Know and Go: Has Your Organization’s ECM Initiative Left You Out in the Cold?

We've put together a couple more Know and Go webcasts, and I wanted to share them with you here on the blog. This next one, hosted by Chris Brown, is titled Knowledge Management 2.0: Has Your Organization’s ECM Initiative Left You Out in the Cold?

Generations of enterprise content management (ECM) systems have promised to help workers share information that flows throughout the enterprise. But in reality, most of these systems are created with content producers in mind. What about content consumers, the people who ultimately need that information?

In our webcast, Chris discusses this issue, and shows how organizations unite knowledge with content consumers. Give it a go by downloading it from our Web site.

Meet the Team: Kathy Walsh from the Inmagic marketing department

Kathy Walsh is one of our newest Inmagic members, and someone I've personally known since my days at Information Resources Inc. We had worked together there in our past lives, and have rejoined here at Inmagic on the marketing team.

Kathy is a Product Marketing Specialist for the company now, and Janelle got acquainted with her for a Meet the Team podcast last week.



Kathy is focusing on researching and understanding the knowledge management needs of various industries around the globe. We'll be using her findings as part of our initiative to gather industry data and customer feedback to incorporate into our upcoming Presto products.

Hit play to hear more about Kathy's professional background, what she's doing at Inmagic, her thoughts on where Inmagic is heading, her goals for her personal career, and other tidbits about Kathy. Enjoy!

Canadian city manages and shares its digital archives online with Presto

Any government organization with a special library collection is likely managing large volumes of archived digital material, including documents, images, audio clips, and more. If you've spent time on a government body's information management team, you're all too familiar with the work required to organize and search content.

For the capital city of one Canadian province, this was a job that required the resources of four to five professionals. The city came to Inmagic looking for a way to more efficiently manage its digital archives and make them widely available to the public, while reducing IT costs and dependency.

We helped the city create a new Web site with Presto where they can easily store multiple types of digital archives, including high-resolution images, documents, journals, and audio. Just one person is required to manage the system. And now, the city -- including its historians, writers, educators, students, media, government employees, engineers, and more -- can easily search and use tens of thousands of previously inaccessible archived files.

We put together a case study detailing the Canadian city's experience with Presto. Give it a read to get the full story on the city's technological requirements, how we worked together to develop a solution, and the results the city has found since deploying Presto.

IN THE BOOKS: Canadian city deploys Presto

Paul Gillin on what makes B2B communities tick

Paul Gillin

If you're online, you're most likely part of a community. Or several. Think LinkedIn. Facebook. Even this blog. All our readers are a part of the Inmagic community. Communities have become an established way to network, share information, and learn. But there's more opportunity with them than might meet the eye.

We explored this more when we talked to Paul Gillin for a podcast interview. Paul advises marketers and business executives on strategies to optimize their use of social media to reach their customers more effectively.

He's the author of three books about social media and online communities, and is now working on his fourth with coauthor Eric Schwartzman. The working title is "Social Marketing to the Business Customer." It looks at social media tools in the context of B2B companies.



Janelle and Paul discuss the most popular uses of communities for B2B companies -- product support and education. "[Using communities] as a way to get problems solved and develop your professional credentials are two of the real killer apps if you will of B2B social media communities," says Paul.

If you're interested in starting an online community at your organization, listen to Paul's advice for getting one going. Also tune in to find out what are the elements of a successful community.

Right now, Paul and Eric are interviewing community organizers, corporate bloggers, HR professionals, salespeople, and others to gather information for their book. They've posted their outline online, and are inviting people to provide feedback. So give our podcast a listen, and then hop over to their outline. You can also read the full transcript on our blog. For more from Paul, hit his blog.

Enterprise 2.0: The case for starting small

LESS IS MORE: Reasons for starting small with E2.0

Enterprise 2.0 is not right for every organization. That's because it's not a one-size-fits-all solution. As we've written before on the blog, it must take into account corporate culture, policies, and procedures. And more importantly, it must focus on the business problem or objective at hand.

I contributed an article to ITWorld this week that expounded upon this. If you're trying to determine whether E2.0 would work in your organization, I'd encourage you to give it a read. I described the reasons why organizations should start small when implementing Enterprise 2.0, including:

• Addressing a pain point drives adoption.
• E2.0 is intrinsically a grassroots initiative.
• E2.0 needs "confined freedom."
• E2.0 requires "social security."

