The Silo-Investment and De-silo Cycle

When people refer to silos, or stovepipes, they mean it in a critical way. Silos refer to something inefficient because it is insulated, disconnected, uncoordinated. There are organizational silos. There are information silos. There are communication silos.

In some cases, silos successfully fulfill a business case. Successful silos provide promised cost or revenue, but all businesses evolve over time and to evolve with the business, silos that succeeded need to shed their insulated, disconnected, uncoordinated characteristics -- the organization, information, and communications need to be de-siloed.

In other cases silos never achieve their planned business case. In case of failure, the need for integration and coordination may never have been understood or articulated. Like the successful silos adapting to a changing business, the failed silos also need to be de-siloed.
Silos are created and dismantled in cycles driven by business and technology trends. Silos crop up the “Silo-investment” portion of the cycle. They are folded back into the enterprise during the de-silo portion of the cycle.

Portals were envisioned as a way to foster cross organizational communication and many portal initiatives delivered on this promise successfully. The late 1990s and the early years of the 21st century saw much investment in portals. Technologies from Plumtree, Epicentric, and Vignette flourished in the silo-investment phase. The business continues to change and continues to embrace the portal concept, so those portal technologies have begun to be folded back into the enterprise during the de-siloing phase. Portals continue, but they continue in a way that is connected with the rest of the enterprise.

Consider that we are now in the silo-investment phase of web 2.0 social networking technology. There is investment in technologies such as Jive’s Clearspace and Atlassian’s Confluence to realize the value in web 2.0 functionality. This is the silo-investment phase of web 2.0. As before, there will also come a time for de-siloing.

Content Consolidation to Become Increasingly Common

In a 2008 Gartner survey of nearly 400 respondents, 69% of enterprises indicated they had more than six repository technologies in production use. These enterprises can benefit from a consolidation program (http://blog.crownpartners.com/?Tag=consolidation) using content Extract Transform and Load (ETL) (http://blog.crownpartners.com/bid/17240/Enabling-Consolidation-with-Universal-ETL), and will increasingly initiate strategic action to realize those benefits.

Two factors are especially important in driving the acceleration of consolidation initiatives. First, cost of consolidation is borne once, but the cost-saving, service-level, and “content de-siloing” benefits are perpetual. In times of revenue uncertainty, the guaranteed return of these perpetual benefits becomes increasingly attractive. Second, consider that increasingly sophisticated automation of content ETL reduces the cost of consolidation efforts. Prior to the development of content ETL, custom programming and manual effort made consolidation error-prone and costly.

Consolidation programs are typically made up of a “hub” and “spokes”. The hub portion of the program ensures the readiness of the strategic content management platform and coordinates one or more spokes. Each of the spokes addresses one of the non-strategic content management technologies, by folding it into the strategic content management platform. Whether the spokes are pursued serially or in parallel, the start-to-finish time required for the consolidation should be minimized to accelerate the returns.

Consolidation at user firms will continue to drive shake-out among content management technology providers. Vignette, Plumbtree, and Fatwire are among likely losers in the continuing shakeout. Weakening among providers such as these will accelerate consolidation efforts as user organizations move to the better-funded, more-rapidly-evolving, better-maintained products from the apparent-survivor providers.

Crown’s Buldoser technology and related professional services capabilities can enable and accelerate your consolidation. Ask us about a consolidation assessment to help you understand and realize the benefits of consolidation.

Crown’s Value Proposition: The Software First “Hybrid” Advantage

Unlike its competitors, Crown is not a typical firm. Rather, Crown’s value is demonstrated through its software offerings. Crown frequently uses engagements in order to leverage and grow their technology solutions.

Traditional IT consulting firms follow a prescriptive approach to client engagements. The process involves a detailed assessment of a particular client need and the creation of a customized solution to meet that need. The consulting firm will follow a series of steps in its process: conduct a strategy analysis, identify an appropriate technology solution, and implement that solution to meet the client’s need. This process is repeated over and over for each new client with little modification to the overall process or project timeline. The value of a traditional consulting firm is based on their understanding and application of “best practices”, or lessons learned from previous engagements, to solve a current client need; not necessarily in the process utilized.

By following this process, a traditional consulting firm is able to expand its knowledge base of best practices and create unique solutions for its clients. The consulting firm leaves the project with additional knowledge on how to solve a problem, but often leaves behind the customized technology solution that made the project a success. Because a traditional consulting firm is compensated on a time and materials basis, the firm is incented to create longer project timelines with customized solutions for each client.

