Adobe Industry Analyst Days

by Colin Teubner.

Connie, Erica and I attended Adobe's analyst days this week in New York, and Connie and I had a chance to sit down with Bruce Chizen, Adobe's CEO, over lunch yesterday. Adobe is a major player in the Web 2.0 universe, with Flash (and the new Apollo technology) competing with Ajax-based technologies for creating rich internet apps (RIAs).

While Ajax is more open, Flash nonetheless can boast better cross-browser and cross-platform support, especially when moving into the realm of mobile devices. Ajax can run into problems just between Internet Explorer and Firefox, but the Flash player works in both browsers as well as in Safari — and on Linux too. In the mobile, world, Adobe showcased a first-of-its-kind tool for testing how a Flash movie looks on a variety of different cell phone models, with extremely rich metadata about each device. It was able to simulate things like the appearance of the screen outdoors vs. indoors, and the performance of a movie on different phones. We also saw a Sony PlayStation 3 running on Flash content.

One interesting question was about whether PDF was threatened by Microsoft's recent moves to create a replacement standard in its XML Paper Specification (XPS). Bruce's answer was, to paraphrase, "No." He believes — and I agree — that it's too late to displace PDF with any format, and especially not with one whose promoter has the goal of selling Windows and Office in mind. Adobe's recent submittal of PDF to the ISO will really help its adoption in government, too.

Back to Apollo, which is Adobe's new platform that combines elements of both Ajax and Flash, but allows applications to run in a browser or on the desktop. Adobe demonstrated an application for eBay that lets users continue monitoring the time to completion of an auction even if their internet connection goes down, for example. A startup called FineTune (finetune.com) also showed how it's building its music player application in Apollo. It remains to be seen what Apollo adoption will be like, but Adobe is allowing purveyors of Apollo applications to redistribute the Apollo runtime — so if developers are sold, it should find its way to consumers too.

Overall, Adobe has a diversified business with many strong products — not the least of which is Creative Suite 3, which takes best-of-breed apps like Photoshop to new levels — but we'd like to see them tie together different lines of business a little better. For example, why aren't they using LiveCycle BPM to drive workflows across the CS applications? Large design shops could really benefit from that kind of workflow automation (and it doesn't have to be overly rigid, either). That kind of cross-product synergy would make them a more important contender for the Information Workplace in the enterprise.

From The Middle Seat

by Craig Le Clair.

Postal regulations matter. The US and most other countries are moving to 'shape-based pricing', which means that postal prices will now reflect the size of the mail being sent, not just its weight or delivery terms. Why is this happening? And do we care? It's happening because the postal regulators have boned up on economics and discovered an amazing thing: their costs are very much related to their machinery's ability to handle volume automatically (no humans). I'll refrain from the usual postal references here.

The really large 9" X 12" letters are hard to sort automatically, unlike their smaller and thinner brethren first class envelopess that fly through the machines. So prices of 9" X 12" envelopes are going up while the second ounce of those first class letters are being lowered. What does this really mean? Well, perhaps the real tipping point for TransPromo documents has finally arrived. "TransPromo" documents, aka transactional and promotional documents, mix marketing messages with transactional content sent out  in "first class" letter mail. So look for more marketing messages to appear on your statements, bills, and other transaction documents. Key enablers are personalization, integration with core customer databases, and authoring workflow, as well as traditional composition. Nothing to write home about exactly — but if you do — avoid those large envelopes.

Take Account Opening. Please.

by Craig Le Clair.

Often when I order takeout food, the restaurants know who I am right away — as if I was a member of the family. At some restaurants, my son placed the order regularly in the past and they will ask about him, "Is Justin okay? Why isn't he placing the order today?" They will leverage the information in my record to make the order simpler. "So you take the plain nan with that?"

If these small establishments with limited resources have this kind of personalized service, why is it that the biggest financial institutions in the world seem to not have any idea who I am? And if I want to extend my business with them, why do I need to start from scratch?

Information managers I speak with struggle to address these pain points in external communications with customers, clients, citizens, agents, and stores; account opening is near the top of the list of pain points. It exists at the lonely edge of the business process where the company interacts with the client — where information bounces between a company's firewall and the customer's domain — but why is this so difficult?

