Digital Landfill

8 Criteria to Consider in Selecting Your ECM/DM Solution

Capturing and storing digital assets for your organization with an ECM or DM solution is only the first step.  Now you need to leverage those digital assets to drive revenue and cut costs further.  So here is your checklist for making technology choices to complement and future-proof your ECM or DM implementation.

[Note: Our e-books are free. Check them out HERE. Have you registered for our free Fall ECM Seminars?]

8 Criteria to Consider in Selecting Your ECM/DM Solution

1 -- Metadata Maintenance (Automation).

If your long term problem has been the categorization and organization of digital assets then you must address this long term maintenance issue.  And do not forget that the meaning and importance of metadata will change over time and quality of tagging will depend on perspective of each end user.  Not to say folksonomies or allowing end users to contribute tags is not useful, it is; but have no doubt that automation is the only scalable solution.  Do not leave tagging to the end users.   The end user is overwhelmed already, so you need to reduce the metadata maintenance requirements on their time.  To automate metadata maintenance tasks, you will need a solution that supports entity extraction and tools for vocabulary management.  This ensures the longevity of your solution for digital assets of all types by minimizing your reliance on end users to maintain it. 

2 -- Findability.

No use storing digital assets securely with redundant backups if no one ever uses them or worse yet, has no ability to discover those assets.  Keep in mind that tagging is often insufficient because a two-line email might have the same number of tags as a 50-page report – but obviously 50-pages has more content to index/tag than two lines in an email.  Also, do not settle for a faceted search or simple content analytics either.  Your ability to empower users to find relationships between documents, people, and events is paramount.  Look for solutions based on RDF or semantic web technology to reveal relationships, so your end users can build profiles and aggregate facts about a person or document without having to read every line.  Linked data and semantic web technology saves time and builds value.

3 -- Total Control.

Can your IT department and developers manage all the software and directly work with it or is the solution dependent on proprietary code, limitations in functionality?  Can you use the metadata for more than search? Can you integrate with BI systems?  Can this support email and CRM systems and leverage the daily inflow of information from conversations and transactions?  Look for solutions that are not simply point solutions, but platforms with a measurable benefit for more than one application.

4 -- Total Cost of Ownership.

Future proof? Does the software rely on proprietary code or require specially trained and certified developers?  Look for solutions that rely on open source and open standards.  Open source could mean that the search engine is Lucene or SOLR or the structured database is mySQL.  Or perhaps the solution can leverage my existing investments in enterprise licenses for Oracle or SQL.  In any case, you need to look at the ancillary licensing costs related to the implementation and then the maintenance of the solution… be aware of hidden staffing costs, certifications, and license costs!

5 -- Flexibility for Applications.

Can you provide direct access for application developers to access, search, and build upon the information you are storing?  Can they effectively use the metadata? Can you search the actual text and content of files or only the metadata?  If you cannot build upon what you store and give your IT team easy access to support your end users, then you have created an archive.  Your ability to search and build upon the full text of what is stored is the key to maximizing the ROI of your information management strategy.

6 -- Flexibility for User.

What are the native tools and applications that your users have to access documents and metadata?  Can you easily develop applications that access and utilize the text within these documents or only the metadata?  What is the search capability?  Are you generating more support requests with this implementation than you are solving?  The main point is that users need to be able to mashup, visualize and access the documents – document management is not synonymous with archiving. The more access options and end-user controls you can utilize, the better.

7 -- Security.

Can you manage security for users, groups, collections of documents, categories of documents, and/or by location of data?  Can you change those settings and provide audit logs to journal the changes in security settings?  How about mapping security protocols from one organization to another for access to the same document repository?   There is no right solution for every organization, so the security offered must be scalable and flexible.

8 -- Audit and e-Discovery.

Can you capture all required elements for dispositioning data and files in compliance with legal requirements of document management policies?  Are you ready for e-Discovery and auditors?  Can you map the capabilities of your solution to the e-Discovery Reference Model?  Truly you can kill two birds with one stone here and create allies within your legal department.

