Beware the Information Architecture Trap

IBM’s intranet information architecture is not good enough for you; nor is Microsoft’s. 

Trap Number One: Looking Outward

When redesigning an intranet or portal, there is a natural inclination by some architects and consultants to reinvent the IA to best reflect what others have done, or simply copying what has worked for "best practice" or "award-winning" intranets. This of course is the most dangerous trap.

It doesn’t matter what Microsoft, IBM or Google has for their intranet, and how they structured their IA, your organization is not theirs. No outside consultant or architect could truly appreciate and know intimately the culture and the formal and informal corporate nomenclature as those who have worked for an organization for years.

An effective information architecture best reflects the most common vernacular of the organization — the most used or common words for describing things.

Information architecture is essential to a successful site. An IA provides a content blueprint for navigating the intranet. It is the science of labeling and placing information where it can be found and reused easily — and quickly.

Information architecture (IA) is mostly science with a hint of art. As it relates to the intranet, the IA is best represented by a site map or organization chart of the major information or content categories (parents) and the sub-categories (children) and how they all relate to each other. IA is generally defined as the content structure of a website or intranet, or the structure or framework for how content is categorized and labeled in relation to other content. In short, IA is the art and science of structuring, labeling and categorizing content.

And yet, most intranets fail to understand the most critical component of effective intranet information architecture — employees need to construct the information architecture. This is not to say they literally take-up the physical architecting, but rather must be involved in the process, and formally engaged for feedback via interviews, testing and card sorting.

An expert should craft the final information architecture, but not without first intimately knowing and understanding the common vernacular, language and specific needs of the employee audience.

Trap Number 2: Getting Cute

Another poisonous trap: cute labels.

The antidote: old, tired labels that everyone knows should be kept.

@Work, MyPlace, MyWork — all new age labels for the same old category, HR (Human Resources). Why on Earth, if there’s been an HR section on the intranet for 8 years, would anyone rename it MyWork?

A tried, tested and true label replaced with something a high-priced consultant only dreamed up the night before represents a major mistake. Go with what you know, with what employees know; old labels may seem tired, but if everyone knows and understands it, then it should be left alone.

When redesigning the intranet, stick with what works: tried, tested and simple. And for god’s sake, don’t be cute about information architecture.

Image repurposed from original by Linn Currie (Shutterstock)

Editor's Note: Toby not only talks the talk, he walks the intranets walk. Read more with Building a Social Intranet

About the Author

Toby Ward is Founder and CEO of Prescient Digital Media, and the author of the Intranet Information Architecture white paper (October 2012).

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

GRC Roll-up: TransPerfect Buys Digital Reef, Guidance Upgrades EnCase e-Discovery

There have been a number of announcements in the GRC space in recent weeks, including the acquisition of Digital Reef by TransPerfect. Varonis has also upgraded DatAdvantage, while Guidance has upgraded its e-Discovery product. There is also a new resource for e-Discovery documentation.

TransPerfect Buys Digital Reef

We’ve been talking about Digital Reef since it opened in 2006, particularly its e-Discovery software, which it has been delivering as an on-premises solution since the start, and as SaaS a bit later.

One of its really attractive components for enterprises in recent times has been its ability to process Big Data. In fact, that ability has been such a pull that TransPerfect Legal Solutions, a US-based legal services provider, has decided not just to invest in the Big Data capabilities, but to buy out Digital Reef completely.

For those who think this might be an extreme way of developing Big Data abilities, consider how quickly this IT area is developing and how much the demand for Big Data processing is going to grow in coming years — especially around the compliance and regulatory space. 

Already, for legal service providers, it is almost mandatory to be able to provide this ability, and TransPerfect can now do it through the Digital Reef buy.

No details of the deal were released, but the idea appears to be to provide early case assessment and large-scale e-discovery to TransPerfect clients as soon as possible. It should also help TransPerfect with its marketing initiatives, as Digital Reef has been known for its ability to scale up or down easily, making it a runner for companies of all sizes.

Guidance Upgrades EnCase

Guidance Software has also been busy in recent days with the announcement that it has just upgraded EnCase e-Discovery to version 5. Guidance strengthened its position in Gartner’s MQ for e-Discovery this year, and it says that with this release its position should be strengthened even more.

EnCase v5 offers seamless integration with Guidance’s other product CaseCentral, the cloud-based e-discovery review and production application. The result is that EnCase now offers in-house counsel control and oversight of the entire e-discovery process — from hold to collection to review and production.