For one, business must deal with more diverse use cases. These relate to the multi-channel environment and the diversity of capture options that now exist. The paper world, despite inefficiency, had one primary use case with a small number of potential variations. Everyone — customers and operations — were trained in the simple paper model.

Today firms are dealing with the Web, email, paper mail, faxes and more with each of these communication channels which frequently overlap despite different underlying technologies. In short, the number and diversity of use cases have grown immensely including the complexity of the back-end workflow.

And think of how bad it can be. As a potential customer, you are persuaded to take action. That exciting TransPromo document with the enticing one-time offer on your phone bill may have swayed you, or perhaps it was an email promotion that did the trick. So you search for and find the correct form and fill it out. Then you fax or mail it in and with any luck it ends up at right location. Further good fortune turns the paper or fax into an electronic fil and forwards it to an indexing queue. Here off-shore staff extracts the needed data and enters it into some transaction system. But corrections are needed that require circling back to the customer. It is re-processed with corrected information and finally a confirmation package is sent that of course requires a "wet signature". So, a second capture process is needed and final documentation is sent out.

There are lots of points where errors can be introduced — lots of systems that must interact successfully. And today there are 100's of client-facing business processes that need to be improved. 

Roaming The Industry

by Craig Le Clair.

I spent a fine day at Hyland Software with A.J. Hyland and his team at the Hyland Software annual partnership conference last week. I'd have to say A.J.'s been a bit riled up of late. He admits to having a large chip on his shoulder — analysts and others have been telling him for years that the smallish pure play vendor will have trouble competing, and they make a good case. Consolidation continues and Microsoft Office 2007 is creating confusion for ECM buyers and more fodder for industry watch dogs.

Yet Hyland has grown revenues consistently and has been profitable for years. I speak to information and knowledge management professionals every day and one thing is constant: they are trying to buy solutions that solve problems. And most care little about who is buying who; they care even less about whether an ECM provider is part of a big company positioning for infrastructure of a medium size pure play emphasizing applications and vertical markets. Most companies are like the homeowner that wants a better shower but doesn't really care whether the underlying pipes are PVC or cooper.

These buyers are focused on the thousands of business processes out there that need help managing content, migrating from paper to electronic, and applying higher levels of automation. There is plenty to do for everyone — and firms that focus on what customers need will continue to prosper.

Why You Should Start First With MDM On The Next Upgrade Cycle

by Ray Wang.

Many of us purchased our large ERP systems prior to Y2K and our CRM systems almost 3 or 4 years ago.  As we enter the next big upgrade cycle thinking about what enterprise application (e.g., ERP, CRM, or SCM) to replace, we'll need to think about the lessons learned. Traditionally, it made sense to put the transactional automation system in first and then go from there. However, with experience, we know this is completely backwards. If you put the big ERP system in, after a few years, some high level muckety muck inevitably asks where are those nice reports that they saw during the demo. Then, we spend the next several years building the right BI infrastructure so we can get to the analytics, dashboards, and reporting tools. A year later, we realize that our data is corrupt and we have duplicates that keep us from making a solid decision. The real question is: do we want to do this again?

In short, the answer is no. You'll want to do this the right way during the next upgrade cycle. Start first by identifying your master data requirements. Think about your business processes you need to support and the customer and product data reuqirements. Then, figure out the type of analytical requirements you'll have. Question you should ask include:

1. What business value will you achieve with this information?
2. What data needs to be real time?
3. Who can access that information?
4. How often should this data be update?
5. What format for display and alerting?
6. How do you tie this back to a business process?

From there build out your transactional systems to support his effort and align your vendor selection capabilities with this in mind. My suggestion... this time plan ahead, do it right, and avoid all the headaches from the last big application project!

For more on Enterprise Applications Vendor Selection read the Topic Overview: Enterprise Applications Vendor Selection

For more on MDM Trends, you can read in the latest Forrester Trends 2007: Master Data Management report.

Making Connections Work and Release Harmonization

by Merv Adrian.

If you want to communicate with your clients, prospects, and colleagues, it's good to make sure that your channels are all working — end to end. Even the largest firms can struggle with this — and nobody gets any larger than Microsoft. The team from Redmond boasts a formidable array of communication technologies and keeping them all in synch can be challenging.

