Defining Document Management - Dec 2006

Here's a good one on defining Document Management or Enterprise Content Management. Looks like AIIM needs to do a better job of popularizing a common definition of these terms - these are hardly new technologies anymore, but the terms have been so broadly used for so many different things that confusion abounds in the market.

"What document management and workflow applications mean to your enterprise

By Maryse de la Giroday

Have you heard the story about the blindfolded people, each given a part of an elephant to touch and are then asked to describe the rest of the animal? The person at the tail describes a very different animal than the person at the ears or the one at the feet and so on. Well, except for the fact that we’re not wearing blindfolds, we’re in pretty much the same situation when it comes to discussing document management. All the questions you ask about document management and the answers you receive reflect yours or the vendor’s perspective.""

technorati tags: document+management, enterprise+content+management, ecm, dms, AIIM, EMC, Filenet, IBM, Documentum, Kofax, Newgen+Software, OmniDocs

DMS: the Indian angle - Express Computer

DMS: the Indian angle - Express Computer: "DMS: the Indian angle"

"New-found enthusiasm among government organisations to leverage IT as an enabler for their growth is propelling DMS adoption. Vendors foresee an opportunity in providing state-of-the-art products and solutions to Indian enterprises that are setting up offices abroad, as well as to MNCs coming to India. The rapid growth in telecom, manufacturing and retail has added fuel to this fire. The telecom sector expects to tap 500 million consumers by 2010. Forecasts Diwakar Nigam, MD, NewGen, “Greater storage capabilities and tools for automated management of data, increased demands of mobile users, integration of other enterprise applications with the DMS, superior workflow capabilities providing quick access to voluminous information such as high-quality video and pictorial data (in addition to the traditional documents flow), and last but not the least, compliance, will drive the market in India.”

Things are really hotting up in the Indian market - and Document Management is an idea whose time has really come. ‘‘Owing to the large number of public sector enterprises, which are still paper-based, there is considerable scope for DMS in India. Due to continuous geographical expansion and the launch of new operations, enterprises are demanding solutions to manage their massive amount of content, both structured and unstructured.’’ says Diwakar Nigam, Managing Director, Newgen Software.

technorati tags: ECM, Enterprise+Content+Management, Document+Management, Newgen+Software, Diwakar+Nigam

More on defining Business Process Management (BPM)

Here's quite a telling post on the WFMC (Workflow Management Coalition) bulletin board. It seems clear that the organizations promoting BPM have themselves been unable to come to grips with defining what exactly is BPM. Here's an excerpt "We have a definition for Workflow, and Business Process in the glossary. Now we need a definition of BPM that we all agree on. We need this urgently for the asia tour." Read the full post here.

The situation gets even more complicated as AIIM continues to treat BPM as part of the overall Enterprise Content Management(ECM) domain. Click here for more.

technorati tags: BPM, BPMS, Business+Process+Management, ECM, Enterprise+Content+Management, AIIM, WFMC

Defining BPM (Business Process Management)

An attempt to compile the various definitions of BPM floating around, on a rainy Bay area winter morning:

• The term Business Process Management (or BPM) refers to activities performed by businesses to optimize and adapt their processes. (Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_management)

• Business process management (BPM) is a systematic approach to improving an organization's business processes. BPM activities seek to make business processes more effective, more efficient, and more capable of adapting to an ever-changing environment. BPM is a subset of infrastructure management, the administrative area of concern dealing with maintenance and optimization of an organization's equipment and core operations. A business process is a set of coordinated tasks and activities, conducted by both people and equipment, that will lead to accomplishing a specific organizational goal. (from http://searchcio.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid19_gci1088464,00.html)

• Business Process Management it is a term that describes activities and (or) events which are performed to optimize a business process. These activities are aided by software tools. These types of software tools are also called BPM tools. (from http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/B/BPM.html)

• The BPM Group defines full cycle BPM as including:

• Discovery – the ability to reveal the current situation around the organisations business processes including people skills and aptitude, systems usage and usefulness for process integration, managements understanding and process maturity.
• Analysis – moving beyond ‘mapping’ of activities and tasks into aspects such as change capability within processes, ideas concerning business performance and the ways and means by which we understand our organisation and its objectives.
• Design – turning the Discovery, and knowledge acquired, with the Analysis, and understanding developed into a meaningful design. Again this must encompass not just the visible process flows and interaction but the supporting and managing frameworks, from management communication mechanisms to approaches to change etc.
• Validation – ensuring that what we are planning to do, what we actually do, and then how we learn and develop BPM further is logical and sound. At a simple level this may involve feedback loops, process audits, skills profiling and score-carding.
• Implement – moving from Design & Validation, which may be related into conceptual, logical and physical, into roll out of new ways of working. The implementation again goes beyond the technology and includes such aspects as people skills development, organisation shape and objectives and utilisation of best practice approaches to help achieve optimum implementation.
• Integration – one of the strengths of a full life cycle BPM approach is its ability to include and complement existing ways of working and at the same time migrate to powerful and compelling new ways of working. Contrast that with Process Re-engineering’s slash and burn approach with often disastrous consequences.
• Control – ensuring that all that is done is complete, effective and sustainable. Many solutions misunderstand this stage and implement report mechanisms and measurement processes that inadequately link to people issues, management objectives and organisation capability.
• Improvement – moving to a continuous and step change capable BPM Framework that allows and enables ongoing change and improving mastery of process.

More to follow...

Please feel free to add your definition(s)

technorati tags: BPM, BPMS, Business+Process+Management, Definition