For traditional firms, this model meets their financial goals:
· Keep billable hours as high as possible
· Avoid software that will eliminate the need for human capital
· Grow bigger, but not more efficient

Crown’s model rejects the traditional prescriptive methodology. Rather than only provide the next client the benefits of learned strategies, Crown also provides the customer with enhanced software solutions from each previous, and future, engagement. In this way, Crown can deliver the same technology solution adopted at one client site to another client without having to repeat the entire project timeline.

For Crown, this model meets their goals:
· Create a highly utilized, knowledgeable staff that can streamline the project
· Provide customized software solutions built on best practices
· Capture more market share and grow
· Establish reputation as the low-cost provider due to lower price and higher efficiency

Further, the client is able to own and maintain those best practices, and software, after the project has ended. Crown will continue to update its software solutions through future client engagements, providing updates to previous clients who own earlier versions of the same or similar software. Crown, in that respect, is able to continually service clients long after the engagement is over.

Crown’s Software First model provides several benefits to its customers:
· Rapid, skilled implementation of customized solutions
· An in-house software solution with ownership rights
· Benefit of previous product enhancements based on best practices
· Benefit of future product enhancements based on best practices
· Half the cost of the competition and twice the value

In addition to benefiting its customer base, Crown’s software model differentiates it from its competitors in the following ways:
· Continuously growing intellectual property
· Research & development is funded by the clients since it is developed on a case-by-case basis on the client site
· Software updates have created a new channel of recurring maintenance revenue year over year
· Crown’s software replaces manual processes
· Ability to take on more engagements and grow to include more software offerings
· Brand development and increasing ability to serve repeat customers
· Overall lower cost of ownership

By the efficient nature of this model, Crown continues to thrive despite the current economic downturn. When IT professionals are encouraged to seek low cost alternatives, they rely on an organization able to consolidate software solutions and provide the highest ROI possible.

Note: Thanks to Crown Managing Partner, Richard Hearn, for the text in this post.

Content Management Platform: A Critical Element in a Knowledge Intensive World

Business is increasingly knowledge intensive. The most successful businesses have the knowledge to do the right things and do things right. That knowledge, whether nascent or explicit, whether instructive or persuasive, produces value when it’s in the mind of an employee, a supplier, a distributor, or a customer. Getting knowledge into those minds drives business results.

Content refers to the documents, web pages, images, videos, and audio segments that enable business results by delivering knowledge to people. Managing content is essential for achieving compliance, efficiency, quality, and other business objectives. Fortunately, software to manage content is reaching new levels of maturity and Crown provides solutions for content management using industry leading products from EMC, Oracle, and Microsoft.

Assembling and delivering knowledge in the form of content is most efficient when supported by a “content management platform”. A content management platform consists of standards, hardware, and software, supported by specific operations and personnel. A platform typically accommodates multiple business needs and serves multiple departments, cost centers, divisions and business units. A platform provides cost advantages that result from sharing expense across a large number of users or applications and the related economies of scale. It also increases service levels, because service-enabling investments that could not be afforded for a single application can be afforded for a collection of applications.

A content management platform provides greatest knowledge advantages when it is used to add and preserve value in each step of the enterprise value chain. Conveying content and knowledge via a single enterprise platform is more consistent and economical than stringing together islands of content management. Below are a few examples of the content produced and used at each section of the value chain. Just as value snowballs through the value chain, content critical for later sections of the value chain should reference and incorporate content in the earlier sections of the value chain.

1. Supply steps in the value chain: raw materials, component, and capital equipment specifications; contractor services descriptions; job skill requirements; capital or financing plans.

2. Central steps in the value chain: procedures that define the integration of inputs with additional sources of value within the firm; management reports; go to market plans; work-in-progress and finished output specifications.

3. Distribution steps in the value chain: sales and marketing material, product documentation, warrantees and guarantees, service descriptions.

With more than 500 content management “go-lives” using industry leading software from EMC, Oracle, and Microsoft, Crown understands the importance of knowledge and how to deliver it throughout an enterprise using content. We look forward to exploring the ways that experience can help your organization get the most out of its knowledge.

Answers on EMC CenterStage and eRoom-to-CenterStage Conversion

EMC’s CenterStage is the next chapter in the evolution of EMC’s collaboration products. CenterStage has origins dating back to the 1980s. At that time, VAX Notes was a commercial product that provided threaded discussion for Digital Equipment Corporation’s peak 130,000 employees, including me, and their customers’ employees. VAX Notes had been influenced by earlier work at University of Illinois’ Computer-based Education Research Laboratory (CERL). VAX Notes provided the inspiration for the blockbuster Lotus Notes product, released in 1989, which enabled solutions for many of my clients. Later, key Lotus Notes employees left to start Instinctive Technologies which shipped the eRoom product in 1997. Based on the success of the product, they changed the name of the company to eRoom. eRoom is the collaboration product offered by EMC today via EMC’s acquisition of Documentum in 2003 and Documentum’s prior acquisition of eRoom in 2002. With EMC’s new CenterStage, now there is a product that combines the best of eRoom, Web 2.0 functionality, and the enterprise content management capabilities of EMC’s Content Server

We at Crown have been anticipating CenterStage since our first conversations with EMC regarding the next stage in collaboration in August 2006. As a result of these conversations, Crown has been selected by EMC to be the sole provider of eRoom to CenterStage conversion software. Crown has incorporated its proven Buldoser technology into the RedCarpet and Buldoser Center products, which convert eRooms directly to CenterStage.

