Sitrof Technologies » Industry Trends

Sharpening the dull Digital Asset Management functionality in SharePoint #DAM #sharepoint

Real Story Group Recent Blog Entries < Real Story Group — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:19:00 +0000

It is an understatement to say that SharePoint has become a nearly ubiquitous platform for workplace collaboration. Yet, as our technology evaluation subscribers know, SharePoint may be omnipresent but it's definitely not omnipotent. An enterprise cannot just survive on SharePoint for all its unstructured content needs, since there are significant functionality gaps in the SharePoint armor. (For instance, we recently noted that SharePoint has been slow on the social uptake.)

Digital Asset Management is another big gap. Customers may praise SharePoint in various ways, but no one can allege that SharePoint has strong DAM functionality. (For more details, consult our DAM Report).

To make up for SharePoint's lack of muscular DAM features -- such as large file storage, transcoding, and transformation -- customers usually look at a separate DAM product. Increasingly common in Microsoft-centric enterprises is using SharePoint as a front-end to a full-fledged functional DAM back-end -- so that when you need transcoding or other non-SharePoint functions, it's there behind the scenes. DAM vendor ADAM has the longest-running SharePoint connector, and it's been widely used, albeit with largely mixed results.

Another widely used offering is MediaRich for SharePoint, by software vendor Equilibrium. It's different from ADAM's connector approach in that MediaRich is not a freestanding product. It requires and rides on the services/functionality provided by SharePoint, such as user management, search, and workflow. It works with both SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010, providing the functionality around metadata, transformation of images, and transcoding of audio and video that SharePoint alone lacks.

The question you need to ask yourself is, do you really need or want your digital assets to be managed via SharePoint, or is it better to take a DAM-specific path and leave SharePoint to manage documents?

If you're already using SharePoint and are looking for DAM functionality, evaluate whether your requirements are best met by an add-on like Equilibrium or whether you'll need a separate DAM product. Much of this will be dictated by the user experience you want to deliver: if users are accustomed to using SharePoint for internal document management, it may make sense to manage those documents together with digital assets, if business workflow requires it. But SharePoint isn't used elsewhere in the enterprise, it should not be the first tool that should come to mind for standalone DAM.

Let us know if we can advise your decision-making.

AIIM Market Survey Finds 76 percent of Business Executives Would Pay a Salary Premium to Hire Certified Information Professionals

The LATEST — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

New numbers show information professionals, hiring managers and decision-makers benefit from certification.

Conducted in January 2012, four months after AIIM launched the Certified Information Professional program, the survey shows that:

- 64 percent of business executives would prefer to hire a Certified Information Professional (CIP) versus a non-certified candidate.

- 76 percent of business executives would pay a CIP a salary premium. Of these, 45 percent indicated that they would pay more than a 10 percent salary premium.

- 61 percent of business executives would prefer consultants that hold the CIP designation over those who do not.

- 62 percent of business executives think having CIP-certified staff would enhance the perception of their organization in the industry

- 60 percent of business executives would prefer CIP-certified IT staff.

- 66 percent of business executives think having CIP-certified staff would improve their ability to find, manage and exploit their information assets across the enterprise.

Debra Logan , vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner Research, and Regina Casonato, managing vice president at Gartner Research, confirmed the need for a professional designation for the emerging information professional, a role distinct from current IT skill sets. “An 'information professional' will not be one type of role or skill set, but will in fact have a number of specializations,” wrote Logan and Casonato in the 2011 Gartner “CIO Alert: You Need Information Professionals .”

Read more at http://www.aiim.org/Resources/Industry-News/42948

When Social Meets Business Real Work Begins

The LATEST — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

How do Systems of Engagement support business processes? What types of activities are ripe for transformation by the adoption of social business technologies? Download this white paper series, authored by Dr. Andrew McAfee that explores the implementation of social technologies in three key areas: Connecting Sales and Marketing, Fostering Innovation, and enabling Enterprise Q&A.

http://www.aiim.org/socialmeetsbusiness

Are paper records finally decreasing?