For the details, click over my article. And thanks to ITWorld's editors for taking my piece!

Presto 3.3 crosses Information Today's desk

The folks at Information Today featured our Presto 3.3 release in their Weekly News Digest on Monday. Thanks for including us!

IN THE NEWS: Information Today features Presto 3.3

Community management becoming strategic enterprise position

OPEN CALL: E2.0 is driving a need for community managers

Enterprise 2.0 is a growing initiative, and with it is coming the creation of new functions and jobs. Positions such as community managers, content managers, and social media strategists are emerging. It's something that many industry thoughts leaders, including Dion Hinchcliffe, are seeing. Dion wrote an article on ebizQ recently about community management, and how it is becoming a strategic new business capability.

He writes, "... as the work environment has moved towards an online one where the dominant communication model is social in nature, then a different set of skills, techniques, and processes are required. As a result, it's starting to become apparent that community management is a strategic function for organizations that are adopting or otherwise being impacted by social computing, which is most of them at the moment."

I agree with his assertion. As I wrote in my comment, community managers are at the intersection of business and social. Business is hierarchical in nature. Community is social and fluid. A company needs both to innovate under the constraints of modern organizational policies and regulations.

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How aerospace is reducing costs and increasing knowledge retention with Social Knowledge Networks

We're kicking off our Vertical View series today by profiling the aerospace industry, and how it can use Presto Social Knowledge Networks to address challenges surrounding contracting, cost containment, regulation compliance, and knowledge transfer and retention. We'll be going through seven more industries over the coming weeks. After you read a profile, I'd also encourage you to check out some of our other series on Social Knowledge Networks for more info, including our Road to Social Knowledge Networks and How to Cost Justify Your Social Knowledge Network Needs.

Let's get started!

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Suite101 goes behind the firewall to explore SKNs

Edmund O'Reilly put together a round-up of new social collaboration applications and tools on Suite101 last week. He included an e-mail Q&A with me as part of his coverage. We talked about how Presto can be used in the cloud, its enterprise security functionalities, its advantages over social networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook, and more. You can read about it all by surfing over to Edmund's article.

SOCIALIZING AT WORK: Suite101 explores SKNs with Phil Green

CMSWire features newly released Presto 3.3

Barb Mosher covered the release of Presto 3.3 on CMSWire. She included an overview of the features and screencaps of the application to illustrate how it works, if you're interesting in learning more. Thanks Barb!

OVER THE WIRE: CMSWire covers the release of Presto 3.3

Presto 3.3 released: updated with deeper SharePoint integration

TA-DA: Presto 3.3 is released today

Over the past several months, we've been working on enhancing Presto according to the feedback we've been getting from our customers. Some of the biggest suggestions have surrounded tighter SharePoint integration, user interface improvements, and simpler federated search management functionality. We've baked those updates into Presto 3.3, which is available now.

To learn more about the new and improved Presto, I'd encourage you to read our press release, which covers the new features and functionality. And as always, please let us know what you think. Are we off-mark with something? Are we hitting the nail on the head? We're developing Presto with you in mind, so please share your thoughts and feedback here in the comments, or drop me a note.

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Official welcome to Chris Brown

Last week, Chris Brown officially joined Inmagic as our CM and KM consultant. I wanted to extend a warm welcome to Chris on behalf of everyone at Inmagic, and share the news with our readers. I like to think of him as our utility infielder. He will be working on client projects, with marketing, on new applications and demos, and more. Welcome Chris!

Controlling a chaotic Microsoft SharePoint environment

PAIN POINT: SharePoint can be challenging to manage

Upgrading to Microsoft SharePoint 2010 will involve more than a flick of the switch for most companies. As Shane O'Neill points out on CIO.com, " ... the time is now for enterprises to assess the suite's new features for both end-users (blogs and wikis) and IT pros (app management, backup and recovery)."

In his article, Shane provides tips for IT departments on managing SharePoint. He quotes Scott Gode, Vice President of Product Management at Azaleos, which helps companies deploy and manage SharePoint and Exchange environments. Gode says, "SharePoint needs constant care and feeding. It is more alive than other applications because users are always adding new content and have more control with SharePoint than, say, a regular database."