Since EMC’s CenterStage product has become available in beta version in September 2008, Crown has presented at many webinars and user groups about CenterStage. Some of the questions and answers from those sessions follow in this post.

Crown’s Buldoser technology, which has been continuously accredited since 2004, and extensive Extract Transform and Load experience make Crown the ideal party to help eRoom customers convert to CenterStage. If you have a question not answered below, please contact Crown at info@crownpartners.com.

Q1: Does CenterStage have the same concepts of access control, both by membership (groups/roles) and by item or folder-level access control (restricted access, hidden items)?
A1: Yes, all the eRoom features in this area come through
Q2: Can you use the Document Storage product component of CenterStage without the other new Web 2.0 components?
A2: The CenterStage Essentials version is a "limited" release of CenterStage. It does include storing documents in folder and attachment boxes like in eRoom, plus a few other features. There is no charge for this version.
Q3: I saw the term "data tables" in CenterStage features. Is that the same as the database function in eRoom?
A3: Yes. The feature is renamed in CS as "Data Tables" (much to the delight of database purists J ).

Q4: Is there a move from EMC to focus more heavily on new technologies (such as web 2.0) and move away from the more recognized features that eRoom has now?
A4: No. CenterStage has been built to leverage all the great features that eRoomers love in it today. Virtually all eRoom items (like Polls, Databases, etc.) will be made available in CenterStage within the current product roadmap. It also strives to "marry" the current eRoom features with newer Web 2.0 technologies that are now flourishing (Blogs, RSS, Wikis, etc.).

Q5: Can eRoom be converted (upgraded) to CenterStage Essentials (CSE)?
A5: Yes, if you are using eRoom today and want to replace it with CSE, you can convert your data accordingly. But not all eRoom features are available in CSE, so you would lose them. If you are using eRoom primarily for document storage, then you may be fine.

Q6: Is it possible to use eRoom and CenterStage Essentials (CSE) at the same time?
A6: Yes. An organization could have both applications running in their environment, but there would be no direct connection between them (like eRoom enterprise with Content Server).

Q7: Will the updates to the RedCarpet utility for migration go hand in hand with CenterStage changes?
A7: Yes. RedCarpet and Buldoser Center are "in synch" with CenterStage. Just note that with each new release of CenterStage, there could be delay of several weeks of the RedCarpet and Buldoser Center releases to ensure that it has been fully tested with the very latest release of CS.

Q8: In an eroom to content server migration using Buldoser Center, how are eRoom databases dealt with (things like field names, drop-down lists etc)?
A8: It is the intention with every feature in eRoom to have it move into CenterStage with the same data. So an eRoom database will convert to a "data table" in CenterStage, including all fields, records, access control, discussion areas, change logs, attachments, etc. If there is anything that cannot be converted it will be clearly documented.

Q9: How will it be addressed if certain objects throw an error when converting? Will there be developer support available to support such incidents?
A9: A report is generated after every data conversion pass from eRoom to CenterStage. It shows what has been copied successfully and what has not. There is then an opportunity to address the specific objects which failed the conversion. Then, with RedCarpet, you re-run the entire data conversion batch. With Buldoser Center, you only need to select the "exceptions" or "failed objects" and re-run those. Yes, blocks of Developer Support hours may be purchased and used to troubleshoot errors.

Q10: How will eRoom indexes be migrated? Do we have to re-index all content post migration?
A10: You will need to re-run those indexes in CenterStage.

Q11: Does RedCarpet or Buldoser Center also work with Documentum Content Server (not just CenterStage)?
A11: Yes, Buldoser Center was built in large part for migrations to Documentum Content Server.

Q12: In the case of eRoom approval databases, will RedCarpet be able to handle the different stages of approval--in other words, will it bring over all approval steps, even those that are "in progress"?
A12: Yes, RedCarpet is planned to process the different types of eRoom databases, including Issues(approval process) data bases. As long as CenterStage has a corresponding, consistent location or feature where the data can be moved, even details such as approval steps will convert as needed.

