BizTechTalk

Now Available: Market IQ on Business Process Management

We released some of the early findings of this report last month, in the free webinar describing key points (view/listen to archive), and now, the streamlined Market IQ on Business Process Management has been released, as usual, as a no-cost resource to any who have an interest in Business Process Management.

AIIM Market IQ on Business Process Management: Leveraging Competencies and Streamlining Processes to Achieve Operational Excellence

This study of 354 end users found that a majority of respondents believe  that their organizations as a whole are at "process ignorance" rather than  "process excellence." Where are you and your organization in the maturity curve?

Download it now, complements of the underwriters of this research: EMC, IBM and Risetime.

If you didn't know, there are also 1, 2 or 4 days of training available from AIIM on Business Process Management as well.

Many options to chose from in either research to support your BPM-related efforts, or training to help sell the value and execute on a project.

Content: Capture/Create (magic happens) Deliver

While we wrap up on Business Process Management, it's time to prep for the Q4 report on Content Creation/Capture and Delivery (otherwise known as the on-ramps and off-ramps of content), and we're looking to establish a list of vendors/solutions that make up this space.

So, if you use, sell, create, integrate or consult on tools to create/capture content and/or to deliver content, help to build this list, and we'll see what we can do pull together a list collectively. Anybody that SHOULD NOT be on the list, please weigh in, and why.

To jumpstart (and remember - solutions for creation/capture and/or delivery/output):
Adobe
Access Innovations
Alfresco
Antenna House
Astoria Software
EMC
Exegenix
Fujitsu
Hyland Software
In.vision
Interwoven
Inxight
IXIASOFT
JustSystems
Kodak
Mark Logic
Microsoft
Open Text (by itself, RedDot, Artesia)
Oracle (Stellent)
Quark
RenderX
SyncRO Soft (<oXygen/>)
TEMIS
Vasont
Vignette
Xerox
XyEnterprise

Who's missing, who shouldn't be on here? Add your comments, and if you're interested in this topic, fill out the form below, for notification of publication in late Q4 2008. Thanks in advance!

Battles between Process Ignorance and Process Excellence

For those of you who have known me over the years, you may recall that when I was at Delphi Group, we had a conference that we called the Business Process eXcellence Summit (or BPX), that had run over the course of a few years, extending from our earlier International Business Process Summit (IBPS) stretching back to 1998 I believe - speakers included our Delphi Group analysts, including Carl Frappaolo and I, as well as James Champy, Howard Smith, Tom Peters, and a wide variety of very well known to up and coming speakers.

I bring this up, because it's all to easy to fall into the trap of thinking that when YOU or your peers know something, to believe that everyone else knows it (and acts on this knowledge) as well.

I still find it amusing that over 14 years ago, I didn't know much of anything about this industry (or set of industries perhaps) I've been involved in since first starting at Delphi in 1994. One of the first books I read on the topic of process was "The Workflow Imperative" written by Delphi co-founder Tom Koulopoulos. The book was already several years old at that point. Having come from a non-business and (officially) non-technical background, I thought I was merely playing catchup to the "normal" business/IT crowd in learning about workflow (now [mostly] BPM).

Turns out that memes, awareness, understanding, and action take a while - and while many organizations struggle to merely update their desktops to stay ahead of viruses and spam, their true business operations are woefully manual and error prone.

Our next major research project is wrapping up, and will be available in early/mid-October, focused on Business Process Management, as a set of methodologies, technical capabilities, and business drivers.

While we have once again asked a battery of "Crossing the Chasm"-style questions, we also examined where respondents would place their organization and their own departments within the 5 levels of the Business Process Maturity Model (BPMM) - ranging from:

Level 1: Initial
Enterprise lacks consistent practices and management is reactive. Little to no BPM strategy, process redesign is ad-hoc at best.

Level 2: Managed
Stabilization of local work through department-level expertise, control, and metrics. Processes are repeatable and documented.

Level 3: Standardized
Enterprise-wide process improvement competencies with product and service orientation. Best practices are standardized and documented.

Level 4: Predictable
The enterprise has established common, integrated assets and processes with measurement and predictability. Variations of process performance are minimal, and processes are stable.

Level 5: Optimizing
Process excellence and re-engineering is fully integrated into the organization. Emphasis is now on the continuous pro-active improvement of processes, narrowing the gaps between objectives and capabilities.

And while you might expect this type of maturity model to end up with a bell curve, we instead have a heavy front-loading of process ignorance, with 48% of respondents saying their organization is at Level 1, versus the extreme of a mere 3% at Level 5.