The tools and applications you select for your ECM or DM solutions that integrate easily can address a variety of IT tasks - saving time and money.  Moreover, you can win many advocates in your user community by saving them time and helping them do their jobs better.

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Charlie Minesinger (Charlie.Minesinger@InnovativeQuery.com) is an expert in enterprise software solutions with over 15 years of experience in consulting to and working directly for enterprises such as Nortel and Siemens.  Charlie is the VP of Sales and Marketing at Innovative Query where he is building semantic solutions with IQeXplore for publishers, enterprises, government partners, and our online channels to transform text and unstructured data into assets that drive revenue or cut costs.

8 Things to Consider When Writing an ECM Proposal

Writing proposals is like a love hate relationship, without the love. Many companies do not give proposal writing its due in the organization. Many companies believe that it is the salesman’s personal relationship with the customer that will win the deal, many companies respond to any and all RFPs by throwing together a “boilerplate” proposal with pricing. This is because many companies do not see the value in spending time and resources on proposal writing. This is where your company can be a winner by putting together a well written sales proposal that responds to the RFP requirements. This by itself will guarantee you a spot on the short list.

[Note: Our e-books are free. Check them out HERE. Have you registered for our free Fall ECM Seminars?]

8 Things to Consider When Writing an ECM Proposal

1 -- Read the RFP from cover to cover and annotate it with a highlighter and pen. If it is available in Word or PDF, use the highlight and comments tools.

And you are saying, “Gee Bud, I never thought of that.” And if you were on my end, as someone who writes RFPs, I would say that I can’t count the number of times I’ve referred the vendor back the RFP to answer a question or read proposals that seemed like they were responding to a different RFP. Read and annotate is the key to success.

2 -- Start writing down questions as you read the RFP.

Questions concern things you don’t understand in the RFP or information that is missing in the RFP.  Submit questions as soon as possible so that you don’t do double work when writing the proposal. Questions force you to read the RFP closely.

ECM RFPs can be difficult because the technology is complex and diverse – document imaging, electronic document management, records management, workflow, and all of their supporting technologies like OCR, PDF/PDF-A, storage strategies, etc.  RFPs can be written by people who may not fully understand the ECM technology array and all of its components and so you may get a requirement for workflow where there is none and OCRing of MS Word documents. Don’t be adversarial, be collegial. Keep in mind that you are the expert in imaging, or OCR, or how long it takes to implement workflow.

3 -- Once you have read the RFP and started your list of questions, begin to outline your proposal.

If the RFP gives you a proposal response format, follow it. If there is no outline, follow a general outline such as executive summary, technical section, management section, pricing, appendices. Start matching areas of your outline to the RFP and make writing assignments.

BTW, don’t throw a 27 page technical whitepaper about workflow into the middle your workflow response section – it ruins the natural flow of your response to a requirement. Save the big bulky whitepapers and studies for an appendix. In your outline, establish the appendices right away so that you can refer to them as you write….”As reviewed in Appendix B, OCR Character Analysis.” and “More detail on workflow can be found in Appendix C, Workflow Explained.”

4 -- Find all of the requirements.

This is an area that can be tricky and difficult because you often will not know if something is a requirement or not. Look for statements that have the word “shall,” “will,” “must,” as in “Vendors shall provide document library services,” or “Handprint recognition will be required.” I often built an Excel table of all the requirement statements so that I know that I am responding to each one.

5 -- Start writing as soon as possible once you have the proposal outline developed.

I can’t tell you how important this is because only by writing will you uncover even more important questions and possible issues that you may not have “noticed” just by reading the RFP. Some issues/questions will be internal to your company/solution like a lack of a certain technology or an implementation/management requirement. BTW, watch your use of boilerplate. I’ve seen vendors throw in a complete 2 page datasheet to respond to a requirement that should have taken three good sentences.