Apart from the CaseCentral integration, there are a number of significant improvements with this version, Guidance says, particularly its parallel processing capabilities and enhanced search and indexing algorithms.

Overall, it provides integrated e-discovery as well as security and risk management to ensure enterprise compliance, regardless of the vertical.

It also comes with early and continuous case assessment, enabling legal teams to quickly obtain necessary facts at any time from pre- through post-collection phases.

Varonis Releases Varonis DatAdvantage v5.8

Meanwhile, Varonis has announced the release of Varonis DatAdvantage v5.8, which, it says, will make data governance not only more flexible and easier to manage, but also cheaper.

DatAdvantage manages both unstructured and semi-structured data while reducing network overheads. The latest enhancements offer better audit and data access control, as well as the ability to identify and classify data owners and oversee entitlement and authorization processes.

Varonis also says that this version has added some considerable improvements to the architecture, particularly the introduction of internally developed collectors that can operate in tandem or as an alternative to Varonis probes running Microsoft SQL. This enables data collectors — a component used for metadata collection — to compile the information with a SQL server. If you want to try it out, there is a 30-day free trial available.

eDJ e-Discovery Resources

Also in the e-discovery space, the eDJ Group has just launched the e-DiscoveryMatrix. The subscription research site is aimed at companies that are considering implementing an e-discovery solution, or those that have a solution, but are not sure they are getting everything they should out of it. 

eDJ, which is the company behind the e-DiscoveryJournal, says that the site will offer information governance professionals completely unbiased information about e-discovery best practices, trends and technologies along with research and information about more than 250 e-discovery applications, and 150 feature articles submitted by solution providers and e-discovery experts.

In addition to research reports and data analysis, the eDiscoveryMatrix offers a comprehensive analysis of the eDiscovery solutions marketplace.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Should Justin Bieber Invest In Your Enterprise Solution?

In recent years, an increasing number of startups and big-name companies have looked to celebrity backers to boost their brands and street cred. Here, four questions to ask your celebrity investor before taking the plunge.

Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, 50 Cent, Ashton Kutcher: A-list celebs, sure. But they're also members of a Who's Who of new-age venture capitalists and product developers. That is, at least according to public perception.

In recent years, an increasing number of startups and big-name companies have looked to celebrity backers to boost their brands and street cred: investors in Airbnb and Spotify include Hollywood stars and chart-topping artists; Beats Electronics has created headphones for Diddy, David Guetta, and Lebron James; and Justin Bieber recently graced the cover of Forbes under the the headline, "Venture Capitalist." But what they get depends on how much these celebrities are actually involved in their investments. What makes celebrity investment better than a traditional celeb endorsement of, say, McDonald's or Pepsi?

For a number of reasons--the generally sensitive nature of investments, sharp-elbowed celebrity publicists, and so forth--rarely does the public get insight into this area. But certainly the perception, at least in the press, is that certain celebrities have an innate business sense. Speaking with a range of entrepreneurs in the space, we look to see whether this reputation is warranted, or whether it's just Hollywood marketing 2.0. Below, a cheat sheet for you to tell the difference.

Are they Beliebers in your product?

For most entrepreneurs, it all comes to what celebrities represent the right fit for their startups, and whether they are authentically interested in the products themselves. Sure, popular celebrities can bring much attention to a startup, but they have to engage with a startup's products in order for the relationship to be effective. For one entrepreneur, with backing from several A-list celebrities, it's incredibly important that a celebrity actually believe in a product before investing in it. For example, the entrepreneur says, the celebrities interacting with the product, whether on TV or elsewhere in the media, brings an attention that is unrivaled so long as it's genuine. "There's kind of an intangible value to that," the entrepreneur says. "That's something you almost can't put a price on."

Robert Brunner of design firm Ammunition LLC, which has notably developed the Beats by Dre headphones, agrees that authentic involvement is crucial, though acknowledges it varies from celebrity to celebrity. "It always works best when the celebrity is involved for reasons other than economics--where there's an actual passion there. With Dr. Dre, he's been fairly involved with the physical design, and really gets involved in the tuning and the sound. This is personal to Dre; it's a reflection of him," Brunner says. "Some other [celebrities] though, well, I've never met, and only get feedback through three levels of channels."

One startup founder, who has myriad celebrity investors, argues that a celebrity's involvement must be mutually beneficial to both brands. "You don't want someone making an investment just like they're selling some new bottled water," the founder says. "It's not like signing a deal with Pepsi where you have to do three events and a commercial. Are they really emotionally invested--and not just financially invested--in the product?"

