Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Cobalt 1, Ritz- Carlton, KL, Aug 28-29, 2007

I did not put my expectation too high for a conference like this as I walked down towards the hotel from Bkt Bintang monorail station. However looking at the list of the presenters I am hopeful and at the very least I would like to talk to them personally. The first thing I learned was that it is definitely shorter and easier to walk down Jalan Bukit Bintang towards Starhill rather then along Jalan Imbi. The conference rooms of Ritz-Carlton are actually linked to Starhill. I forgot actually I was there in the exact room for one masterclass before.

Cobalt 1 is small room and one look at the list of participants it is a very small conference despite the line-up of good speakers.

Before the conference starts I booted my laptop and discovered there is a free WIFI. So I was connected the rest of the day and it was useful to check for information and reference. I thought of blogging the conference live but decided not to.

Mr. Nagendran M. Perumal, Head of Semantic Technology Platform, MIMOS Berhad, MALAYSIA

The first speaker, Mr Nagendran, was from MIMOS and he supposed to talk about Semantic instead he talked more about KM and KM in Malaysia. The first two slides were really a nice surprise to me as he had historical items on KM Journey at MDC and KMAM. Both that I led and part off in a big way in 1999 and 2003 respectively. The speaker just did not realize that he has the person as his listener when he talked about it. MIMOS is using Sharepoints Portal with all the features and I sense the reality is that all of them not highly utilised.

Prof. Eric Tsui, Professor of Knowledge Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, HONG KONG

What Prof Eric shared with us is something that, more or less, we have journeyed through. His ECM framework comprises of Knowledge Audit, Taxonomy Creation and Maintenance, and RSS Feeds. For the knowledge audit he uses SNA to explore and understand the relationship of the subject he is dealing with. The result of the exercise also provides him with the map of what is the best possible way to structure his Enterprise Portal. He put emphasis on the development or adopting a very good taxanomy framework. However his facilitation workshop to develop the initial taxonomy was a bit simplistic to me. According to Prof Eric the combination of manual and automatic tagging is the best option to properly manage any critical assets. We also share the same believe that it is important to get everybody to tag their own information. The third component of his framework is RSS Feed and he proposed us to explore the newly launched Yahoo Pipes.

Mr. Tho Chee Kin, Practice Manager – Enterprise Content Management, Siemens Malaysia, MALAYSIA

I met Mr Tho when we visited Siemens a year ago and during his presentation he mentioned my name twice in emphasizing certain points. The first order of the day in implementing ECM according to him is to sell the business case to the management. Sustainable competitive advantage is one option and the other could be making the organization Agile, Efficient, and Compliant.

He defines ECM as the technologies used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes.

The issues mentioned and the business case put into place were common issues argued from the point of view of KM and we have been addressing some of them through various initiatives. However the concept of ECM is very important to understand, internalize and implement.

His suggested ECM Roadmap.

1 Understand the Technology and Capability
2. Identify Processes to be Implemented
3. Prioratise based on Need and ROI
4. Prepare Overall Plan (3-5 years)
5. Select Technology and Implementation Partner/s

He also stressed Change Management as key component for successful implementation.

Mr. Keith De La Rue, Knowledge Manager, Telstra, AUSTRALIA

Keith, whose works I used to read about, shared his KM experience at Telstra through implementing Online Document Library, iStore, ; a weekly web-based Sales KnowHow Bulletin; and Knowledeg Bites.

He called his strategy as a Middle-out strategy.

He started with no clear policy on storage and access; multiple sources of content, no single target audience view, start small and think big. Tow major key success factors are adopting an Open policy – Trust and instituting Reward for Knowledge Sharing. He admitted that most just fall into places and lucky that their Lotus Notes based system is scalable and easy to use.

Learning: It does not have to be big but only something practical and make sense to most. Trust is also key.

Mr. Kemal Hasandedic, National President, Records Management Association of Australasia, AUSTRALIA

ECM is defines as – Seamless integration of People, Content and Processes at Internet Speed.

Advocate continuous selling and communicating

Start with a pilot project and ‘seek opportunity’ – content management policy – emails management.

Mr. Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Principal, CMS Watch, USA

If you have heard CMS Watch you must have heard Alan and of course vice versa.

1. Basic question to ask is - Why we manage content?
2. To him ECM without Business Process Mgt is useless
3. WCM is always separate from ECM – taxonomy for web content is navigational whereas the ECM is internal.
4. Integration is key and ways to integrate – Portals, Workflow/Routing, BPM, EAI, ESB, EDI
5. Also the need to see ECM as a platform.
6. The right metadata, standard, policy in day one would help
7. Pay more attention to information or document life cycle.

Mr. Alok Shende, Vice President – ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan, INDIA

Future of ECM

Most of the content of his presentation have been covered by otherspeakers.

1. DRM = ECM
2. Records Mgt is no longer just document but might be process and a piece of a document
3. ECM/BI – Analytics - content usage behaviour
4. Value to corporate knowledge and low complexity – Blogs, wikis
5. Benefits – tangible

Panels Discussion:

1. Ms. Melissa Heng
Practice Manager – Business Intelligence, Siemens Malaysia, MALAYSIA
2. Mr. Arijit Chowdhury
Senior Business Intelligence Manager, Dell Inc., MALAYSIA
3. Prof Eric Tsui
4. Alan Pelz-Sharpe

Q: Who own content, content mgt and the portal?

Eric: Depends on governance models. Content Mgt – broken between dept, not clear within the industry
Alan: Governance – no owner, finding on is a nightmare. Content mgt – dept take ownership. Platform – IT

Q: Strategic roles within ECM value chain?

Eric: The importance of contents

Q: Challenges to implement BI?

Arjit, Eric: Structured data. Content analytics for unstructured data is the biggest challenge.
Alan: context of structured data sit within unstructured data
Eric: External content is also important. RSS, Links, reference are important to keep and track
Alan: Web content analytics is really taking off

Q: How to go about creating a policy?

Alan: Really slowly and patiently. Difficult stuff
Eric: Contextualise

Q: Implementation?

Alan: Involve as many as possible within the value chain
Eric: Agreed with Alan and part of change management
Alan, Eric: Hype is real in ECM.
Alan: Web Service enabled means nothing. Archive storage must be vendor natural

Learning:

1. Framework of ECM – overview
2. Map what we already have
3. Operationalise Content Management policy
4. Ensure standardization – metadata, taxonomy
5 Give due consideration to external content