I recently had the experience of joining them for an analyst call, and there was a Live Meeting opportunity for a richer presentation. I was eager to take advantage of that and clicked the appropriate buttons. I was offered an enhanced Media Player stream but like many companies, Forrester locks down its configurations, so upgrading that was not an option. So I chose the web browser version instead. As it happens, IE is not one of the "locked down" components so I had already upgraded to IE7 (and that was not without its challenges; it doesn't work well with some key corporate systems we use here. But that's another issue.)

Well, that turned out not to be optimal either. I got the following message from Live Meeting:

==================================================================================

You can run Microsoft Office Live Meeting on your Platform, but some configuration changes could improve your experience.
You are using Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, a browser more recent than those tested with this version of Microsoft Office Live Meeting. If you encounter any problems using this browser with Microsoft Office Live Meeting, please try using Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or Netscape 7.1 through 7.2.

===================================================================

This did not turn out to be a catastrophe — some of the features I might have had access to were not available, but I was able to hear the speaker and see (mostly) the visual content. But it certainly should be a warning to anyone using internet-based conferencing — make sure you've thought through all the configurations you might encounter. If Microsoft can't support their own current releases in harmony with one another, just imagine what might happen to you! You certainly don't want to have to recommend a competitor's product.

What’s All This Talk About Informal Learning?

by Claire Schooley.

After we leave formal education settings, 80% of our learning is of the informal kind; yet only 20% of corporate education dollars are spent on what is most important to us as employees.  Why are corporations spending 80% of their employee education dollars on that modest 20% of the learning we do?

So, what is informal learning? It’s that unplanned discussion with a colleague over an issue you don’t understand and glimpsing a new perspective on how to deal with an issue that has arisen. It’s sending an IM to a remote colleague to get information on how the company is implementing a procedure, and then setting up a 10-minute phone discussion to go deeper. It’s bouncing ideas for a new project off a colleague, then asking her to question your perspectives—like a kind of informal coach. These sound like things we do every day, right? Some corporate cultures actively encourage and support these informal ways of learning through trust, technology—IM, Expert Location, or good intranet search capability—and a supportive culture, while others frown on “taking time away from work” to talk to colleagues.

So what should we employees do? We should view corporate learning as performance improvement, rather than a matter of how many courses we have completed or what grades we received on the tests. We must take responsibility for learning what we need to know. What do we need to know to get our jobs done? We should be able to tap those short content-pieces—yes, those single-concept, 5-minute learning-nuggets, easily accessible through a word search covering learning catalogs and other intranet documents. Scheduled learning and culture sessions can also provide help in learning how to use the tools effectively and understanding that everyone in the organization has a responsibility to make the company successful through assisting others in informal ways.

Can informal learning be tracked by LMSes? Yes, courses on culture, productivity ideas, technology can be tracked, along with compliance-mandated learning. But the “tracking” of informal learning comes through performance assessment which is becoming an important part of the Human Capital Management (HCM) to develop and maintain a competitive workforce.

Is informal learning happening in your organization? If so, let me hear from you. What initiatives are employees taking? What road blocks are popping up? What’s working well? What’s not?

The Joy of Baking?

by Stephen Powers.

I recently spoke with an IT manager who came up with a great analogy for a problem I continue to see in the WCM space. He was telling me about how much customization his team has needed to do while implementing a WCM solution, and how he expected some features to be more out-of-the box, like advanced content authoring tools. He commented, “At Christmas time, the vendor sent us one of those gift baskets that vendors sometimes send. You know what those baskets are usually like - wine, cheese, candy. But you know what they sent us in this year’s basket? Brownie mix. We had to bake our own holiday gift. I wanted to call them up and tell them, ‘This is exactly what is wrong with your product!’"

To continue with the brownie analogy: 10 years ago, organizations were baking brownies from scratch, with maintenance-heavy, homegrown WCMs (some are still baking from scratch, but that’s a story for another day). A few years later, companies started baking those brownies from a mix, with WCM vendors selling them first-generation products which were essentially toolkits. Fast-forward to today: vendors who want to succeed in this difficult space need to continue moving towards delivering fully baked goods; all the IT implementation team should have to do is unwrap and serve (and maybe throw a little icing on top). At this point in the WCM product lifecycle, IT departments shouldn’t have to spend a lot of time customizing authoring tools or creating basic templates, or building functionality to perform commonplace tasks like staging multiple content items at once.