In that sense, it doesn't matter how many followers a celebrity has on Twitter or how much engagement they could potentially create. If they're not the right fit for your startup--and your product--then it won't matter. In other words, microloan platform Kiva might not want Charlie Sheen as an investor. Inversely, Lindsay Lohan might not have been the right fit to have invested in enterprise social network Yammer before it was acquired. "[Celebrities] probably shouldn't go investing in productivity tools," the founder jokes.

Are you starstruck?

Talk to entrepreneurs about celebrity backers and you'll inevitably soon be talking about press attention. "If you look across TechCrunch once a day, you're likely to see at least five companies with big-name angel investors," the startup founder says. "But I don't feel it's all that useful to have a name--to just have a vanity investor. It's not just a matter of getting any celebrity X, Y, Z."

Brunner too contends that it works much better when "it's more than just a name play," when it's not just "hollow celebrity branding." He cites doing design reviews with Pharrell and Lady Gaga, who get involved with the product development to provide feedback and inspiration.

"Name recognition hasn't meant anything to us," says the entrepreneur with A-list backers--a celebrity endorsement can't mask a poor product. The product has to be able to stand on its own.

Having celebrity investors is beneficial beyond what headlines their names can generate, most argue. "They're involved in the product itself, the decisions we're making, giving us input on what they think we should be doing across the board," the entrepreneur says. The startup founder agrees, explaining that celebrities are also very "helpful with introductions, with campaign and promotional ideas."

Is Kim Kardashian really the New Reid Hoffman?

Still, as much as celebrities might boost engagement among fans, provide feedback and marketing prowess, as well as generate media buzz, the fact remains that celebrities are not exactly venture capitalists or product gurus, at least in the traditional sense. Sure, Bieber might be slated a new-age VC, but as the startup founder told me, "It's like he understands liquidation preferences or how to structure a term sheet."

So be warned: Don't expect Kim Kardashian to lead your Series B round. But also remember that celebrities entourage--for every Vincent Chase, you're likely going to get an Ari Gold. "They have smart managers, smart lawyers, and smart agents--they're looking to bet on companies and categories that are going to be winners," says the startup founder.

Have you considered the downsides?

One source deeply involved with the celebrity investment community describes the downsides of working with artists and actors: "The problem is most of the higher-level celebrities do not know or understand good design. They kind of know what they think is cool or looks cool, but it doesn't necessarily translate into good products. Another thing dealing with musicians is that in the music industry, you can change a recording until the last second it's published. You really can't do that on a product. So the problem I constantly run into is people wanting to go fuck around with this stuff late in the process which is just catastrophic on a development schedule."

Source : fastcompany[dot]com

Study: In the Enterprise, Tablets Without Training Can Mean Anything But Sales

As an increasing number of tablets make their way into the enterprise, and as companies scramble to establish BYOD policies, there remains an important question:  is anyone making an effort to train the users about the proper use of their devices? The folks at the SAVO Group were also curious about this.

Tablets - Training = Angry Birds (and Bosses)

SAVO Group cites a study conducted by the Sales Management Association (SMA), "Mobility: Where Your Sales Force is Heading (With or Without You)". The study found that among the 26 percent of participants who reported their organizations are providing tablets for sales representatives and the 43 percent who said their organization supported the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend, an overwhelming 67 percent are not being trained on best practices for utilizing the tablet during customer interaction.

The study also revealed that respondents were using tablets for communication, web access and social media applications rather than customer presentations or CRM applications. In the absence of formal training and policies, tablets are quickly becoming a costly investment in email, social networking — and no doubt, Angry Bird tournaments — for sales representatives.

Adopt an Effective Tablet Strategy

What can you do to ensure that some enterprise tablet users don’t disrupt your organization? SAVO Group recommends having a clear adoption strategy, prior to deployment, noting that it should include training those who will using tablets for specific purposes related to sales, inventory or customer service. Not only will this serve to increase adoption, but ultimately, it can also help to drive revenue growth.