Wow... If you are even ALIVE, you are at Level 1. Seems to me, it's time to start moving along the maturity curve. It's not magic, it does not have to be expensive, although it is work, I'll grant you that. But the pursuit of process improvement sets the stage for higher margins, reduced costs, faster time to market, easier ability to partner, do mergers and acquisitions and survive the journey, etc..

Stay tuned for more - and in the meantime, feel free to sign-up for direct notification of the publication of our Business Process Management research, below.

Who are the Process Players (BPM/Workflow)?

Rather than assume we know it all when it comes to the world of Business Process Management (BPM) and Workflow, we're looking for feedback (as we did with Findability) on what companies should be considered on the list of solution providers for BPM and Workflow.

The twist is that we are not limiting this list to "pure-play" BPM providers, as fun as that might be.

We're interested in Document-centric Workflow/BPM and Transaction-based Workflow/BPM as well, which heads into the direction of larger platforms - Enterprise Content Management (ECM) suites as well as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) suites. (If you care about business process - does it matter to YOU whether it's baked in to a bigger solution, or prefer BPM that is agnostic?)

Below is a guaranteed incomplete list of the types of providers we're considering having listed in the upcoming BPM survey. Who are we missing, and for that matter, who shouldn't be on the list? Even given acquisition/consolidation, it's a big ol' world of process.

The proposed list:
Adobe
Alfresco
Autonomy/Cardiff
BEA
Corticon
DST
EMC/Documentum
Flowcentric
Fuego
Fujitsu Interstage BPM
Handysoft
IBM/FileNet
IDS Scheer
Intalio
Integrify
K2
Legato
Lombardi Software
MetaStorm
Microsoft
Open Text
Oracle
Pegasystems
Progress Software (Sonic/IONA)
SAP NetWeaver BPM
Savvion
Singularity
Skelta
Software AG
SpringCM
TIBCO
Ultimus

So, who are we missing, and for that matter, who shouldn't be on the list? For example, does Adobe belong on this list? If no, why not? If yes, why? or Oracle? In or out? SaaS and Open Source options - SpringCM and Alfresco. Valid? Useless? (for this list)

Anyone representing a solution provider who should be on here, feel free to weigh in, don't be shy - there's no magic involved in this list. Process practitioners/consultants, your insights are especially wanted.

Flashback and Fastforward on Process

Well, we released our latest research, the Market IQ on Findability yesterday (Got Find Yet?), but the research drumbeat marches ever onward!

It's a big world of content, information, knowledge, and process, and for Q3, we're tackling a more process-centric view of the world.

Specifically, our next topic covers the world of Business Process Management (BPM), Workflow, and the ties of processes (automated or manual) to specific business concerns.

If business process (fill-in-the-blank) is something that fires you up, let me start to whet your appetite for the topic by pointing you to a free report that was published by AIIM last year, right around the time that Carl and I came onboard to start Market Intelligence.

Go grab a copy of the AIIM Industry Watch on Business Process Management: Not Just Workflow Anymore - and stay tuned for more on process coming up.

Any information that you're dying to have statistics/findings on in the world of process, feel free to comment away here and on some specific subsequent posts I'll regarding what solution providers should be considered "in the BPM fold," what standards matter for process, how success is measured in BPM projects, what methodologies are in use, what systems and applications are (or should be) typically integrated within a BPM project, etc..

Lost in a Sea of Search? Find It!

Did you know?

69% of people responding to our Findability survey believe that <50% of their business content is available online.

49% of respondents “Agreed” or “Strongly Agreed” that “Finding the Information I Need to Do My Job is Difficult and Time Consuming.”

Whew. I've spent almost a decade helping people understand how to make the most out of search, taxonomies, relevancy ranking algorithms, user interfaces, information architectures and more.

Looks like there is still plenty of work left to be done - as we are nowhere near universal satisfaction with Findability in the Enterprise.

As I've been mentioning for a few months now, the long awaited (well, I've been longing to deliver it, that counts, right?) Market IQ on Findability is now freely available for download. Over 65 pages and 70 charts/figures, I believe you (and your manager, executives, IT staff, business colleagues, etc.) will find interesting material in this research.

The research is provided completely and entirely free, although we do of course ask for (minimal) registration information. Grab yourself a copy while it is hot off the virtual presses!

I don't mean to paint an overly negative picture, but enterprises (and whoever does or does not "own" search/find or for that matter, content) are not doing a fantastic job at minimizing the amount of time wasted in organizations (time isn't money it would seem) trying to find the information people need to do their job, or the amount of time wasted in re-creating information that already exists, but can't be found.

Some organizations are doing a much better job at providing useful, intelligent Findability experiences for their employees, partners and customers - but it is far more rare than it is common.

