Top Skills Webinar Review

The AIIM Top Skills webinar took place last week. The webinar revolves around a survey where 656 ECM industry participants answered questions about the skills, training and compensation for people in the industry with an eye on what it takes to move forward in your career. Over 1100 people registered and over 450 people attended the event.


The event was also covered on Twitter using the #TOPSKILLS hashtag. The conversation on the hashtag continues as people ask Doug Miles further questions about and discuss the results.


A number of good questions came out of the event:

•    What skills would you most like to improve?

•    What is the most desirable title?

•    What % of orgs are planning their first implementation?

•    What % of webinar viewers will take training in 2010?

•    What is the average salary for a records manager, an information architect, an IT manager, an LOB manager?

•    Will my salary go up if I raise my skills?


It was interesting to note that for IT folks, the skills they most wanted to improve revolved around records management. Not many records managers indicated an interest in raising IT skills however!


The most desirable title was Information Architect. In my experience this role is someone who leads the entire content management effort for an organization. A great example is Nancy Richards when she was at Swedish Medical. There is a good write up on her achievements in this role in this Infonomics article.


Another stunner was the percent of organizations that are planning their first implementation. For those of us who have been in the content management arena for years, it is easy to think every organization has been through many of these implementations. But of the respondents, 23% were planning their first significant project, and 16% were rolling out their first significant project. That means a lot of folks in the AIIM crowd are still looking for the basic information on workflow, taxonomy, repository setup, user roll out - the things we take for granted in a content management project.


Also interesting was the parity between IT and LOB for salary - it was closer than most people think.


Oracle sponsored this research as part of our ongoing support for the content management industry and the people in it. We'd be interested in your feedback regarding future research you'd like to see. And in the same spirit, Oracle is sponsoring an executive keynote panel at AIIM Expo, for the second year in a row. For more information you can see the AIIM Expo keynote page.

TopSkills Webinar

The AIIM Top Skills webinar will take place next week. This webinar is based on survey results asking content management practitioners “What are the Top Skills you need to move forward in your career?” It also talks about their organizations’ policies for training, and salary comparisons of a number of positions in the industry.

With over 700 content management respondents, there is some good data there. And with over 950 people signed up, a conversation on the event has begun – people are anticipating what some of the answers will be and sharing their own thoughts on what are the Top Skills needed – on Twitter at hashtag #TOPSKILLS. We will monitor the #TOPSKILLS hashtag during and after the event for questions and discussions, so join in the conversation!

Podcasting with Bex

So, I guess the first question is, what is Infoglut? This question kicked off my podcast with Brian “Bex” Huff on his co-authored book, “Transforming Infoglut! A Pragmatic Strategy for Oracle Enterprise Content Management.” Most of you know Bex – he’s an Oracle Ace and was a key developer at Stellent, so he’s pretty qualified to talk about the status and direction of content management. And he’s very passionate about what is right and what is wrong, including content management practices. So, as you would expect, he got on a bit of a rant, and it was fun to sit back and watch his intellectual sparks fly.

A couple of interesting points:
•    Because the CIO reports to the CFO, technology is a cost center instead of a center for innovation.  But this is going to change. Some studies suggest that data value will be seen as a line item in the balance sheet. So CIOs are going to be charged with more innovation.

•    Regarding social media, Bex states “I’m a serial-contrarian… Social media? As opposed to anti-social media?” What people are looking for are inspirational applications – applications that are “fun” to use.

•    Bex also provides his definition of Collaboration vs. Content Management vs. E20  - and three predictions for the industry in 2010.

You can hear it for yourself: http://bit.ly/6iTIXW

Forrester ECM Suites Wave 2009

Forrester just published their 2009 ECM Suites Wave. Forrester notes that Oracle Content Management is "a compelling option for many enterprises, especially those seeking to leverage investments in other Oracle applications." Oracle has licensed this for download, so have a look on us and enjoy.