Organizations should also consider aligning their applications with a sales process and distributing well-defined usage goals. This is particularly important as 77 percent of those surveyed mentioned their desire to include sales process integration with their iPad adoption. Participants also weighed in on the types of tablet applications that would make them valuable for sales representatives. Most often mentioned were apps that included:

• Access to approved corporate materials (74 percent)
• Virtual white boarding (74 percent)
• Multimedia applications (69 percent)
• Webcast hosting (63 percent)

While there is a strong feeling in the industry that tablets won't be replacing laptops anytime soon, it's clear that they can play a role in the enterprise — provided they don’t compromise your security or complicate tasks. But like any emerging technology, it’s important to educate and promote awareness about how to use it so that it becomes an empowering tool — not a disruptive one.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

The Digital Workplace: The Need for Good Practices in a Complex Work Environment

Today's workforce has a growing number of tools at their disposal to communicate, collaborate and get work done. But there is a concurrent increase in workflow complexity, which, left unmanaged, results in time lost and inefficiencies. It's time to bridge the gap between the two.

For easily repeatable tasks, the process has often been defined and implemented in the systems you are using, such as an ERP system. In knowledge-intense and highly dynamic and collaborative work environments, processes are often barely repeatable (check out Thingamy for more on the concept of barely repeatable processes).

This means that knowledge workers who participate in a task have to design or redesign the process each time it is executed. Much more is required from those who participate in a barely repeatable process than an easily repeatable. Instead of simply following instructions created by a process engineer, you have to be a process engineer yourself and design the process on the fly as you execute it.

Efficient Practices Lead to Results

In such a work environment, it is very important to have efficient practices — ways to perform common individual tasks — that allow you to execute the job in an efficient way. You also need to have those practices in common with the other people who will be involved, otherwise you will have to revert to “whatever works” practices, using the most convenient but not necessarily most suitable tools and methods to collaborate, such as email and ad hoc physical meetings.

Here’s my key point: how efficiently tasks and processes are executed is very much dependent on the practices and tools used. For example, there can be extreme differences in efficiency between a scenario where you co-author content by emailing documents back and forth and a scenario where you can co-author the content directly using a tool like Google Docs or the co-authoring capabilities of SharePoint 2010 in Word.

First Identify the Problem

When I talk to people they often recognize the symptoms of bad practices, but they often lack the insight and awareness of what causes the symptoms and why, which of course makes it harder to treat and cure the “disease." Many of the underlying problems can be fixed by developing better practices using new tools. 

You hear people complaining about too many emails and information overload and when they hear about new tools or new ways of working, they often react negatively, saying they can’t handle more tools or information. What you really need to do is to help them get an understanding of why their situation looks like it does and that it is related to how they currently work with information and communicate and collaborate with each other.

It all starts with asking questions:

• How do you overcome geographical and time differences, i.e. how do you handle a task that involves several people but all people cannot be physically present at the same time to execute the task?
• How do you overcome organizational barriers, .i.e. how do you involve external parties in the execution of a task or process? How do you exchange information with external parties in secure and efficient ways?
• How and where is information created, stored, organized, shared and accessed for each task?
• How and where is information created for one task made available for other tasks performed later by the same or other people?
• How and where are tasks that are inter-dependent coordinated? How do you get notified about the need to execute a certain task, and how do you signal current status to the people you collaborate with — that it has been executed, delayed, interrupted or stopped?
• How and where is information shared in an efficient way to stakeholders that need, or could need, the information?
• How are generic, frequently performed tasks carried out, .e.g.
  • Find information
  • Find a person
  • Co-create information
  • Update information
  • Review information
  • Collect feedback

The Solution Often Already Exists

When questions such as the ones above have been asked and answered, we need to ask ourselves how existing — and new — technologies can be leveraged to work smarter and be used to develop better practices, in particular for tasks that require collaboration and interaction between several people from different organizations, locations and time zones. 

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

What a Difference 30 Years Makes: Megatrends Redux

It’s been thirty years since John Naisbitt published his landmark book, Megatrends, exploring a number of major changes in society, ten to be exact, likely to impact the way we live, work and govern ourselves. Looking back across those three decades, it’s clear that Naisbitt got a lot right and a few things wrong about the information society whose arrival he recognized.

What may be useful to us, however, are the trends he saw in the early 1980s, the variables he expected to shape and balance the resulting changes and the reasons some of those variables didn’t behave as he predicted.

Industrial to Information

First, to his credit, Naisbitt saw and made his first chapter about the rise of an information society in place of the industrial society we had been living with since the end of WWII.

Although the personal computer had only just made its appearance in the late 1970s and while many commentators were still grappling with the end of the industrial age, seeing nothing coherent on the horizon, Naisbitt recognized that information would become the critical resource and wealth in a new “information society.” He reasoned that society would need a new knowledge theory of value to replace earlier labor-based theories because, he also reckoned, we would “mass produce information” the way we used to mass produce hard goods.