This is true. SharePoint databases can grow too large, and as a result, performance can degrade. But I don't believe this is due to SharePoint being "more alive" than other enterprise applications. I don't consider SharePoint to be "more alive" than a CRM system, discussion forum, or Web CMS. All these systems have a great deal of sharing and interacting.

The real reason SharePoint performance can degrade is two-fold.

1. Without considerable IT expertise and/or IT investment, SharePoint can quickly lose value if database volumes exceed 50 GB.

2. As the article states, SharePoint is positioned as a Swiss Army knife. Have you ever tried to use the scissors or the saw in a Swiss Army knife? It's difficult, and they don't do a great job. I would prefer a real pair of scissors.

We've seen these challenges consistently in our interactions with our customers. It's a major reason we added SharePoint integration to Presto, which we've covered extensively on the blog. I thought Shane detailed some other good tips in his article, so I'd encourage you to flip over to CIO and give it a read.

Breaking information silos is key for life sciences organizations

If the economic crisis has demonstrated anything to us, it's that departments and projects of nearly every variety are being scrutinized for their value. In our customer interactions, we're seeing how information managers must increasingly justify their expenditures.

This is something IDC analyst Dr. Alan S. Louie is also seeing and covering in his work studying life sciences organizations. In a recent blog post, he wrote about how "information, not infrastructure, is the key success factor." Life sciences companies are targeting information sharing and elimination of information silos in their strategic initiatives.

It brought to mind one of our blog series, How to Cost Justify Your Social Knowledge Network Needs. We covered how Social Knowledge Networks can address the complexities inherent in information sharing -- management of which is essential to improving strategic decision-making, increasing productivity, and reducing costs.

As organizations grapple with essential cost reductions, they are revisiting their old business models from every angle, and turning to better data management to increase productivity, produce the related operating cost reductions, and remain competitive.

For more of Dr. Louie's perspective on eliminating information silos in life sciences organizations, I'd encourage your to turn to his post.

Pharmaceutical's KM challenges come to light at Center for Business Intelligence conference

LOOKING INSIDE: Pharma's KM challenges surface

A few weeks ago, The Center for Business Intelligence held its Bio/Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Forum on Knowledge Management for Medical Affairs. Keynoting the conference was Gil Yehuda, who talked about social media's implications on bio/pharmaceutical organizations today. He's posted his thoughts on his blog, and you can read part 1 and part 2 of his reaction there. It includes notes he took and conclusions he's drawn based on the sessions presented.

An interesting thing Gil brings to light is that pharmaceutical companies have an abundance of information in their organizations, but need better ways to leverage it. "Some of the speakers and participants were expanding their practice to meet new challenges. But some were stuck in regressive, doomed mindsets, known to fail," he writes.

From Gil's assessment, it seems a major challenge among pharmaceuticals is knowledge retention. Companies are grappling with how to manage knowledge throughout an enterprise's life cycle so that it persists for future generations, while adhering to legal policy. For more from Gil, hit his blog.

A library of Enterprise 2.0 case studies on JacobMorgan.com

Enterprise 2.0 and social marketing strategist Jacob Morgan has put together a collection of E2.0 case studies and examples on his blog. They're culled from various industries and companies, and his hope is that they provide some useful insight for others deploying, or looking to deploy, their own E2.0 initiative. He's opened the floor for readers to post any additional case studies they might have, so I added ours to the mix. Feel free to add your own and wander about the resources.

KMWorld names Inmagic a Company that Matters in Knowledge Management for second consecutive year

KMWorld conducted its annual ranking of the Top 100 Companies that Matter in Knowledge Management. The publication's editors have named Inmagic to its list for the second year in a row. It's a great honor to be included on KMWorld's listing, and I wanted to thank the editors for the recognition.

In his article announcing the winners, KMWorld Editor-in-Chief Hugh McKellar writes, "The firms on this list are true solution providers that are dedicated to understanding what their customers need and delivering elegant technology for the requirements of the knowledge economy."

We hope our customers agree. :) Thanks, KMWorld!

We issued a press release today announcing the news, and I pasted here if you'd like to give it a read for more details on the award.

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