6 -- Many RFPs state that “Pricing will only be a factor when two or more proposals have equal technical points.” And this is true.

While some companies will choose the lowest price proposal, most companies want the best solution first and lowest pricing second. This is your chance to show where your product is different technically from all others. By the way, feature/benefit writing goes a long way to helping explain the value of your solution. OCR is a “feature” and “converting a TIF image to text” is a benefit. Feature/benefit selling is basic salesmanship seems to have been lost. Remember, a proposal is a selling document and it may represent your first contact with the customer.

7 -- Make time for a final review of your proposal.

I can’t tell you what it means to an evaluation team to see a proposal with lots of grammar mistakes, misspellings, sentences that are incomplete, sentences that have no context within a paragraph, and a proposal structure that is ill defined. Evaluation teams I have been on have eliminated proposals due to the overall poor quality of writing, organization, lack of effort. If possible, ask another salesman or someone not helping on the proposal to read and comment on the proposal. Some vendors have a “Red Team,” which is a second group of people who can read and evaluate your proposal as if they were the customer.

8 -- Figure out how to make your proposal a winner among all the other proposals – while staying within the framework of the RFP.

In a recent proposal effort I helped on, we determined that key to winning the proposal was the experience of the implementation team. We hammered this point many times throughout our proposal - our implementation team had the most actual experience, had worked in that industry and spoke the language. There would be no “learn on your nickel” time, no fresh-out-of-college people, and we would “hit the field running with a named senior implementation team.” We backed these statements up with solid resumes and references to similar successful implementations. This strategy not only worked, we won, but the customer mentioned this in our first project meeting. BTW, we were not the lowest priced.

Bud Porter-Roth, Porter-Roth Associates, is an independent consultant in the ECM world. He is author of, “Writing Killer Sales Proposals” and “Request for Proposal: A Guide to Effective RFP Development.”

8 Benefits to Gain by Outsourcing a Document Management Provider

Outsourcing is an unparalleled strategy that enables businesses to focus on their core business needs and better serve their customers. It’s also an effective way to build a culture capable of adapting to change at a moment’s notice. Today, many companies are reviewing their operations in depth to understand their true core competencies and determine what processes to outsource to become more efficient. 

 [Sidebar from JM -- If you are a Document Management reseller or integrator or service bureau, you should plan RIGHT NOW to attend our annual Document Management Service Providers Executive Forum in Nashville.  It is THE event and slots are going fast. Click on the above link for details.]

Outsourcing with a document management provider for non-core services such as document shredding, storage and imaging can free up your business processes in a cost-effective manner; letting you focus on your main business goals.  Some signs your business should look into outsourcing include: high volume of transactions, complex process requirements, and/or dynamic growth.  This may also be ideal if your business is under pressure to reduce costs. Any chance of decreasing transaction-processing costs frees up capital that can then be applied to more strategic initiatives.

Below are eight strategic benefits of using a document management provider:

8 Benefits to Gain by Outsourcing a Document Management Provider

1 -- Improved Company Focus.

A document management provider provides companies with more time to excel and focus on its core company initiatives. Businesses can save money and reduce excess staff by not having to facilitate and support processes such as document shredding, storage and imaging on a daily basis.

2 -- Peace of Mind. 

The cost of poor document management is continuously on the rise and can potentially cost your business millions of dollars. According to the Pomenon Institute, the average cost per information security breach in 2009 was $6.75 million. Data breaches not only cost money but cost public trust, which often makes it hard for businesses to recover. The right provider will provide an unbroken chain of custody throughout the entire lifecycle of all your documents. Further it will ensure your company complies with government regulations to remain compliant and credible.

3 -- Access to World-Class Technology Capabilities.