Accounts Payable: Three Pathways to Efficiency

My colleague Jason Lamon just got his article published in Infonomics "Accounts Payable: Three Pathways to Efficiency." Jason has many years of expertise in document capture and imaging, and his article has a lot of depth in the details of how organizations can automate their processes.

1. Back-end Document Capture and Archive
While this level does not automate the process, it provides a solid base of content so that your processes are not disturbed if paper is lost. It also provides a good look up process when you need to refer back to an invoice - a lot better than going to the warehouse and dusting off some old boxes.

2.Front-End Document Capture and Data Entry
In this process, invoices are scanned and then routed for data entry. This still requires the manual process of data entry, but enables electronic review, which is much faster.

3. Front-End Capture and Workflow
This level provides full-blown workflow to route the processing and approvals. One additional area that can be included is document recognition and OCR, which can even automate the data entry process.

Jason also offers some guidelines for organizations to decide which level of automation they are a candidate for. It's a great read. You can follow Jason on Twitter @jasonlamon.

Putting Documents Into Business Processes

Most organizations agree that a lot of time is wasted looking for documents. In the webinar I did with Jim Pearce of Tallgrass Technologies last week (I'll post more about this later), his customer Missouri Division of Professional Registration, reduced costs associated with lost or misplaced documents by 92%. And one of the keys to these kinds of productivity gains is having the information in electronic format, and having it accessible from right inside the business processes.

On the heels of the Enterprise Application Documents announcement at Oracle OpenWorld ’09, Oracle is offering two webcasts that further explore the process improvements and ROI achieved by integrating Oracle Content Management with enterprise applications. The first webinar, titled “Quick and Easy Access to HR Documents,” shows how organizations can create an enterprise-wide document repository, decrease costs and cycle times of HR processes, ensure regulatory compliance, and improve PeopleSoft implementations by putting document and image access right into the PeopleSoft application window, where people need them.

The second webinar is titled “Transform E-Business Suite Processes with Integrated Document Management.” This webinar shows how by tightly integrating Oracle Content Management and Oracle E-Business Suite organizations can streamline operations, decrease cycle times, and reduce document storage and shipping costs, removing paper from high-volume transaction processes.

These two webinars complete the series that began this summer demonstrating Oracle Content Management integrations with Siebel Call Center and Siebel Sales and Siebel Marketing modules. From a single enterprise-wide document repository, organizations can search across content while enabling access to documents right in the business processes where they are needed.

Keeping Content Management Funded

How do you ensure your content management projects are funded at your organization? How do you ensure that your corporate leadership has visibility into your projects to protect them when times are tight?

I've just uploaded four videos that show the AIIM Keynote Panel. Top executives from four firms discuss how they keep their management aware and keep their projects vital. These four segments have been often quoted since they were recorded, in publications such as Fortune Online, but now you can see them in their entirety.

AIIM Keynote Panel Part 1
AIIM Keynote Panel Part 2
AIIM Keynote Panel Part 3
AIIM Keynote Panel Part 4

These clips are from the AIIM Conference Keynote Panel on the first day of AIIM 2009. In these videos:

• Molly Wenzler of MeadWestvaco discusses how she encouraged her executives to fund a new WCM project when they were not able to find their highest selling product on the web, or how to connect a prospect with a sales person
• Mike McKuras of BlueCross/BlueShield of Minnesota talks about how they looked at ECM as one giant project with a $24M price tag, and instead assign an ECM expert to every project to make sure that it is incorporated into the planning
• Todd Januzzi of Vornado Realty Trust speaks of how their content management has had a direct impact on their bottom line by making them better able to respond to document requests for real estate sales, and by freeing up office space by converting paper documents to electronic
  
• Lt. Col. JD Whitlock of U.S. Air Force Medical speaks about how they have made their content more accessible, improving the quality of the content and making their people more productive.

Let me know what you think. Leave a comment and tell me if these were useful, or what you would like to see presented next year - we are in the midst of choosing our topic and speakers.