Geoffrey Moore on “Systems of Engagement and The Future of Enterprise IT”

Geoffrey Moore widely known for his ground breaking and transformative analysis of technology adoption life cycle (Crossing the Chasm) provides an incisive analysis of the impact of web 2.0 technologies on Enterprise IT. In his White Paper “Systems of Engagement and The Future of Enterprise IT” he advances the notion that that “Over the past decade, there has been a fundamental change in the axis of IT innovation. In prior decades, new systems were introduced at the very high end of the economic spectrum. Now it is consumers, students and children who are leading the way, with early adopting adults and nimble small to medium size businesses following, and it is the larger institutions who are, frankly, the laggards.” He then makes a compelling case that “What is transpiring is momentous, nothing less than the planet wiring itself a new nervous system. If your organization is not linked into this nervous system, you will be hard pressed to participate in the planet’s future.”

Of particular value to IT professionals focusing on Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is Geoffrey Moore’s analysis of the interrelationships between what he refers to as systems of engagement (aka social media) and systems of record. Social media wants to be free, perhaps only subject to principle-based controls, while systems of record by their very nature need to be subject to controlled processes. Social media is designed to facilitate collaborative knowledge creation processes, while systems of record are designed to transform that inchoate, subjective knowledge into re-usable best practices in the form of explicit knowledge. Such explicit knowledge is deemed a corporate asset with inherent business and informational value which must be preserved and protected as a record. Striking a balance between the transient and permanent nature of systems of engagement and systems of record is expected to create significant challenges for IT organizations.

Geoffrey Moore’s observation is that “Best practices in this new world are scarce, the pressure by the business to implement is accelerating, a generation of networked millenials is ready to enter the workforce, and connections back to the familiar world of systems of record are tenuous. Our traditional definitions of control and governance must adapt to meet the changes of this new world.” He provides highly practical and empirically validated recommendations on how to effectively integrate systems of engagement into systems of record. He concludes that “The challenge now is that organizations must redefine how they deal with these issues and extend how they think about control and governance in order to deal with social technologies that are much more distributed, informal, and ubiquitous than anything that we have known previously.”

Hope you will find the White Paper informative and helpful.

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Interesting AIIM Research on the Management of Social Media

The recently published Treasury Board Guidelines for the use of Web 2.0 provides a governance framework within the public sector. From an IT perspective the challenge is how to systematically capture, manage and control social media content as part of a formal system of record. The Treasury Board Directive on Recordkeeping provides for a broad and inclusive definition of a record as “published and unpublished material in any format”. This definition includes social media content. Provided that such content is created in support of government “programs, services and on-going operations” then it may be deemed as an information resource of business value which must be subject to formal retention and disposition rules.

A helpful resource to assist in the integration of social media content within a formal system of record such as an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system is the recently published report by AIIM: "Social Business Systems – Success Factors for Enterprise 2.0 Applications". The report suggests three business drivers that necessitate controls over the use of social media: information governance, statutory/legal obligations and security/privacy considerations. The AIIM report suggests a number of IT approaches to mitigate risks: regular “sweep” of social media into a the corporate ECM, utilizing natively supported social media extensions provided by ECM system vendors that support the profiling, classification and retention of social media content, integration of social media tools to already in place workflows and use of social content analytics to monitor use, trends and sentiments. A companion AIIM survey "Managing Social Content to Maximize Value and Minimize Risk" underscores the primary impediment organizations face with the proliferation of social media. The survey found that less than 50% of organizations have formal record keeping best practices in place for the management of social content.

The implementation of effective social media strategy requires a balancing of what may appear as diametrically opposite interests. Social media is designed to facilitate dynamic and informal knowledge creation processes, while systems of record are designed to transform and control such informal processes into re-usable best practices in the form of explicit knowledge. The AIIM report concludes that “The challenge with social business content management is to achieve control and governance without inhibiting the free and easy exchange of social interaction.”

We encourage you to share your perspectives with us.

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Welcome to the CORADIX Blog

In the past few years CORADIX has spent a great deal of effort developing our practice areas, constantly trying to become better at what we do. Listening carefully to our clients describe their challenges, and analyzing how our consultants can help us develop unique approaches to those challenges. To meet this challenge, CORADIX has organized “think tanks” on a wide variety of IM topics. We quickly realized the power of these think tanks, which have been instrumental in improving our capabilities. Our communities of practice, both clients and consultants have been growing enthusiastically.

To this end, the CORADIX blog aspires to stimulate a conversation with you. Our goal is to help you remain at the vanguard of innovation by imparting insights, resources and helpful tips relating to information management best practices. For those who like to write, we welcome you to speak to the CORADIX practice managers about authoring a white paper, and have a chance to have it critiqued by a very knowledgeable audience.

Marshall McLuhan a Canadian icon who studied the impact of electronic media wrote some thirty years ago “We have extended our central nervous system in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned…”   Social media transcends geographic and organizational boundaries. Information flow is instantaneous. We have witnessed the power of this technology; the human genome project that identified 25,000 genes in the human DNA, brought down corrupt dictators, and for some, solved really big problems like finding a mate. Social media also challenges the conventional wisdom of hierarchical management principles.

In such a dynamic environment information management can no longer be viewed in silos.  Businesses and Governments recognize the strategic value of an integrated approach to Information Management.  For example, the Government of Canada’s "Whole of Government Framework" is based on the premise that information must be “safeguarded as a public trust and managed as a strategic asset” that “provides the right information to the right people at the right time while ensuring proper e-record safeguards and policy compliance.”

The CORADIX blog is intended to explore these issues and hopefully provide a useful resource for our constituency of customers and for our valued network of consultants. To get us started you may find the linked CORADIX White Paper on “Enterprise 2.0: Where Social Media Intersect Systems of Record” of potential value. The white paper explores the challenges and opportunities associated with social media; provides tips and resources and includes a social media maturity survey to help you assess your organization’s readiness to leverage the value of social media technologies.

We invite you to join the conversation.

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