When handling document management needs internally, companies tend to buy lower-end technology to save on cost.  However, issues can arise if your company experiences rapid growth. Many companies have to quickly hire and train additional staff and potentially deploy new hardware or software to support the growth, which can be costly and time consuming.  By partnering with a secure document management provider, your company can gain instant access to world-class technology capabilities that traditional in-house operations may not have the financial ability to support–at a cost-effective price.

4 -- Enhanced Data Security.     

It is critical to proactively protect private business and customer confidential information.  With identity theft and data breaches on the rise, partnering with a provider that is AAA NAID certified and PCI-DSS compliant is imperative. NAID certification verifies that your provider adheres to stringent security practices and standards defined by the international trade association for the information destruction industry.  PCI-DSS compliance certifies that the organization follows the comprehensive requirements set by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council to ensure data integrity.  A proper document storage facility is equipped with 24-hour security systems, alarm systems and complete fire protection to safeguard your documents at all times.  Further, an imaging service will house files in a secure environment and provide complete backup, redundancy and disaster recovery to ensure your files are never lost or compromised. Lastly, all documents that need to be shredded are constantly monitored and protected until destroyed. You will also receive a certificate and destruction for a legal audit trial.

5 -- A Customized Solution.

Every business has unique challenges when it comes to document management needs. Your provider can offer customized solutions to meet the needs of your business. For example, if your company requires long term record retention but has a low volume of retrieval, it will most likely not be feasible or cost effective to convert every single file. A viable alternative is to partner with a provider that can store and manage large volumes of existing files off-site, yet deliver paper records in an “on-demand” electronic format. This enables employees to work with electronic records on a daily basis and saves the company significantly in converting years of physical records. No matter the size of your organization or what processes need support; your provider can create a customized solution to complement your business needs.

6 -- Increase Productivity and Streamline Staff.

Many companies have a group of employees managing and maintaining the process flow for an abundance of internal documents such as human resources files. By using a document management provider, your staff will be able to focus on their core job responsibilities instead of tending to endless imaging and filing or wasting time trying to locate lost records. 

7 -- More Space. 

Don’t waste valuable building space for file storage. A document storage provider is ideal if your company has a large volume of records with long retention rates but limited space. Using a secure storage provider will not only free up space, but will offer a secure storage facility equipped with 24-hour security cameras, alarm systems and complete fire protection systems to protect records from catastrophes such as floods and fires.  Your files will be stored safely and it’s an efficient alternative to in-house management expenses.

8 -- Regain Control.

Is locating a document like trying to find a needle in a haystack? Managing large amounts of data internally can be difficult to control and often becomes a logistical nightmare.  By using imaging and storage solutions, you can locate and gain access to any file at a moment’s notice. For example, with imaging, once files are uploaded into the secured database, they are organized to your specifications, simplifying the retrieval process and providing you with a user-friendly system for filtering and analysis. In the storage environment, all documents are tracked with a barcode system and can be located immediately.  This instant access takes guess work out of locating files and lets employees focus on their core job responsibilities.

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Bob Hoffman is Director of Imaging Sales for Cintas Corporation. He has more than 23 years of document management experience. For more information, please visit http://www.cintas.com/DocumentManagement/

AIIM and EDSF team up on back-to-school training program

• Back to School with AIIM and EDSF
• Discounted Online Certificate Courses 
• www.aiim.org/training
• EDSF Code: EDSF9HB

This is the time of year when parents and students are frantically getting ready for school.  Whether it’s the first day of kindergarten or the first day of college, it can be an exciting time. 

Just as it’s important for our children to continue their education, it’s also critical that we keep our skills up-to-date, and this is the opportune time for us to consider “going back to school”.  To help make continuing education fit easily within busy schedules, EDSF is pleased to partner with AIIM to offer their online Certificate Programs to EDSF supporters.

EDSF supporters can take these courses at the AIIM Professional member price of $600 instead of the usual rate of $750---a $150 savings. A portion of the registration fee goes directly to EDSF’s Document Management and Graphic Communications Industry Scholarships, which support the industry’s future generation. Registration is available at www.aiim.org/training. Use EDSF discount code EDSF9HB.  

