AIIM is introducing a new and unique annual conference in San Francisco, March 20-22, 2012, and is looking for forward-looking and engaging presentations. Use this opportunity to share and discuss your strategy and lessons learned for using content to engage customers or staff; automate the processing of content; and controlling content in a social, local, and mobile era. Attendees will learn from thought-leaders and early adopters, while networking and connecting with their peers. Plan the future of content management in an era of social, local, and mobile technologies. The 2.5 day conference program will consist of a series of entertaining and thought-provoking 20 minute presentations by business and IT executives. Learn about opportunities, challenges, and possible solutions Get ideas and strategies from industry rock stars and early adopters Choose between 3 tracks covering content management strategies in an era of social, local, and mobile technologies: Engage: Use enterprise content to engage customer, partners, or staff Process: Automate the processing of enterprise content to improve business operations Control: Managing enterprise content and records to meet regulatory compliance Note that our goal is to have many presentations that will require participation by the attendees; e.g., the speaker shares a problem that the…

[Note: The opinions expressed in our 5 myths columns are those of the author.] Myth # 1 – We won’t save that much time or money if we cut paper out of our business processes. Reality: Time is money! Organizations that effectively use their workforce, technology and innovation can improve customer service, decision making and quality of goods and service. Leveraging an ECM solution can drastically cut the time it takes to get work done, freeing employees to focus on more important, revenue-generating or core organizational activities. In addition, hundreds of filing cabinets and offsite document storage make finding a specific document more difficult than it should be. White Memorial Medical Center in Los Angeles is saving approximately $100,000 in offsite document storage costs per year with an ECM solution. The cost of transferring paper files to and from the storage facility, and of moving hard copy charts throughout the hospital, has been reduced by nearly $20,000 per year. Myth #2 – The ROI for ECM systems is mostly about reducing paper consumption. Reality: Many ECM implementations get their initial ROI from paper reduction. But, ongoing savings related to automating processes, resulting in reduced labor costs, and improved efficiency and…

I just got back from vacation. We go to perhaps the most boring place in the world for vacation, but that’s how I like it. (Just FYI, while at the beach I stumbled upon an article I wrote about our beach from 12 years ago while doing a Google search. Proof that electrons live forever – caution, kiddies – but that’s another story. Here’s the link; scroll down to a “Traveler’s Guide to Buxton.” The place is called Buxton, NC, on the beach at Cape Hatteras. Whenever they give hurricane directions, they always refer to our beach. Stumbling across the article and thinking about our 30 years at this strange location, it occured to me that my time at the beach has been characterized by three main phases – phases that map directly to the revolution going on in information management. Phase One (1981-1995) – What is Connectivity? – There was no cable on the island, and it was too far for a TV signal, so there was no TV. The small hotel we stayed in did not have telephones in the room, and of course, we had no cell phones. So if you needed to make a call, you…

Here are some headline points from our just released SharePoint and ECM survey. Just as a reminder, downloading the survey results is free, but you do need to register on the site. SharePoint and ECM survey highlights: Only 8% of SharePoint users have completed their upgrade to the 2010 version, whereas 21% are deploying 2010 as a first use. Of these 6% are live. 28% are in the process of upgrading from 2007 to 2010. Half of the user base expects to be live on 2010 by the end of 2011. 36% of responding organizations consider they have SharePoint “in use across the enterprise for content management.” Included are 11% with no other content systems, 19% running unconnected ECM/DM/RM systems running in parallel and just 6% who have SharePoint fully integrated with other systems. A third of organizations have 90-100% of active users with licensed access, predicted to grow to over half in 12 months time. IT is by far the most advanced department for adoption and use, followed by Line-of-Business – likely reflecting the widespread use for project management. The IT department is in charge of SharePoint in all but 28% of organizations. Only 17% have a representative governance…