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John Mancini President of AIIM (www.aiim.org)
has just published a thought provoking book Occupy IT Book that is a must read for
information professionals. Written in a highly engaging manner he lays out in
simple yet compelling fashion a blue print for how businesses must fully
espouse IT innovations inherent in the intersection of cloud, mobile and social
media technologies. The author starts
with the following premise: “…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…”.
The author makes a compelling argument that the confluence of rapid
IT innovation cycles and consumer led mass adoption means 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…”. The shift is
toward “systems of engagement” with employees, customers, partners and external
constituencies interacting in a dynamic and instantaneous manner unencumbered
by the constraints posed by legacy systems.
The author posits the view that “…the inexorable drive toward
Systems of Engagement requires that we think radically differently about IT in
our organizations…”. The author’s call
for action is in the form of a manifesto for “…creating a framework and a set
of imperatives for how we should collectively look at our IT priorities in the
era of consumer technologies…”. He calls for five key initiatives; fully
embrace cloud based IT architecture, go mobile, transform the business into a
social enterprise, remove paper from business processes by digitizing content
and prepare for capabilities that extract value from big data. These
initiatives call for more agile organizational structures and collaboration
between business and IT “…where smaller teams made up of multitaskers and
multidimensionally skilled workers with subject matter expertise, business
savvy, technology skills, and a range of appropriate interpersonal and
“political” skills…”.
The book is not only written in a personalized and engaging manner
but is also extremely well researched, with extensive references to empirical studies
and research that supports the author’s arguments as well educates the reader.
And there is more. There are several chapters that provide a technology primer
related to cloud, mobile, social media and records management principles and
technologies.
The book may be downloaded here: Occupy IT Book