Everyone that registers prior to September 30 will have their name placed in a raffle for a prize to be announced on October 5, at EDSF’s Scholarship Night at Graph Expo.

The Certificate Programs are designed from global best practices from among AIIM's 65,000 members. The Certificate Programs cover the following areas:

• Enterprise Content Management: Learn how to take control of your information assets.
• Electronic Records Management: Learn how to take control of your electronic records.
• Business Process Management: Learn how to improve your business processes.
• Information Organization & Access/Enterprise Search: Learn how to optimize findability and enterprise search.
• Email Management: Learn how to improve the control of corporate emails.
• Enterprise 2.0: Learn how to use Web 2.0 technologies to improve collaboration and innovation across the enterprise.
• SharePoint: Learn best practices for sharing and managing information on the SharePoint platform.

How do the online programs work? Each program is broken into 60-minute modules with online audio and PowerPoint. Students may start, pause or stop the module at any time to review materials at their own pace. They may also view a module multiple times to ensure mastery of content. Downloadable handout materials and additional links and resources accompany each course. At the end of each module there’s a quick exam (15 to 20 questions) that reviews the previously covered content.

Students have unlimited access to the online courses and handouts for six months, with a maximum of three attempts to pass the online exam, which is accessible from the AIIM Web site. Participants need 70 percent correct answers to pass the exam. Once they’ve successfully passed all the exams for the program, participants will receive a Certificate of Completion and will be awarded the designation of Practitioner or Specialist, which can be used in conjunction with the associated logo and title on a business card, e-mail signature, Web page, etc.

To receive the EDSF discount, Certificate Program participants must enter code EDSF9HB when registering. For more information on AIIM’s Certificate Programs and to register, please visit www.aiim.org/training. Questions? Contact AIIM Training at training@aiim.org or 301-755-2631.

8 things you always wanted to know about SharePoint -- but were afraid to ask -- free e-book

If you haven't already done so, a reminder that our SharePoint e-book is now available and it's free and there is no registration required.  

In addition, it is published under Creative Commons, so if you want to post it on you web site and use it for SEO, lead gen, etc., feel free. Just note where you got it from. Contact me if you have any questions what you can do and what you can't.

Download SharePoint e-book

Also, here's a link to all the "8 things" e-books.

After Google Wave, Where Will Google Go Re Social Media? -- Google Me

To give credit where credit is due, saw this originally on Gina Trapani's blog, Smarterware. 

There's a lot of speculation in the wake of shuttering Google Wave about where Google will go next, especially with regards to Facebook-like functionality and the extendability of Facebook into realms beyond our immediate personal networks.

Gina is scary smart about all things Google, so check out her post, What to Expect from "Google Me".

Here's the original Google presentation that Gina references.  Worth looking about in terms of Google's vision...

The Real Life Social Network v2

View more documents from Paul Adams.

Also, check out my posts on the E20 Community blog...

8 Things to Consider When Writing an ECM Request for Proposal (RFP)

An RFP is a tool used to purchase products and services by promoting competitive proposals among vendors. Through this competitive process, vendors offer an array of potential solutions and prices and compete with each other to win your business. Buyers evaluate the many different vendor solutions and pick the one that most closely fits their project requirements and budget.

An RFP is a vehicle that allows both the buyer and the vendor to establish a dialogue and to work from the same set of rules, requirements, schedules, and information. The opportunity to have this dialogue is an important element in the process because requirements are not always clear and the vendor, as the expert in a given technology, is allowed to question and interpret what is being requested by the buyer. Conversely, the buyer has the opportunity to question and clarify issues in vendor proposals to ensure that the product fits the need.

8 Things to Consider When Writing an ECM Request for Proposal (RFP)

1 -- Review and Understand the Technology.

