Governance for ECM, How do we do it?

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is an emerging set of the technologies used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes; ECM tools and strategies allow the management of an organization’s unstructured information, wherever that information exists. It's not enough to "manage" content. Of course, the ability to access the correct version of a document or record is important, but organizations must go further. Content must be managed so that it is used to achieve business goals. Critical to this strategy, are the tools and technologies of ECM, which manage the complete lifecycle of content, “birth to death.”

EDI over the Internet

The revolution for EDI has been taking place since the last decade. Although the figures might tell the VAN (value added networks) have been successful to survive several odds. But now the internet technologies are coming forth to embrace the EDI protocols and methodologies.

EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) has been an ANSI X12 or an EDIFACT standard driven with VAN as the primary transport. There are 2 considerations primarily for EDI or e-Commerce - the Translation/Transformation and second the Transportation. Translation is the mechanism to convert the business data into Trading Partner understandable data, and transportation is the mechanism to publish/receive the business data. EDI cryptic files (ANSI X12 or EDIFACT) over VAN transports have been extensively the mechanisms of yester years.

Why Organizations need Collaboration and Communication tools?

Close your eyes and imagine a day without a Computer, telephone / cell phone, email, internet - NO WORD, NO EXCEL and NO PPT. Can you re-collect any such day?  80-90% answer is NO. You must be using atleast one of these, if not all.

In a typical office environment - A day starts with checking emails, attending meetings, chatting on messenger, use company intranet, Internet and various LoB (Line of Business) heterogeneous applications – Web based Legacy, homegrown or ERP/SAP. An individual (for e.g. in an IT company, to which we can better relate) plays multiple roles and has various responsibilities - task initiator to an approver or may be an administrator or an auditor. All these elements are inter-woven and consolidated into complex matrix, based on the functions of an Individual and the operation of an organization - access is granted or restricted to systems/tools (SSO:Single-Sign-On is major challenge).

Next Generation - Touch screen applications! Are we ready yet?

Keyboard is a history now. Look at some of the latest gadgets we are adopting and using – Virtual and infrared Keypads, keyless - iPods, iPhones, Touch Screen mobile devices and so on….

From Early days to modern hi-tech computers, the technical evolution has witnessed a rapid change, the way the human interact with computers and software applications, emerged from CGI to GUI into NUI (Natural user interface). User Experience: Ux (also referred as UI: User interface) has become the mantra of every software vendor like Apple, Sony, HP and Microsoft, to extend the touch and feel aspect into reality. Some of the future technologies implemented and used in home projects (Source: Future Disney Innovations) by Microsoft (Xbox 360, Vista, Zune and Surface):

SAP Supply Network Collaboration: Improve margins amidst uncertain growth in recessionary times

Globally, businesses have realized that the current economic recession is here to stay in the near to mid term future. Hence, companies are designing compelling measures to steer the business through these tumultuous times with minimal impact on long term business objectives. Companies have already begun cutting costs across the board as margins are under pressure.