The Enterprise Content Management Blog

Too Many Vendors Or Not Enough Innovation?

One of our contacts in the PR world sent over some thoughts after reading our continuing discussion about why content management companies fail. His remarks might not be terribly surprising for those of you that live and breathe content management, but they warrant a re-visit.

He got me thinking about an often-overlooked characteristic of the content management sector: the sheer saturation of vendors and solutions.

As he put it, "I think, from even just a pure economic perspective, the No. 1 reason a content management company will go out of business is because there's not enough room for all of them."

And why is that? Is it because of our propensity to view any company that touches content or manages data as a content management vendor? Or is it a classic case of the vendors' desires to be all things to all people? It's really a combination of both. It's just too easy to pass up a sales opportunity for companies that he says are "just trying to stay afloat."

That brings up the notion of innovation. If content management companies are just keeping their heads up above water, how can they think freely about what the next customer needs? And throw in the fact that the space has several publicly traded pure-plays along with what he described as the big dogs (Microsoft, IBM, EMC) and you have a sector on a quest for real differentiation.

The publicist to the CM stars also mentioned how tough it is to predict a long-term view of the industry, citing things like open source, SharePoint, and consolidation as potential speed bumps to growth and innovation. Open source has to be the one that looms the largest. As Alfresco's co-founder told me this week, "Open source is the only distribution model that can compete with Microsoft's distribution model."

Perhaps some of the CM vendors should take a page from the less-entrenched software companies building the knowledge worker apps of tomorrow. It's not just R&D tunnel vision and loads of cash that allow companies like Alfresco, Jive, and MindTouch to do what they do. It has more to do with taking a fresh look at your market and how you need to serve your customers. You see, Jen in Finance doesn't want another big repository that she has to search. She doesn't want to cut and paste content from different applications. She wants to mashup up her own content and she wants it to live and breathe in her own workspace.

I liked the way Jive's Sam Lawrence attacked the innovation thread earlier this week. He sent me his take on how enterprise software's heavyweights could eventually be overtaken by social software's up-and-comers.

This has obviously been debated ad nauseam, but the perfect storm of open source, cloud computing, and Web 2.0 certainly makes for interesting speculation.

The disruption he mentions already is being felt by CM vendors everywhere. When will it drive the innovation needed?

Technorati Tags: content+management,WCM,web+2.0,enterprise+2.0,mindtouch,jive+software,alfresco

Content Management Blunders From Down Under

The hits keep coming in from my "Top 5 Reasons A Content Management Company Will Go Out Of Business" post.  This time the comedy of errors experiences come from a university from the land down under, proving content management blunders serve us all on a truly global scale.

And just for the record, I'm painfully aware that most of the reasons apply to any technology company, certainly one that builds software.

• No.1 - You fail to thoroughly test your new releases, then delete any problem posts from your tech forum.
  
• No.2 - There's not enough interaction between front line technical staff and the engineers, so a problem goes for 3 months of "we haven't changed that" ends with a message from engineers with "oh yes we did".
  
• No.3 - When your documentation hasn't been properly reviewed for a new release, so it contains suggestions that haven't worked for two major releases
  
• No.4 -You have 'modular' products where you don't have to include all the pieces, but things are a bit strange if you don't. They're also problematic if you do, because you have to provide for customers that haven't bought them all.
  
• *No.5 - 'Upgrading' turns a functional testing machine into a non-functioning lump of silicon, that needs to have its OS reinstalled it is so far beyond being repaired.

Number 1 and number 4 are my favorites. The fourth one, describing the modular product pitch really hit home. The challenge with "marketing modular" is the modules become moving targets, updated in collateral and client pitches as frequently as new functionality can be dreamed up by management. Do everyone a favor and first make sure you have the an architecture in place to support your wild-eyed quest for more market share.

OK, I'm done.

First posted on InformationWeek's Content Management Blog.

Technorati Tags: information+week,content+management,CMS,content+management+blog

5½ More Reasons That A Content Management Company Will Go Out Of Business

I seemed to have touched a nerve in my recent entry about the top five reasons a content management company will go out of business, judging by the feedback received via e-mail, tweets, IM, and the blog.

My wife helped me compile the original list based on comments that she says I've repeatedly made over the dinner table. While I'm a little surprised that she was actually listening, she was surprised that companies could make the same mistakes over and over.

The next five reasons on my list come from an ECM executive who asked to remain anonymous because he said it would be too obvious which company he's talking about, and he's already been accused of having a bad attitude. Because that was such an interesting comment, I've decided to add it in as reason 5-1/2 that a content management company will go out of business:

5-1/2: When someone suggests you have a problem, you accuse them of having a bad attitude. I know the company is your baby, your sweat, your dreams. But the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Most people do not want you to fail, especially if you're providing their paycheck. Pause, listen, count to 10 and then try to fix the problem.

The next five reasons were suggested by Mr. Anonymous:

6: You change your model, and abandon your network. One fine morning you wake up and decide that your future is in professional services, and that the partners who have built your customer base for you are just stupid little companies that no one will miss.

7: You change your model without making the appropriate employee staff increases and investment. In spite of #6, you decide that your marketing and professional services people are too valuable to spend time helping your sales force sell product. You try to convince your partners that your professional services organization really isn't a threat to them and that you need your partners to do all of your proposing and demonstrations for you. You hope that your partners won't notice the disparity between #6 and #7.

8: You decide that your ownership of the desktop is just too important to be traded away, and users aren't going to adopt SharePoint because Microsoft can't be trusted and real companies don't use SharePoint.