ECM is a diverse set of technologies that can work together but you can also buy and use only one application. ECM – Enterprise Content Management applications can be:

•    Document imaging (scanning)
•    Electronic document management
•    Records management
•    Workflow
•    And other associated complementary technologies like OCR

If you don’t understand the above, your first stop should be www.aiim.org and the Resource Center. Many RFPs specify all technologies but the work is actually limited to an imaging system or a electronic document management system. Requiring technologies that will not be used will up your costs considerably.

2 -- Your Business Needs Should Drive the RFP – Write an RFP Around your Functional Needs, Not the Technology Solution you Think you Need.

Too often an RFP provides the answer and forgets to ask the question. We often get so anxious about the technology that we specify a complete system instead of providing key information such as what business problem am I solving, how many, what type, how long, and what we strategically want from the system – better document control, lower the price of a transaction, records management, etc. Provide the functional requirements and let the vendors “propose” the best solutions.

3 -- Requirements, Requirements, Requirements.

Too often we see RFPs without any functional/business requirements (#2 above) or RFPs with 500 “question” or “statement” requirements taken from a list found on an Internet site or “borrowed” from another RFP. If you don’t do your homework and gather “your” requirements (by interviewing users) vendors will hammer you with questions and you will be forced to do the work anyway. Functional Requirements state a fact or a need such as “ACME has 200 million paper documents with no programmatic way to identify the document type or content of the document and no way to control its life cycle.” A recent government RFP, for a small system, had 4 extensions to the due date and over 140 questions – how much extra work is involved in responding to 140 questions, some of which caused a change in requirements! Do your homework or the vendors will do it for you.

4 -- Tell Vendors How They Must Write Their Proposals.

I can tell you from experience that reading 10 or so proposals that have no common organization is incredibly difficult, time consuming, frustrating, but you get the idea. In your RFP, tell vendors how they must organize their proposals – section by section. This will help you to do a fair apples-to-apples comparison based on your evaluation criteria, which is next. BTW, you can require that proposals only be 50 pages long, forcing the vendors to edit typically overwritten material.

5 -- Establish Evaluation Criteria and Actually Use Them.

If you are new to writing RFPs, think of reading ten 100 page proposals that essentially say the same thing with potentially different technical concepts and vocabulary.  Without evaluation criteria it will be a very difficult task to clearly differentiate each proposal.

6 -- Include a Demonstration and Reference Site Visits or Calls in your RFP Schedule and Timeline.

Even if this is not your first system, include a demonstration and if financially possible, reference site visits or at least calls. In one RFP I managed, we were down to the short list of 2 vendors and our next step was a demonstration. One vendor who was very aggressive in their pricing and their proposal (and attitude), actually failed the demo – they couldn’t finish. While their proposal was a winner, on paper, the reality was they couldn’t use their own system – without a demo, we may have chosen that vendor.

7 -- Establish a Project Budget for Pete’s Sake.

How many times have we seen a project “postponed” when the proposal pricing comes in? Prior to releasing an RFP, work with vendors to get a ballpark idea for project pricing. Key to project budgeting is to understand that there are three basic components:

a.  Vendor software – pricing could be based on number of users, number of servers, both.

b.  Implementation costs -for every dollar spent on software, you may be spending two dollars on implementation.

c.  Your internal costs – you may have to hire or dedicate internal staff to implement and manage the project and may have to bring in replacement staff – this is a real cost to you and should be part of your budget.

Of the above, b and c are more difficult to estimate and b may be a serious cost center. Most system implementations fail because of implementation costs, not because the software application failed.

8 -- Establish a Reasonable Time Line for the Project.

A project timeline starts from, “Hey, could we use an imaging system to do accounts payable?” to “Wow, accounts payable is now automated and it actually works!” Conceptualization, requirements development, RFP/Proposal/Demo time, contract negotiation and award, and implementation could easily be 12 months. I worked with a company that had to stop the purchase of a system after the RFP because another, “more important” project was starting and they could not do both projects at once.

