In mid-May AIIM released a study authored by John Mancini titled The State of Intelligent Information Management. It's a thoughtful perspective on the intersection of traditional content management and the increased focus of organizations on digital transformation – favorite Attensa themes! The report is free to AIIM members. Since buying a professional membership is less than the cost of buying the report I'd suggest that approach. There are plenty of other benefits and value in membership.
The report brings together two important perspectives. The first is that of organizations of various sizes expressed through a survey earlier in the year. The second is AIIM's own point of view regarding “Intelligent Information Managment”. What is the state? Dawn and time to get busy.
Here is a summary from AIIM.
“In February 2018 we set out to quantify what organizations thought of “Intelligent Information Management,” how they see the relationship between IIM and Digital Transformation, and where they are on both their Digital Transformation journeys and their plans for the underlying technologies that fuel core IIM practices and methodologies. Here’s what we discovered:
- Every organization is on — or should be on! — a Digital Transformation journey. The heart of this Transformation journey is understanding, anticipating, and redefining internal and external customer experiences.
- Digital Transformation effectiveness is imperiled by a rising tide of information chaos and confusion.
- The rising tide of information chaos and confusion is creating a demand for new information management practices that extend beyond traditional ECM.
- How organizations describe these new information management practices is still evolving.
- AIIM believes that four key Intelligent Information Management practices or methodologies — and an associated set of modular and configurable technology building blocks — are critical to Digital Transformation success:
a. Modernizing the information toolkit.
b. Digitalizing core organizational processes.
c. Automating compliance & governance.
d. Leveraging analytics & machine learning.”
John Mancini, The State of Intelligent Information Management © AIIM 2018, www.aiim.org
There were a few survey results and a couple of quotes from responses that go to the heart of how organizations deal with the flood of content each day i.e. produced by the first digital wave. The second digital wave is going to be how organizations deliver it. That is the heart of digital transformation – engaging internal and external audiences more effectively.
Here are a couple of interesting survey responses:
“I think anything with word management in it is outdated. The world today is about dynamism and agility, and ‘management' sounds so 20th century. I don't care where and how content is managed, I am interested in how it is leveraged and insight derived from it.”
I agree with this and in particular the fact that managing content is becoming the wrong business process to succeed. The focus needs to be on managing peoples scarce attention rather than content.
“The main problem is that digital transformation is a veneer on top of existing systems. The system and processes architecture needs to be re-examined and thought put into processes for very real continuous improvement. Unfortunately most companies only pay lip service.”
This also rings true but it should be viewed in the context of one of the survey questions “Our information management strategy needs to be modernized to meet modern problems.” 92% of the respondents agreed with 64% of them “completely agreeing”.
Is the right term to describe all this “Content Services” as Gartner promotes or is it “Intelligent Information Management” that AIIM promotes? One thing is clear – change is coming.