He was right of course, and we are mass producing information, or at least data, in volumes that even he couldn’t have conceived. However, the fact that so many information utilities, social media and search engines most notable among them, still rely on advertising for their revenue suggests that we haven’t quite yet solidified that new theory of information value.

Searching Isn’t Always Finding

Use a modern search engine and you will see that the creation side of the information equation is charging ahead full steam. But try finding a complex or subtle item of information on the Internet and you will also see a location side still struggling. As the glut of content mounts, the need for a comprehensive and universally understood way of identifying information so that it is easily available and not buried in a gazillion search engine hits, grows with it.

The brick and mortar library world addressed this problem as early as 1876 when Melville Dewey came up with his decimal classification system and in 1908 when the Library of Congress adapted Cutter’s dictionary cataloging scheme. The process of assigning classifications to content was further organized with the 1967 publication of the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules or AACR.

But with the rise of automation in the 1960s, the library world panicked at the thought of those new computer people invading their sandbox and much of the momentum and progress was lost, sending the content world essentially back to square one trying to figure out what an effective cataloging scheme should look like — working for Xerox Education Division back then, I witnessed some of this happen and it wasn’t pretty.

Complicating the process were multiple schemes, developed by different players with different perspectives, different funding, even from different parts of the world, but all convinced that they were right and none much interested in consensus.

The search engine world hasn’t helped either: after all, effective content cataloging reduces the need for their systems by providing pre-configured paths to information and if you don’t need to search the entire Internet to find information, you likely won’t see or respond to the ads that provide the lion’s share of Google’s (et al) revenue. So we spend most of our time searching through everything for tidbits of information that often exist only in a few places.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Umbraco Web CMS 4.9 Focuses on the Editor Experience, Rich Media

The open source content management system Umbraco may have dropped version 5, but the refocus on version 4 has brought some nice improvements and a number of bug fixes.

The free, ASP.Net-based Umbraco is designed for building websites — from small campaign or brochure sites to large media-based sites — and complex Web applications.

Umbraco, which bills itself as a  “priceless CMS at the cost of virtually nothing,” was first released in version 2.0 in 2005, which was also when the first developers conference, called CodeGarden, was held. Unfortunately a turn in the wrong direction resulted in dropping the next major version of the Web CMS to go "back to the basics".

“The early days of Umbraco was the result of a wonderful collaboration between three guys in Copenhagen,” wrote one of those guys, Niels Hartvig, on the Umbraco blog. He added that, “almost eight years later — I’m smiling again” because of the new release.

Focus on the Editor Not the Developer

Umbraco 4.9 features a revised editor, easier integration of third-party videos and images, and a new media library. In addition, the new version includes more than 50 “big” bug fixes, incorporated from submissions by over 20 contributors.

The application now supports HTML5 uploads to the media section, and there’s a new folder content overview that can be filtered and from which common actions can be applied to media items.

The Media button in the Rich Text Editor now supports the oEmbed standard in its embedder, and the code editor for templates, scripting and XSLT templates has been upgraded. Creating and inspecting relation types can now be conducted from the backoffice.

Umbraco 4.9

Umbraco Gets Its Focus Back With a Little Help

Hartvig said, “September 2012 feels like October 2004 on steroids.”

He also noted that, in the past quarter, the number of improvements submitted by external contributors for the Umbraco core is higher “than any other quarters combined.”

Umbraco said that, for this Microsoft platform, it is in the top five most popular server applications and among the ten most popular open source tools. Umbraco HQ is the privately-owned commercial entity that provides support, a bug-fixing warranty and productivity-enhancing add-ons for the open-source product.

Umbraco HQ said the application is used by over 110,000 active websites, including the Davis Cup, Heinz, Peugeot, Hersheys and Microsoft’s Official ASP.NET website. HQ is based in Odense, Denmark, and maintains offices in Bellingham, Washington and Southport, Australia.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Google Study: 9 in 10 Consumers Engage in Sequential Device Usage

As the number of Internet-enabled consumer devices continues to grow, so does the propensity of consumers to sequentially use multiple devices to complete a single online task. In fact, according to a new study from Google, 90 percent of people move among devices to accomplish a goal.

Results of “The New Multi-screen World: Understanding Cross-Platform Consumer Behavior” indicate that these devices can include smartphones, PCs, tablets or TV. Examples of how consumers sequentially use multiple devices for a single task include opening an email on a smartphone and then finishing reading it on a home PC and looking up product specs on a laptop after seeing a TV commercial. And 98 percent of sequential screeners move between devices in the same day to complete a task.  