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Bud Porter-Roth, Porter-Roth Associates, is an independent consultant in the ECM world. He is author of, “Request for Proposal: A Guide to Effective RFP Development,” and “Writing Killer Sales Proposals.”

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Looking for the latest on SharePoint? Look no further -- get my free SharePoint e-book.

Are you a SharePoint consultant or integrator?

Yes? Then you need to be part of our SharePoint Buyer's Guide, which will list SharePoint consultants and implementers. Get listed and make sure you're exposed to the 65,000 members need your services. What are you waiting for? It's free. In September, we will launch our fourth community focused on how to (or if you should) effectively use SharePoint to address your collaboration and content business challenges. Contact Bryant Duhon (bduhon@aiim.org) with any questions. Add your services NOW.   Use the form below and email it to bduhon@aiim.org. http://www.aiim.org/forms/AIIM_Buyers_Guide_Vendor_Information_SharePoint_Form.pdf

Webinar next week on ERP and ECM intersection

Forrester is doing a webinar for us next week on the intersection between ERP and ECM systems. It looks like an interesting one; click on the link below to register.

http://www.aiim.org/Events/Webinars/416

Here's some of the background on the webinar...

In capital-intensive industries physical assets represent a significant proportion of the total worth of the organization.  In addition to the physical assets, these businesses have large quantities of information and document assets to manage as well.  When any of these assets fail or underperform, business can be disrupted with costly implications.  By managing assets across the facility, organizations can improve utilization and performance, reduce capital and operating costs, reduce risk, and improve return on asset investment.

An important development in asset management involves the integration of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), where business operations can be streamlined through optimal organization of documents, emails, and content from other business systems made easily accessible from transactions and processes.

This is a non-technical presentation of real business scenarios where unstructured content is driving more intelligent and efficient business processes.

Date: Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Time: 2-3 p.m. Eastern (GMT-4); 1-2 p.m. Central; 12-1 p.m. Mountain; 11 a.m. - 12 noon Pacific; 6-7 p.m. GT

Evangelizing the ECM Industry -- I Finally Found the Key and It's Alyssa Milano

 A lot of us who care about content, records and information management face the same quandary -- If WE can see how important these technologies are, why can't everyone else? Why can't our bosses see it? Why can't the news media? Why is it so hard to convince potential users to move forward with projects? Why can't the general population see the importance of this part of the tech space?

Well, after 15 years of trying, I have found the solution to "mainstreaming" our industry. And the winner is...

Alyssa Milano.

Let me back up a bit.

Like many of you, I watch the traffic on my blog pretty closely. I use Google Analytics and also use an app called ChartBeat. ChartBeat is a lot of fun because it gives you real time analytics -- at any point in time you can see how many people are on your blog, where they are from, and what they are looking at. It also sends you text alerts when there is a spike in your traffic.

Well, after laboring in the content management vineyards for quite some time, I got an alert last Wednesday. A big one. According to the alert, there were over 200 people on my site at that very moment, almost all looking at a post I did almost a year ago. 

The post? 37 Really Cool Statistics About Social Media. Here's what last week's traffic looked like...

 

As I watched the traffic, it was clear that the traffic was being driven by Twitter. Retweet after retweet after retweet. Which begged the question, where was the original?

Eventually I found it. Alyssa Milano, star of Who's the Boss and Charmed, and with 991,373 followers, had set everything in motion.

Now I'm not sure what got her to tweet about my post. But I ain't arguing with serendipity. And Alyssa, if you are reading this, you can tweet about our information management stuff ANYTIME.

So, if you ever have any concerns about how to get a LOT of people to pay attention to your content management concerns, here's the answer.

Alyssa Milano.

No charge for this advice.

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Been to our new communities? Check them out...

Enterprise 2.0

Capture and imaging

Electronic records management