John Mancini President AIIM

According to AIIM’s 2008 State of the Industry Survey, released following AIIM President John Mancini’s keynote address at the AIIM International Exposition and Conference, organizations of all sizes have “crossed the chasm” in their awareness of the importance of solving the document, records, and content problems that are affecting their organization.

“In the early years of our survey, we used to find an awareness gap between large organizations and everyone else in terms of understanding the implications of the information management chaos,” noted Mancini.  More than half of those surveyed this year expressed either marginal confidence or no confidence at all in the integrity of their electronic information.  This result was true regardless of the size of the organization.”

Mancini believes that the implications of this simple fact - in terms of the potential of enterprise content management (ECM) market - are enormous.  “We have moved in just a few years from an industry that was relevant to only a handful of users within the largest organizations to an industry that will soon reach most desktops within large organizations.  But even more importantly, the solutions of this industry are now within the reach of organizations of ALL sizes.  There are 1.3 million business organizations in the United States alone with annual revenues of over $1 million.”

The survey quantifies a wide variety of issues related to end user experiences with ECM solutions:

Organizations have a long way to go in dealing with the implications of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure adopted in December 2006.  32% believe it would take them at least one month to find all of the relevant information regarding a customer. Confidence in the integrity of electronic information used to make decisions remains low.  52% of end users have at best “slight” confidence in the quality of their electronic information.

Microsoft SharePoint has quickly become an important part of the solution mix within end user organizations.  33% have already implemented SharePoint in some part of their organization. Most organizations have yet to develop a coherent strategy for leveraging SharePoint and other ECM solutions.  Only 15% of end users have a “formal plan or strategy in place describing where they will utilize the SharePoint investments and where they will utilize other ECM investments.”

The results also quantify the top obstacles (out of 13 possibilities) that end users have faced in deploying ECM technologies:
 41% = “We didn’t think through the process and organizational issues.”
 36% = “Lack of knowledge and training among our internal staff.”
 32% = “Internal politics and lack of consistent governance.”

Mancini notes, “The obstacles highlight the need for organizations to simply get smarter about how to effectively implement content, document, and records technologies.  The industry is mature enough that we can now point to a set of best practices among our members to help organizations new to the space get started more quickly.  Our six certificate training programs are designed around the best practices of our 50,000+ associates around the world and have been validated by Expert Advisory Panels in both Europe and North America.”

AIIM’s Certificate Training Programs cover the Why?, What? and How? of enterprise content management (ECM), electronic records management (ERM), business process management (BPM), information organization  access (IOA/Search), email management (EMM), and enterprise 2.0 (E2.0).  Classes can be taken online or in-person.  Programs are designed for business managers, IT managers, compliance officers, executives, archivists, librarians, risk managers, records managers, etc., as well as for solution providers, sales consultants, project managers, and technical staff. 

Find out more at www.aiim.org/training.

AIIM is the community that provides education, research, and best practices to help organizations find, control and optimize their information. With 50,000 industry professionals as associates, the association is international in scope, independent, implementation-focused, and, as the representative of the entire ECM industry - including users, suppliers, and the channel - acts as the industry's intermediary.