Crossing the Chasm – Backwards!

Unless you have been hiding under a rock, you can’t have missed the “Future of ECM” project that AIIM has been working on with Geoffery Moore, author of the famous “Crossing the Chasm” book, documenting the shift from Systems of Record to Systems of Engagement, as the main driver for the future of ECM.

First of all let me say that I’m 100% behind this principle. Although not necessarily agreeing with all the points in the report, I wholeheartedly believe that the fundamental behaviour shifts that underlie Enterprise 2.0 and Social Networking, are defining a new type of “content” that is not constrained by the same parameters that we manage in ECM systems today, and will therefore need an altogether new approach to managing and governing it. And as that content is still fundamentally text-based (I don’t like using the term unstructured), the ECM industry is the right place for that transition to happen.

Anyone following my (sparse) blogs, will know that I’ve written about this the same topic before:

• Is it a record? Who Cares? & Is it a record – take 2! and
• GoogleWave killed the ECM Star

What I find fascinating however, is that the current market dynamic described in AIIM’s study, in some ways contradicts the original “Crossing the chasm” model that Geoffrey Moore developed. Instead of the adoption curve lagging behind software innovation, we now have the bizarre scenario where the market is ahead of the software. The ubiquitous presence of social networking tools, connect-everywhere-24×7 smart mobiles and online-presence-savvy Gen-Y “I want it in an App” teenagers, means that the market adoption is dragging the software industry, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century. Software vendors are playing catch-up with the market demand and new information management models (e.g. Systems of Engagement) are being invented to reconcile the IT industry status, with the market that is already defined out there, demanding these new capabilities.

So we’re crossing the  chasm backwards! We’re no longer educating the luddite users of the amazing benefits of the the latest and greatest IT innovation, waiting for the end-user market to mature. Instead,  the market demand is dragging the luddite software vendors into producing real customer-driven, agile, adaptive, consumable enterprise software that has to keep up with the snazzy, clever, sexy and dynamic capabilities that consumer users are already enjoying on their mobile phones in their personal lives.

Today, there is a fundamental difference between the speed that the market develops, versus the speed that software is being produced.  So, while the Information Management principles explored in AIIM’s study are absolutely valid and relevant, they need to be developed in tandem with new, better, faster, cheaper, more focused software development & marketing methods. Otherwise the chasm will only become bigger.

What IS the value of a document?

I just read an interesting blog “What is the cost of a Lost Document” by Jeff Shuey.

The points he makes about the risk of not capturing information appropriately, are of course valid and often quoted in the world of document management. But it got me thinking on a more fundamental issue: How do you determine what the real value of a document is?

Clearly not all documents have the same value: losing a grocery receipt is fundamentally different to losing your driver’s license or your passport. Misplacing an expenses claim receipt might be worth £20, misplacing a vital piece of evidence in a litigation case might be worth £20 million. Today’s Financial Times is vital for making business decisions tomorrow, but worthless recycling paper next week.

Which makes the generic numbers like the PriceWaterhouse ones quoted in the Jeff’s blog seem just as relevant as ordering clothes for 2.75 children.

So how can we measure the value of a document? What is it worth? None of the Content Management systems that I’m aware of today, have provisions for assigning individual value to stored content, let alone managing its lifecycle differently based on that value.

Is it even possible to determine the value of a document? (And for the purposes of this discussion “a document” could be anything from a 140-character tweet message, to a 300,000-page drug application…) Where does the value come from?

• The cost and effort of preparing or acquiring it?
• The cost of storing it and managing it?
• The context in which it has been used in the past, or may be used in the future?
• Its rarity or brevity or accuracy?
• Its relevance now? Its potential relevance in the future?
• How often it has been accessed and referenced and by whom?
• Who it is relevant to?
• The length of time that it retains its value?
• At what point does its value peak and when does it wane?
• The risk it carries, by its existence or by its absence?
• etc., etc. …

The list goes on! And this is before we even start thinking about assigning metrics or actual monetary value to any of the above.

Common sense says it’s probably some combination of all of the above. But do we measure any of this today? Should we?

Imagine the potential scenarios, if every document in a Content Management system carried a continually adjusted “Relative Content Value” property (You’ve heard it here first: a document’s RCV! ). We could easily foresee…

• A system that automatically discards a document, because it’s readily and securely available online, storing a reference instead
• A system that automatically archives and protects an email that has been used in contract negotiations
• A system that automatically hides a document that contains personal or confidential information
• A system that automatically discard or hides documents that have repeatedly appeared in search results but nobody chooses to read
• A system that automatically relocates content to different risk mediums based on its value
• A system that automatically calculates insurance premiums for insuring against loss of its content, based on the total content’s value to the organisation
• A system that can determine the likely life expectancy of a document, based on the history of how similar documents have been accessed in the past.
• A system that would notify you, the author, when facts in your original research sources have been disputed or have changed, rendering your document misleading.
• etc., etc. …

Actually, we have technologies today to implement most of these things, if we knew what that “relative content value” was. What we are missing is a coherent way of calculating and storing that value on an ongoing basis.

Which brings me back to my original conundrum: Is it ever possible to determine what IS the value of a document? How?

George