; understand your objectives up front, before you start thinking about technology; and engage the end-user community as part of the change management plan.

The technical tracks were attended by people who were trying to sort out what this “ECM” thing is. ‘How do I go about deploying the software?’ ‘How do I select a vendor?’ was a prevailing theme for many at the show.

Most importantly, attendees wanted to hear from their peers about successful implementations – what are some best practices and lessons learned? They wanted to hear real, live stories about how a company was able to deploy and get business value out of the technology. Not surprisingly, these sessions were well attended.

One of the sessions: “The Content Technology Marketplace – Where is it Going?” featured a panel discussion with leading industry analysts on the current state of, and future prospects for, the content technology marketplace. Questions posed to the panelists like: “What are the greatest risks and opportunities in implementing ECM?”, “What is the trend with ECM Suites versus Best of Breed?”, “What will the content technology marketplace look like in 2010?” and “Are organizations paying attention to Web 2.0?” offered a good indication of what was on the minds of many of the attendees.

In terms of market differentiators, one of the messages we heard from more than one session is that ECM is an infrastructure and building and incorporating solutions that meet specific vertical requirements is where the market is heading. The trend is not which vendor will have the most features, but who can provide organizations with a solution deployment. This is the approach that Open Text has been taking for the last couple of years and we are very well positioned to deliver the solutions customers want today and into the future.

On the subject of Web 2.0, which refers to Web based communities and hosted services — such as social networking sites, wikis and blogs, at Open Text, we are seeing a growing acceptance of more collaborative applications in the work environment. Our focus is on the kinds of work activities that are best facilitated through these collaborative content authoring systems. The Open Text Online Global Community – OTO – is a great example of how we are using our own communities of practice software to onboard some of the former Hummingbird customers. This site is the gateway to collaborative support options to our valuable end users, customers and partners where they can ask us questions and speak to each other in a secure environment.