Open Text’s executive vice president Bill Forquer
Bringing the power of Web 2.0 to the enterprise is a challenge for many major organisations that are facing consumer pressure due to the growing popularity of social networking technologies.
Enterprise software and enterprise content management company Open Text works in this area to help organisations manage and gain the true value of their business content.
Fairfax Business Media Asia managing editor Ross O. Storey discussed these issues with Open Text’s executive vice president Bill Forquer who believes enterprise use of Web 2.0 technologies can revolutionise communication and interaction in companies and in government.
What is Open Text’s vision for enterprise content management (ECM) and how does it rate the importance of ECM in today’s enterprise IT environment? Why is it becoming more important and what are the key issues that enterprises need to overcome?
Open Text’s vision for ECM is based on our understanding of the orchestration of people, processes and content in an organisation. We manage content across its entire lifecycle, independent of its origin and format, by understanding how it flows within and across departments, what systems it touches and what business processes it is tied to.
The importance of ECM in today’s IT environment is rapidly growing. It is still smaller in terms of investments compared to enterprise resource planning (ERP) but companies are most certainly beginning to see the great potential ECM holds. We are currently seeing an exponential rate of growth of information flowing in and around organisations, with 90 per cent being unstructured words or data.
By being randomly organised and not having a content management system in place, organisations are wasting both money and time by paper-chasing and re-doing work that gets lost in endless paper trails. In order to turn the ever increasing volumes of content into useful information, it needs to be managed and controlled. ECM applications enable organisations to do this.
Organisations also look to ECM to overcome the stringent requirements of corporate governance, privacy and security surrounding corporate information. Good content governance and change management, however, cannot be ignored when an organisation implements ECM; they are an important factor in its success.
IT security, governance, risk and compliance was rated a number one area for increased IT investment in 2009, by respondents to MIS Asia magazine’s annual IT Nation: Tech Trends and Enterprise Priorities research. How does Open Text describe the current governance, risk and compliance environment in the Asia Pacific? What does Open Text believe will be the impact of the current economic downturn on likely future IT compliance requirements?
New technologies are constantly extending the ways companies work with content and we are currently seeing an information explosion with word data doubling every two months. With this explosion comes the need to place governance, risk and compliance in a ‘must have’ category and higher investments in these areas will definitely be made throughout the Asia Pacific. As Web 2.0 emerges, for example, companies will need to have good content governance in place before taking on the Web 2.0 tools.
The economic downturn has caused more government intervention. With that intervention will come compliance requirements of various forms many of which will require increased information governance.
Concurrently, organisations are making cutbacks due to the downturn and this will leave them with increased need for business efficiency and a heightened awareness to security risks. The combination of increased regulatory pressure and demand for business efficiency will create even more pressure on IT organisations for good information governance, cost reductions, managed risk, and business efficiencies. ECM applications can answer all of these demands.
Open Text maintains that it helps organisations manage and gain the true value of their business content. What sort of research can you provide that indicates just how well enterprises in the Asia-Pacific region are realising this maximum value? What figures show how well companies in this region are handling this issue? How much room is there for improvement and where are enterprises falling down in this?
We are seeing records management become more and more important in enterprises across the Asia Pacific, as compliance and risk management drive uptake. Records management controls the lifecycle of important records and also deletes unimportant or out-of-date content. Being able to manage all these vital business records across your entire enterprise will bring greater value to an organisation.
In Gartner’s review of the records management market ‘MarketScope for Records Management’ report published on 20 May last year and authored by Kenneth Chin, Gartner forecast a strong five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25 per cent between 2008 and 2013. In its review, Gartner also marked the records management market at about US$400 million in 2007 revenue, which was an increase of 30 per cent from 2006.
A survey Open Text conducted of 104 record managers at the Records Managers Association of Australasia conference in October last year confirms these Gartner findings. The Open Text survey found that 75 per cent of the organisations planned to increase their spending on records management in the year ahead and 40 per cent believed that records management will take up a larger percentage of total IT budget investment in 2009. The survey found that the key drivers for this investment included ongoing regulatory compliance, corporate accountability and employee productivity.
Records management forms part of Open Text’s ECM suite and we are continuing to see investments in this product, both in the private and public sectors of Asia Pacific. In the Australian state of New South Wales, for example, we were recently awarded the contract to provide electronic document and records management software to government departments and agencies throughout the state.
There is room for improvement, however, as we still see organisations not deploying their records management tools across the entire enterprise. In Open Text’s survey, it found that one-third of organisations believed providing real-time information to employees was important, but only 25 per cent provided this access to records on a mobile device.
How well are Asia-Pacific enterprises succeeding in their quest to capture and preserve their corporate memory? What risks do they face if they don’t do this?
The impending shift in workforce demographics, as the ‘baby boom’ generation begins to retire, means all companies in the Asia Pacific are faced with the challenge of capturing their intangible corporate memory. Open Text’s ECM tools are developed to meet this challenge by capturing, preserving and re-using the intellectual assets which are created by these seasoned employees. When looking specifically at the adoption of ECM solutions, we are seeing momentum across the Asia Pacific, which is a sure sign that companies are recognising these solutions and getting the necessary value out.