The most popular reasons for sequential device usage include web browsing (81 percent), shopping online (67 percent), managing finances (46 percent) and planning a trip (43 percent). Eighty-one percent of sequential online shopping is spontaneous, which Google credits to the widespread availability of smartphones.

The other primary way of using multiple devices is simultaneous use, meaning using more than one device at the same time. This includes both multitasking — performing different tasks on different devices — and complementary usage such as looking up a product online while watching a TV commercial.

Seventy-seven percent of the time, TV viewers have another device plugged in — with smartphones (49 percent) and PCs/laptops (34 percent) the most popular.

Search Connects Devices

The study also found search to be a critical connector between devices used sequentially. Consumers use search to pick up on a second device where they left off on the first 63 percet of the time they are conducting multi-device search, 61 percent of the time they are browsing the Internet using multiple devices, 51 percent of the time they are shopping online via multiple screens, and 43 percent of the time they are using more than one device to watch online video.

In response, Google advises digital marketers to allow customers to save their progress between devices, as well as use tactics like keyword parity (maintaining the same keywords across different publishers and the three primary match type silos of broad, phrase and exact) to ensure that they can be found easily via search when that customer moves to the next device.

Consumers Combust into Spontaneous Search

Study findings show that 80 percent of searches that happen on smartphones are spur-of-the-moment, and 44 percent of these spontaneous searches are goal-oriented. And more than half (52 percent) of PC/laptop searches are spontaneous, with 43 percent goal-oriented. Google says this presents more opportunities to connect with consumers, so businesses have to make sure they’re present and optimized across multiple screens.

Advertisers and Publishers Take Heed

In an interview with AdWeek, Google head of global mobile sales and strategy Jason Spero said direct-response advertisers “cannot ignore the sequential use of devices because it’s a direct effect on how we shop and how we purchase. A brand advertiser — and many, many, many brand advertisers spend on TV — can’t ignore how the connected device is being used to complement TV.” 

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

OpenText: 5 Components Of its New Enterprise Information Strategy

Many companies faced with a growing number of channels and ways to access information just push ahead and hope they will hit on the right formula to stay in the enterprise information management space (EIM). Not OpenText. The changes in the market are so profound, its new CEO Mark J. Barrenechea has redefined the company’s strategy in five key areas.

OpenText’s Strategy

In fairness, there isn’t a huge change in strategy to the one that it has been following over the past couple of years, but the fact that it has been written down and that OpenText is publicizing the strategy does indicate that it is very clear as to where the company is going, at least in the medium term.

Obviously, the announcement is all part of the getting-to-know-you process between Barrenechea and the rest of the information management world after his appointment and the retirement of John Shackleton last January.

But it is also the sign of a confident company in the face of a market that is changing at an incredible rate; a case of “this is where we are, and this is where we’re going”, something many companies are still struggling with at the moment. Summarizing enterprise concerns and where the new strategy comes from, Barrenechea said:

We live in a world where the firewall is no longer the boundary for business…Today, information is mobile and lives everywhere - in the cloud and on premises. Organizations planning for the future require new, more dynamic ways to utilize information across social and mobile applications, manage everything from compliance to security leaks and enhance business processes and information exchange with customers, employees and partners…”.

Cloud, Data, Mobile Strategy

And that’s the key to this strategy. OpenText is building a business that is cloud-based, data-centric, mobile-enabled and agile. While it is not throwing out the old-ways — on premises applications and the like — it is fully embracing the new.

The change process began last year, Barrenechea says, before he came on board, but it is he who will develop and implement the strategy.

Generally speaking, it focuses on the next generation of enterprise software that will enable users to get the best out of their information, while at the same time still offering full governance, compliance and security.

Five EIM Pillars

As yet, there isn’t a huge amount of detail about this strategy, but we will be talking to OpenText over the coming days to fill out the skeleton we do have. In the meantime, these are the five pillars moving forward:

1. Enterprise content management: OpenText says that it will continue to build enterprise content management systems that offer users better insight into their data and provide more impact on their business. It also covers the development of information security solutions, ensuring confidentiality, privacy and access.
2. BPM: Another OpenText favorite and one that it will also continue to build on offering improved business impact, automation and management of business processes. In the OpenText stable it also comes with dynamic case management for multi-step processes as well and business modelling.
3. Customer Experience Management: Barrenechea also says they will be building around customer experience management with a focus on providing users with targeted and optimized information to create better relationships with their customers.
4. Information Exchange: This is one of the real enterprise sore points; how to exchange information between users internally, as well as getting information outside the fire-wall via file transfer, cloud-based file sharing and mobile synchronization.
5. Discovery: OpenText is also focusing on the discovery of information. It probably sounds a little bit more exotic than it actually is, but the basic idea is to be able to find information across enterprise systems. This is achieved through the application of intelligent metadata, as well as linking structured and unstructured information across multiple formats.