9: You believe that your customers are locked into your products, because so many of their strategic business processes use your tools. Your customers would never replace someone who has sent them as many Christmas cards as you have.

10: You believe all the things in your press releases, because you like the way the people who write them dress and they use real URLs inside of text.

Keep'em coming.

First posted on InformationWeek's Content Management Blog.

Technorati Tags: content+management,business+strategy,information+week,CMS,ECM

Catching Up On Some AIIM Thoughts

I'm way behind getting this up but wanted to get some thoughts up for what it's worth.  Most of my AIIM updates a few weeks ago were via Twitter, which was a good exercise in conference blogging since most of it was done using my Samsung i-730 via SMS.

As far as the show,I came away sort of underwhelmed.I made some good contacts and met some fellow bloggers, but the show's excitement seemed muted. I kept digging for some real news or slivers of innovation as I circled the ECM vendor stations. Mostly I came up empty. Yeah, Oracle talked up Stellent and yes EMC was pitching platform updates, but that's just a day in the life of an enterprise software company. And outside of an audio announcement of FileNET's mock trial, they were incognito except for an IBM booth on the OnDemand (print) side. Yawn. Not surprisingly, most of the innovation came from hungrier solution providers and early-stage companies trying to make a name for themselves.

All that aside, I did get the sense there were real buyers roving the show floor. The Attensa guys (more on them later) confirmed my hunch saying the show provided real customers with real budgets..unlike what their colleagues experienced at the Web 2.0 Expo.

I only attended a few sessions and those were just as advertised - very focused and very topical. Luckily I was also fortunate enough to be in Xerox's eDiscovery roundtable, a very fluid session that was not only in-depth but also informative thanks to a good mix of analysts, columnists, and legal practitioners. Here's a link to the podcast. Thanks to Becky Dziedzic at Xerox for her hard work organizing the session.

< Photo | John Mancini and me >

The other thing I kept thinking was Questex Media, producer of the AIIM show, should take a page out of FAST's book and create an online community and year-round blog for the show. I just think it's ironic that one of the largest content shows around lacks any real online horsepower and savvy. There should be plenty of conversations taking place..where's the social networking? Here? Looks like that was for the press only. Note to the organizers: Give your audience a voice and let your community interact. We all might learn something.

The highlights for me were as followed:

• Xerox's new media push ( Ok, I'm sucking up a bit but their Second Life launch was interesting and their panel was impressive)
• Attensa's RSS platform - it's a three dog race between Newsgator, KnowNow, and Attensa.
• The Microsoft Solution Provider Pavilion - K2.Net, ClearView,  Meridio , and Russ Stalters' firm were a few that stood out. 
  
   
  < The Attensa team >

Technorati tags: AIIM, microsoft, ECM, ecm+vendors, oracle, stellent, EMC+documentum, john+mancini, attensa, clearview+ecm, k2.net, meridio, boston

OpenText is Blogging, uh, soon.

Oh what a small web world we live in..evidenced by what you can find trolling through your blog stats. I noticed a click-through came from ECM Briefs, the new blog launchpad from OpenText. Looks like Bill Forquer, head of biz dev, and top techie Brett Shellhammer will provide the commentary and news scraping. (Wonder if they'd join the newly formed Enterprise Content Management Network?)

"ECM Briefs are short, timely news items from around the world of enterprise content management. The Open Text communications team pulls together reports from events, news about customers, partners and new products, ECM industry trends and other topics. While much of the content is related to Open Text solutions, we strive to provide a broader industry perspective, as well."

OpenText obviously figured out you can accomplish a lot by by tapping into the stream of consciousness of your thought leaders. I bet there's not an OpenText customer out there who wouldn't subscribe to ECM briefs. If the conversation and insight fails to deliver any value, customers will kill it anyway. 

And for the remaining companies that haven't started channeling their insights, you're missing out on some huge opportunities. I recently saw a community develop right before my eyes, using a similar unified blogging approach.

Perhaps by eating their own blog and wiki dog food (powered by their own platforms), OpenText and others will open their eyes to the importance of creating a voice and fostering a sense of community.

P.S.

This is where I insert the shameless marketing widget for The ECM Network below: (email me if you think you should be included..there's almost 500 subscribers so far.) 

Technorati tags: open+text, ECM, ecm+vendors, blogs, business+blogs, marketing+2.0, enterprise+blogging, enterprise+software, ecm+briefs

$1600 Bucks For An ECM Conference?

An invite to EMC's Momentum 2007 Conference showed up this morning in my inbox -- with a $1600 price tag attached to it.

What do you guys think? Too much, not interested, wouldn't miss it? I'm not picking on EMC specifically, they just happened to be one of the next upcoming conferences.

So I'll ask everyone, are vendor conferences a dying breed? Are they doomed to be replaced by videocasts, skype conversations, and blogs?

And on the blog note, shouldn't EMC and others be reaching out to citizen media for coverage of these events? That point's been belabored many times but I still don't see many software companies doing it.

I'm not sure if the enterprise guys will ever move to the Unconference, but it would definitely shake things up a bit. I'm sure there's a PR firm already pitching the unconference approach to a mid-market software company as we speak.

But hey, at least EMC booked the Counting Crows. Wait, those guys haven't had a good song in more than a decade. Oh well, hopefully, the WiFi's good.

 

Technorati tags: emc, EMC+world+2007, emc+documentum, EMC+Momentum+2007, emc+vendors, unconference, counting+crows, user+conferences