Q13: Do you support the migration of a Community Member List? Does CenterStage have an equivalent "community"?
A13: Yes, there is the concept of "local members" in CenterStage (in addition to the LDAP directory), and members from eRoom will be imported accordingly. Group and community member lists will be transferred. “External” eRoom users will be transferred into Documentum as “inline” Documentum users.

A Call For Urgent Investment in Consolidation, Productivity, and Customer Relationships

Making good investments is as important as it ever has been. Times of economic contraction demand investments that reduce costs, improve productivity, and enhance relationships with customers. In addition to the drag of slow or negative growth in the market as a whole, businesses that abstain or are unable to make these investments will also suffer loss of market share.

Reducing costs by consolidating redundant systems is a good investment. Redundant systems spring up in times of rapid growth, when increasing capacity to satisfy an expanding market dominates other considerations. Now is the time to reel-in those redundant deployments and reduce indirect cost per unit of output. Consolidate before market growth returns, because once market growth returns, the focus will again be on expanding capacity and there won’t be time to consolidate.

Improving productivity is a good investment. As experience accumulates and technologies evolve, opportunities arise to do things more efficiently. Now is the time to harvest the benefits of experience and technology developed while markets were growing. Increase productivity now, before market growth returns, because once market growth returns, the accelerating pace of business will make it more difficult to adopt productivity enhancing practices.

Improving relationships with customers is a good investment. If customers are spending less, it’s all the more reason to retain existing customers and attract new ones. If the competition is in disarray resulting from changing financial circumstance, now is the time to strengthen customer relationships. Traditional “pounding the pavement” approaches to customer acquisition have been outpaced by web and e-marketing approaches. Don’t wait for the competition to regain its footing. Work quickly to strengthen the loyalty of existing customers and reach out to new customers via web and e-marketing.

For each of the good investments, one question that remains is how to get most benefit per dollar of investment. For more information on the use of information technology to get the best return, visit the resources below.

• The use of extract, transform, and load technology for consolidation is in “The Critical Role of Extract Transform and Load Solutions for Enterprise Content Management”

• Further perspective on business process management and the related productivity gains is in Mark Travers’ KM World article, "Business Process Management: A Strategic Imperative for a Down Economy"

• A web and e-Marketing approach to strengthening customer relationships is outlines in my previous blog post, "The Foundation for WAM Solutions: Speed and More..."

Consolidation, productivity, and customer relationships are all good investments and should be pursued urgently during this phase of the economic cycle. Any one of these good investments gets even better to the extent that multiple objectives are addressed with one initiative. There are many ways that these investments can be made to address cost reduction, productivity enhancement, and customer relationships all at once. My colleagues and I at Crown are eager to identify and realize exactly those investments with you. That's making a good investment great.

Going from Good to Great on the Fifth Anniversary of Buldoser Accreditation

Crown’s Buldoser product is celebrating its fifth anniversary of accreditation awarded by Documentum and EMC. Having been in commercial use as a Crown project utility since 2001 and licensed as a supported software product since 2003, Buldoser was first accredited as Designed for Documentum in 2004. It has been continuously accredited during the five intervening years.

Much has changed during Buldoser’s life, and much has stayed the same. Crown’s Buldoser initially became popular as an alternative to “Dump and Load” and home-grown approaches for moving content. In the early days, Buldoser moved content among Documentum repositories, file systems, and ODBC-compliant information stores. The changes in Buldoser’s life have occurred via four major releases and supporting minor releases. Now Buldoser has broadened into a family of extract, transform, and load (ETL) products. The family includes Buldoser, Buldoser Center, and RedCarpet. These products each have a distinct and complementary purpose. As a family, they address a wide range of use cases such as migration, archiving, synchronization, and others. Beyond the traditional Buldoser source environments, additional source environments have been added, including FileNet, Lotus Notes, SharePoint, ApplicationXtender, and eRoom. (For a more detailed review of the current evolved state of the products, reference “The Critical Role of Extract Transform and Load Solutions for Enterprise Content Management” in the Crown resource library at http://www.crownpartners.com/home/login.jsp)

Crown’s consistent investment in ETL products is based on the flywheel concept presented in Jim Collins’ “Good to Great”. Using the concept, Crown’s ETL products have gained maturity and momentum through steady, sustained investment over a period of years. Crown has made the investments in much the way one would apply consistent force to accelerate the spin of a heavy flywheel. Like the optimal force applied to a flywheel Crown’s investments have been a steady vector, always aligned toward a single direction, always continuing to accelerate the fly wheel.

Most important in the life of Crown’s ETL products have been the experience and loyalty of Crown customers. The passion they share for Crown products and their collaborative engagement with Crown has brought the ETL products to the milestone of the five year anniversary of Buldoser’s accreditation. The partnership around the ETL products continues, and as more a more customers join in that partnership, the flywheel of these products accelerates from good to great and beyond.