What are YOU finding in your own experiences with Findability in the enterprise? Total chaos? Search bliss? Irrelevant junk? Instant success?

Would love to hear what your experiences are, and any feedback you have on this research. For those 528 people who contributed their time in responding to the survey, thank you again for your time and efforts. Much appreciated!

FoFF - Findings on Findability? Fail! #1

It's funny, I've been covering Findability-related topics for 8 years now, and sometimes it is just very difficult to return to the "beginner mind" and remember what it's like to not be immersed in all of the guts of Findability. What works, what doesn't, how it works, how it doesn't...

This is a reason I like to trot out Geoffrey Moore's "Crossing the Chasm" idea - it helps to reinforce that ideas don't just pop up out of nowhere and reach complete saturation. Education, Awareness, Adoption, Success, Improvement - it all just takes time (and effort) to seep in.

Case in point -

I've been a Netflix subscriber for a few years now, and at the time, I felt I was late to the game. Apparently not! Most of our survey respondents have no experience at all with Netflix.

That's truly unfortunate, as they have great Findability (and usability), from where I sit.

A few items to be aware of - type-ahead search. Some would argue this is a waste, but if the performance hit isn't too much for you (as an implementer OR a user), it's awfully handy.

Here, I was typing in "star" and up came:

Improved my chances right off the bat that I would get to THE search result with one action.

Any guess what I was searching for?

That's right...

Star Wars, or more specifically, Star Wars IV: A New Hope (the original - which makes no sense at first glance, but presumably you're all sci-fi geeks too, right?)

And of course the search results show not just the two most likely candidates (the original and a digitally enhanced version), but related genres and collections (egads, those are taxonomies on the right!), and related titles I could watch instantly (Netflix has expanded outside of DVD rentals. Sadly they don't support Macs - but I won't go into Microsoft and their platform-specific DRM scheme just now).

The point of this entire Findability experience? Of course it's to MAKE MONEY.

And that is a point to keep in mind in the enterprise experience. Why does Findability suffer in the Enterprise? It's not magic, folks! Without attention, time, investment, a known set of reasons why Findability is failing, and what would make it better, well, NOTHING is going to be improved.

Create an account on Netflix and poke around. How you can take their approaches to increasing Findability and bring them to YOUR enterprise experience (or heck, your consumer-facing experience)?

And if you've pursued this at all, please, weigh in and tell us how it went. Painful to implement? Easy as 1-2-3? Expensive? Cheap? What benchmarks for cost reduction, time reduction, revenue increase, etc. did you find? Are your facets unfindable? Fragile?

Lastly - for more on our coverage of Findability, sign up to listen in (and ask questions) in our free public webinar on Findability (providing a peek into our Market IQ on Findability), this Thursday, June 26th at 2pm EDT (-5 GMT). I'll be there - will you? Let's find out...

Of Findability, Folksonomies, and Facets

Ramping up to our webinar in support of the forthcoming findings in the Market IQ on Findability, I wanted to point out a few useful resources to help in selling (or at least understanding) the issues that impact Findability, and ways to "solve" Findability.

First resource:
A presentation I'd posted a few months ago, and which I'd first created several years ago and used to make people's heads explode after I'd just spent 1-2 full days extolling the virtues of taxonomies and formal organization schemes.

Folksonomies and Facets

| View | Upload your own

Second resource:
At the Enterprise 2.0 Conference 2 weeks ago, I ran into Thomas Vander Wal, who coined the term "folksonomy." What better way to FURTHER explain the concept, than point to one of his recent presentations that relate to this? The presentation I chose discusses both the collaborative (it's made of people!) side of folksonomy (social bookmarking, primarily - ala delicious, connectbeam, etc.) as well as the tags and tagging that underpins the process.

After Noah: Making Sense of the Flood (of Information)

| View | Upload your own

Third resource:

If any (all?) of this is of interest, stay tuned for our Market IQ on Findability, and the free public webinar coming up on Thursday June 26th at 2pm EDT, we've released some early findings (see press release), and have quite a bit more coming.

In the meantime - anyone using a folksonomy approach in your organization? Successfully? Failing? Would love to hear more about your experiences, and help to raise the best and worst practices around these areas.

Enterprise 2.0 FTW!

Whew, Carl and I had some fun this morning at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston - and from the limited view we had from the stage (ah, blinding stage lights!), and the laughter (at pretty much the expected spots), I'd say it went over well.

Ran into a ton of people who recognized me from Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, this blog and other social sites - including on my ride in on the train... it's getting to be a really interesting world where the boundaries between the "real" and the "virtual" are awfully blurry (in a good way).