As you’ve gathered from this there isn’t a great deal of detail of how it is going to use, or develop, these five different components. In the next few days we will be talking to OpenText and will outline this strategy in greater detail then.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Forrester Wave: Enterprises Concerned Over Cloud-Based Collaboration Feasibility

There are a number of surprising takeaways from a new Forrester Wave report that should force many collaboration vendors to think through their development strategies twice. Not least of these is that despite all the progress that has been made, many IT leaders are still questioning the feasibility of cloud-based collaboration tools.

Cloud-based Online Collaboration

The report, Forrester Wave: Cloud Strategies Of Online Collaboration Software Vendors, Q3 2012, is based on research compiled by TJ Keitt and is the result of surveys sent to 2,438 IT executives and technology decision-makers located in Canada, France, Germany, the UK and the US working in everything from SMBs to large enterprises.

It identified what Forrester describes as eight significant collaboration services providers — Box, Cisco Systems, Citrix Online, Google, IBM, Microsoft, salesforce.com, and Yammer — that were scored on over 38 criteria.

Today we will look at some of the issues that this evaluation raised, while tomorrow we will look at the five companies that made it into the Leader’s segment of the Wave.

Forrester Wave Online Collaboration: Vendors included in the Wave
 

Before looking at it in detail, there are three main takeaways from the study that put the entire body of research in perspective. They include:

1. Business Agility

To address business problems enterprises must partner with a number of external groups outside the firewall. Cloud-based collaboration tools can be delivered to both PCs and mobile devices and enables the free flow of information.

2. Cloud-based Collaboration Feasibility

Despite the massive strides in security and compliance and the fact that more than half plan to use online collaboration tools in the next two years, many IT leaders still don’t trust online services.

3. Vendors Reassure IT leaders

Following on from this, then, it makes sense that successful vendors in this space are those that can reassure businesses around these issues. Successful vendors in this space will be able to provide the flexibility enterprises require to achieve business goals.

Online Collaboration Appeals

While there is considerable competition in the online collaboration market, Forrester says that the rush to get products to the market is not vendors trying to one-up each other, but reflects a very real and expanded demand for products. More than half of enterprises survey said that they are or will be using SaaS collaboration technologies in the next two years. Business leaders believe SaaS offerings will offer them the following advantages:

Responsiveness

Customers that are increasingly informed and empowered can force an enterprise to change its strategy to suit. Business leaders believe that they will be able to respond to this with technologies that enable easy information flow, and a space outside the firewall where the enterprise can collaborate effectively with clients.

Feature Upgrades

Traditional on-premises software that depends on a three-to-five year refresh cycle prevents enterprises from changing and upgrading outdated software. Online services update themselves, a factor that was mentioned by 60% of those in the survey.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Twitter Tightens API Rules: Increases Authentication, Decreases Requests Per Hour

Twitter plans to release version 1.1 of the Twitter API in the coming weeks, and it involves a number of new user restrictions. Changes will include required authentication on every API endpoint, a new per-endpoint rate-limiting methodology, and tighter “Developer Rules of the Road,” especially around applications that are traditional Twitter clients.

Seeking Authenticity

In version 1.0 of the Twitter API developers have access to certain API endpoints without requiring their applications to authenticate, essentially enabling them to access public information from the Twitter API without Twitter knowing who they are other than their IP addresses. To prevent what Twitter calls “malicious” use of the Twitter API and to gain an understanding of what types of applications are accessing the API, in version 1.1 the company will require every request to the API to be authenticated.

For developers who are already using OAuth when making API requests, Twitter says all authentication tokens will transition seamlessly from v1.0 to v1.1. If an application is currently using the Twitter API without using OAuth, developers will need to update it before March 2013.

Rate-Limiting Endpoints

Twitter will cut the number of authenticated requests applications can make from the current 350 calls per hour to 60 calls per hour per-endpoint. According to Twitter, analysis of current use of its API shows this rate limit “will be well above the needs of most applications built against the Twitter API, while protecting our systems from abusive applications.”