If enterprises don’t capture and preserve their corporate memory, they are losing vital information and knowledge. The biggest risk here comes down to competitiveness and staying ahead in your industry.
What are the most common mistakes that enterprises are making relating to ECM and what are the expected consequences?
Mistakes are not usually technology-related. They tend to come from an enterprise not giving enough attention to change management and end-user adoption.
The end-users of ECM are the workers in an organisation so it is crucial to successful adoption that they see the new software as easy to use. Ideally, prior to the implementation of ECM, a focus should be put on communication with these workers to prepare them for the changes. And the ECM application should be deployed ‘inside’ the desktop applications they are already familiar with to lower the learning curve. If change management isn’t implemented, the technology won’t be utilised to its potential and these workers will soon become disillusioned and stop using the system.
Web 2.0 seems to be something of a frontier technology for many major enterprises, particularly here in the Asia Pacific. What research can you provide demonstrating the take-up of Web 2.0 here?
The adoption of Web 2.0 capabilities throughout the Asia Pacific in both organisations and government is directly proportional to the adoption of Web 2.0 by consumers. Similar to consumers, there are organisations that are fearful of Web 2.0 but there are also the early adopters and innovators. As these early adopters begin to prove that Web 2.0 can be adopted safely into an enterprise, the trend will catch on and we will see spending on these technologies increase dramatically over the next few years in the region.
What good examples can you cite of companies in the world which are doing well with their adoption of Web 2.0? What key benefits can adopting Web 2.0 bring to an enterprise and why are enterprises generally a bit hesitant about using this approach?
Motorola is one of the world’s most aggressive adopters of, and recognised leader in, Web 2.0. They currently have 50,000 users and run 4,400 blogs, 4,100 wiki pages and have 2,600 people actively tagging.
Adopting Web 2.0 can increase an organisation’s productivity and collaboration. Breaking down the communication and hierarchical barriers in a workforce gives the ability to share information for better collaboration. Collaboration can also result in greater employee satisfaction within the enterprise as it creates networking and social interaction abilities.
Hesitance generally streams from security and privacy issues. Companies fear losing control of their information and company data when they adopt open software platforms consistent with Web 2.0. Similar to when e-mails first worked their way into companies, this fear of losing control over the flow of information leads to the thinking that sensitive information could easily be leaked out of the company.
Just how can Web 2.0 go about ‘revolutionising communication and interaction in companies and in government’? What sort of risk is there that governments will be opening a can of worms (Pandora’s Box) by adopting Web 2.0 systems, because they may be overwhelmed by community response?
First companies need to strike the right balance with Web 2.0 and their company culture, and then advance on both fronts. Once they have done this, the possibilities are huge. Web 2.0 can break down silos and hierarchical barriers, bringing social and collaborative communication both internally and externally. In governments, forums, poll functions, blogs and wikis, for example, all work to create horizontal decision-making—bringing members of a community closer and allowing better communication between citizens and politicians.
The risk of being overwhelmed by community response is the same risk governments felt when they entered into the world of websites and e-mails. There was a risk then that staff may not be able to respond to e-mails and keep information on the website continually updated. But slowly governments adapted to these new technologies and staff numbers increased in-line with their technology capabilities.
Web 2.0 is just another tool in their communication arsenal. They will need to experiment with staff numbers for successful follow-up to community response but also have the advantage of being able to use traffic numbers on their website as an indication for the amount of community response expected. It is also here that building on Web 2.0 in moderation becomes important.
What specific customer and partner issues have been brought to the surface by the current economic downturn? How has the vendor–customer relationship changed?
Generally, customers will be scrutinising for return on investment so the business case of the vendor has to be solid. Customers will also be trying to leverage their existing set of vendors, rather than starting a new project.
The current economic climate is fuelling demand for ECM as customers are looking to improve information governance, efficiency and returns on investment. ECM is especially important to cost management as it can improve enterprise processes such as accounts payable or claims processing, which is very appealing to both customers and potential partners and vendors.
How can ECM and Web 2.0 increase an enterprise’s competitiveness? Any good examples?
ECM and Web 2.0 can impact any of the strategic objectives of an organisation, for example, staying compliant, cutting costs, growing new revenue channels, customer loyalty, and so on. A company that embraces Web 2.0 and manages it correctly can gain increased productivity and collaboration by providing a new way to communicate and share information. It also helps an organisation create new and deeper connections with their customers and partners.
Engineering companies, for example, are becoming a lot more decentralised with a lot of project teams working in remote locations. The workload depends on the collaboration of these project teams that are scattered around the globe and across time zones. Here there is an obvious need for collaboration and knowledge-sharing processes of the Web 2.0 model. Open Text’s ECM software can then categorise and manage all this information so it can be stored for easy retrieval by the project teams.
Is there anything else you’d like to add that you think should be included in our discussion relating to ECM, Open Text and Web 2.0?
Companies need to ensure they have a solid understanding of records management and good content governance before they take on Web 2.0 tools. It is important that they are at a mature stage of their ECM strategy.
Both Web 2.0 and ECM need to start small and work their way into an enterprise. ECM solutions can’t be initially implemented to solve problems across the board as this will result in creating information silos.