Toolkits just aren’t good enough anymore — keep an eye out for this when you're shopping for your next WCM.

Is Microsoft Serious About Social Computing?

by Rob Koplowitz.

I’ve already blogged here about how much I enjoy using Office 2007. Today I wanted to blog about wikis and blogs. I opened up Word 2007 since I generally like to create things locally and then push them up to the network when I’m ready.  I opened Word and clicked on “New” and found two choices; “Blank document” and “New blog post”. Well, that’s kind of cool. Microsoft has already integrated Word and blogging. Might even be able to use Office Live for that...

This brings me to a question that I’ve been hearing a lot from clients lately: Is Microsoft serious about wikis, blogs and other emerging aspects of social computing? The answer is a resounding YES. Wikis and blog are tools for creating content and collaborating. These are markets that Microsoft takes very seriously.

If you haven’t had a chance to familiarize yourself with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 yet, take a look at the social computing functionality. SharePoint now has the ability to generate wikis and blogs as template types. While SharePoint’s implementation may not be as elegant and full featured as some of the new pure-plays, it is completely and seamlessly integrated into their flagship collaboration product. (Apologies to the folks in Exchange, but let’s face it, you’re email, SharePoint is collaboration) What does this mean? Well here are just a few examples:

Every blog and wiki can be real-time enabled with presence, IM etc. if you are running Office Communication Server

Wiki and blog templates can be augmented through the addition of web parts

Templates can be customized and extended through the use of SharePoint development tools

Content generated in blog and wiki templates can be managed using policy management tools that are part of SharePoint

While pure-play vendors will be more nimble and faster to deliver new functionality, Microsoft will do what they do best; integrate with the rest of their technology stack and continue to invest. 

STAY TUNED: Research on the topic of social computing in the enterprise is in progress.

Swap out FileNet for Microsoft ECM? Yeah, and Michael Jordan tried to play baseball too...

by Kyle McNabb.

I owe the title of this blog entry to my San Francisco-based peer, Rob Koplowitz. Why? Well, he has a quicker wit than I do.... Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest professional basketball player of all time, felt he could translate his incredible hand/eye coordination and skills to the sport of baseball when he first retired. The result? He played a few games in the minor leagues, drew a ton of attention, but never came close to the success he had in basketball.

The news? Through June 30, 2007, Microsoft's offering a 25% discount off the regular price of SharePoint Server 2007 to existing FileNet customers that migrate off their FileNet ECM solution to Microsoft's brand spankin' new ECM support in Office 2007.

Microsoft's a giant, and they're very good, possibly "Jordanesque", at office productivity and collaboration. And we believe Office 2007's new ECM support complements Microsoft Office's strengths. But ECM addresses a wide range of transactional-content (high-volume production processes), business-content (information worker needs), and persuasive-content (customer experience) needs. We've just published an overview of Microsoft Office 2007's ECM support and recommend enterprises think of Microsoft as an ECM platform addressing business-content needs.

Being good at managing business-content - project documents created in Word, financial plans created in Excel, sales presentations created in PowerPoint - doesn't automatically translate into being good in high volume transactional-content processes such as mortgage origination; new account opening; claims processing; case management; or underwriting. To their credit, Microsoft's aligned themselves with a few vendors that understand these high volume transactional-content processes including Hyland Software, KnowledgeLake, Kofax, Captaris, and Tecmasters.

The takeaway? Michael Jordan is to baseball as Microsoft is to high-volume transactional ECM - lots of raw talent, but not experienced, and not that good. Microsoft needs to walk before they run in the world of ECM by first demonstrating they can truly tackle an enterprise's breadth of business-content ECM needs. I don't think the 25% discount off of SharePoint remotely justifies the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of US dollars or Euros an organization may have to spend to migrate off of FileNet and build upon SharePoint + partner(s) - even if it is Hyland Software, a very good transactional-content ECM provider - to address their transactional-content needs.