There will also be a set of high-volume endpoints related to Tweet display, profile display, user lookup and user search where applications will be able to make up to 720 calls per hour per endpoint.

The Rules of the Road

Changes to Twitter’s official developer “Rules of the Road” will include a shift from display guidelines to display requirements (such as linking @usernames to the appropriate Twitter profile), requiring developers that are building client applications that are pre-installed on consumer electronics devices to have their application certified by Twitter and requiring developers to work with Twitter directly if they need a large amount of user tokens.

Bloggers Voice Displeasure

In addition to preventing misuse and gaining a better understanding of the API environment, Twitter says its new API guidelines are designed to encourage application development activity in areas such as social CRM, social analytics and social influence ranking, while limiting certain use cases for traditional Twitter cases and syndication.

However, not all observers are quite so positive about these planned changes. Computerworld compiled a list of negative postings from IT bloggers about the changes. Comments included: “[It's] disappointing to see Twitter turning its back on the…community that played such a large role in its…expansion”; “the new requirements…may make it more difficult for third-party clients to differentiate themselves” and a “translation” of Twitter’s “weaselese” that boiled down to “We look forward to forcing you to build a service, then destroy any chance of making money from it.”

Not every blogger was negative, however. One blogger wrote, “I was left thinking a lot of the changes were reasonable and made sense…With concrete rules we can always ensure we are in compliance.” There was a caveat of “My only request to Twitter is that they keep the lines of communication…very open.”

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Sales Enablement - Unleash the Potential of Your Sales Team

Sales enablement is a hot topic lately, with an increasing number of CRM and sales/marketing automation vendors providing sales enablement solutions. However, according to Dan Schleifer, EVP of sales enablement for enterprise sales collaboration software provider SAVO Group, the full potential of sales enablement lies in revealing what happens in the middle of the sales process.

Sales Enablement in the Middle

“CRM is the accounting system of record for sales at the tail end of the process,” Schleifer said during an exclusive interview with CMSWire. “Email and social tools are at the top. But in the middle of the process, assuming sales reps don’t do decent jobs entering sales contacts into the CRM system, and they invariably don’t; you don’t get visibility into what is happening in the field when the sales rep’s lips are flapping.”

Thus, Schleifer said there is no single tool that provides sales visibility all the way down the sales pipeline, from initial prospecting to closing (or not closing) a deal. He continued,

Marketing automation is important but doesn’t close the deal. CRM backs in from the closed deal further into the selling process. But nobody is collecting data such as what PowerPoint slide the sales rep used at what stage of the sales presentation. We don’t know what objections were handled or what team members were pulled in.”

For example, Schleifer said that a project manager may have been called in to all the successful sales presentations for a specific service or product, but this data is not captured in the traditional marketing automation/CRM information-gathering process. “It’s the essence of what makes B2B sales tick,” he said.

From the Field to the Home Office

Therefore, Schleifer said the full potential of sales enablement technology lies in its ability to uncover what is really happening in the field, identify success factors, and then communicate those factors throughout the enterprise. In addition, he said properly applied sales enablement tools can provide “short cycle feedback” allowing adjustments to sales strategies as they are being enacted.

“As a sales executive I don’t want to wait for the CRM system to tell me that a new product release is not resulting in closed sales,” he stated. “The clinical moment of truth in any sales process is when the rep is sitting with the customer. Sales enablement allows you to understand that moment of truth.”

By automatically collecting data in real time while a sales rep is making a presentation or pitch, via mobile device, sales enablement tools can eliminate organizational silos and fill the gaps in B2B sales data quickly enough for sales strategies to be altered as soon as problems can be identified. They also allow senior management to quickly understand what makes top performers stand out compared to their peers.

“Any VP of sales can tell you who their top performers are,” said Schleifer. “But they can’t tell you why. Sales enablement technology allows them to collect and process data on their top performers and determine patterns of success that then be pushed to all sales reps through the right coaching. It changes the sales process.”

Ultimately, Schleifer said a sales enablement tool should work the way an assistant aiding a surgeon works. “The assistant hands the surgeon every tool they need,” he said. “That person knows everything — the surgeon doesn’t have to write it down.”

In the next few years, Schleifer sees sales enablement technology developing to the point it can provide senior management with real-time actionable feedback from the field, rather than short-cycle feedback. “Executives will get a real-time field view and be able to take immediate action,” he predicted. "It’s really just Big Data and analytics wrapped around the right data. Within days or even hours of a new product release, you’ll know if it’s working.”

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com