At the moment I don't know where the videos for keynotes are being hosted/posted, so I will instead point you to the presentation itself, in "raw form" (minus our stunning banter). Pop forward to slide 12-13 or so to get into the intelligible "meat" of the presentation. The early portion won't make a whole lot of sense without commentary.

You can view the presentation embedded below, or directly on slideshare.

| View | Upload your own

The Long Tail of Presentations (Be Findable!)

I've posted my presentations from time to time here on my blog, and typically hosted (in the end) at slideshare.net.

Although I've been a reader/viewer of presentations on slideshare.net for some time, I only began posting presentation to the site 7 months ago.

Why is that?

There were many reasons why I believed this was worth a bit of experimentation:

1. For content that I've already shared publicly already, this is a good central location for me to refer people to. Any time I present now, I simply point people to slideshare.net/dan.keldsen and away they go. Solves the problem of conferences or other events that do not have a presentation sharing location, and even if they do, provides the ability for people to see what else I'm yammering about (context and discovery is awfully handy).
2. Experimentation with "2.0" tech, and the ability to easily share/embed content, in my blog, YOUR blog, or anywhere else - makes it that much easier to get even more life out of my presentations. Re-usability and broad distribution is a great benefit of where we are in the state of the web these days. Simple standards and mechanisms win out over complexity every time. Please, feel free to refer to my presentation as you like - simply attribute appropriately, and link back to the slideshare repository (or wherever I've posted it).
3. If I'm sharing information already, for example a presentation I gave 6 months ago in Denmark entitled "Who's the Boss, MOSS?"- I'd be willing to bet that the majority of people on the planet didn't make it to that presentation. So why not open the information to a much larger audience? There were perhaps 50-75 people in the room - yet on slideshare, 1861 views have totaled up since I'd posted it the day of the presentation. That's a nice magnification of the audience - and in this case, that "Long Tail" is one heck of bigger audience than I'd had at my disposal in the live audience.
4. Like many of the other things I do, blogging and podcasting for example, you don't have to take my word for it that I know what I'm talking about - you can go and experience it for yourself. So rather than reading what I have to say about myself on a resume (or LinkedIn) about my experience and expertise (and I try to be as truthful and upfront as possible, but nobody is perfect - and as Seth Godin says "All Marketers are Liars" - see video of Seth on this topic)

There are many more reasons, and I'd love to hear what others are finding as either useful or useLESS about such a resource. There is almost no downside to posting your presentations - as long as they are meant to be public at all, the broader reach you can gain, the more usefulness that content will have to you and your potential customers, next potential employer, existing customers, etc..

And to simply whack you over the head with my point, and tie this to our current research - the Market IQ on Findability (due out in June, pre-register for the public webinar) - you can't FIND what isn't available in some findable form.

You may have some brilliant presentations sitting on your desktop/laptop - but unless it's out there, somewhere, in a format that allows it to be searched or otherwise navigated to, nobody will ever know about it. As I said in a somewhat controversial post recently, ideas are nothing - it's executing on them that's the trick. Take it another step, and even execution on the idea isn't enough. If you have a 100 MPG car that's in production, but nobody knows it exists, then you may as well not have bothered, as the end effect is ZERO. That's marketing, folks, and it applies both for the outside world (to consumers or other businesses) as well as internally to your organization (making people aware of what you can do as an employee).

Search isn't magic - and this business of the "Long Tail" which has gotten considerable hype since Chris Anderson's article in Wired and expanded missives in the book released in 2006 is not just applicable to consumer-facing services, and specifically about SELLING.

Much of the content that should be powering your organization is stuck in silos (such as your inbox) which might be of incredible value within your organization. And merely lamenting that information is in your organization, and going about in recreating a sales proposal, a PowerPoint presentation, or pursuing a line of research isn't just a bad idea, it is a huge waste of the existing resources of your organization.

Re-invention/re-creation is a tax on your organization that isn't adequately accounted for by typical financial accounting methods. Findability plays a key role in breaking that cycle - take a listen to a podcast interview I had done with Stan Garfield a year ago on "Reinvention Prevention" - which discusses this issue of findability for knowledge and innovation purposes.

To wrap it up - we've closed the survey for the Market IQ on Findability, stay tuned for the final report, and please feel free to pre-register yourself for the free public webinar where we'll be discussing the findings.

In the meantime - what is YOUR personal experience in the "Long Tail" - whether as a consumer (the "traditional" sense of the Long Tail), or within your enterprise? Are your colleagues understanding this? Is this a reason that gets people to contribute their content into a content management system, wiki, blog, etc.? Has it had any affect at all? Would love to hear how people are thinking and acting around this type of thinking.

Comment away!