The LATEST — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

According to this AIIM survey, legal costs, fines and damages could be reduced by 25% if organizations applied best practice procedures to records management, security and e-Discovery. Just 13% of the respondents think their organization already follows best practice in these areas. We also found that the volume of paper records is finally decreasing, and that reducing storage costs is lining up with compliance as the biggest driver for RM projects.

Download this free 27-page report to see how your records management strategies match up with the best – or the worst – and how to move forward.

http://www.aiim.org/Research/Industry-Watch/RM-Strategies-2011

Technology Toolkit of a Digital Marketer #digitalmarketing #socialmedia

Real Story Group Recent Blog Entries < Real Story Group — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:37:00 +0000

You already know that marketing is evolving and becoming increasingly digitally focused. That means today's marketers must become much more proficient across various marketing technologies to be fully effective.

But what should a marketer's technology toolkit contain? If you were only to follow what WCM/WXM vendors promote, you're only seeing a small part of the picture.

In fact, Digital Marketing can mean many things depending on the context. If you are a marketer, you might want to:

Create and update your web sites
Personalize and optimize your interactions with users
Build landing pages
Acquire, profile, prioritize, nurture, and manage leads
Create, manage, and measure the effectiveness of email and other digital campaigns
Monitor and gather intelligence about your brands
Engage with people via social media
Mobile-enable all this interaction
And so on...

Consequently, you can find many types of tools that claim to provide “Digital Marketing.” If you map these capabilities to tools, you will need one or more of the following and probably some others too:

Content and Experience Management tools for Web Content Management, Digital Asset Management, Site Management, and Personalization
Lead Management tools
Campaign Management tools for creating and managing campaigns using email, social media, web, and mobile
Social Media Monitoring and Intelligence tools
Landing Page Management tools
Combinations of many of the above in self-styled "suites"
And so on...

As you can imagine, there's a panoply of tools out there. In our forthcoming advisories and research, we will try to de-mystify the highly crowded and fragmented digital marketing marketplace.

As with our other reports, we will also provide a methodology for mapping business needs to technology alternatives, as well as a roadmap for evaluating digital marketing vendors.

Updated Technology Vendor Map #trends #EntArch

Real Story Group Recent Blog Entries < Real Story Group — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:33:00 +0000

We've just updated our longstanding "subway map" for 2012.

Biggest changes have come around acquisitions (e.g., HP), and a fast-moving Red Line (a.k.a., Collaboration & Social), as well as a number of key entrants in the Digital & Media Asset Management segment.

Vendor Subway Map, 2011" src="http://www.realstorygroup.com//images/RSG-Subway-2012-Small.jpg" />

For higher-resolution JPG and nicely-printable PDF versions of the map, visit
http://www.realstorygroup.com/vendormap/

Hope you find it helpful!

Joomla continues enterprise journey — sort of #opensource #wcm

Real Story Group Recent Blog Entries < Real Story Group — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:24:00 +0000

This week, the Joomla! community released version 2.5 of its open source CMS package. There are many new features but the key highlights of the new release are:

Multi-database support
Upgraded search functionality with support for auto-completion and stemming
Update notification and single click updates for Joomla! as well as any extensions

These features represent another step in Joomla's long, incomplete journey to try to become more amenable to enterprises. But before you get all excited and start thinking of using Joomla! for, say, your enterprise intranet, keep these points in mind:

While Joomla! announced added support for databases other than MySQL, in reality, it only adds support for Microsoft SQL Server. In fact, Microsoft's influence is quite visible (and is probably good for the project), and the new version also supports Microsoft Windows Azure. Support for others databases (Oracle, et.al.) remains in the works. As with all issues related to Joomla!, how soon extension developers update their code to take advantage of new platform capabilities will actually dictate how much you can adopt those capabilities. Many extension developers will update their code but many will not, so you will need to make sure the extension you want to use supports the database you want to use.
As for the search engine, it's really a core extension. So all you need to do is activate this (it's disabled by default). However, you will again need to make sure extensions are updated to take advantage of new search functionalities. Even if they are, there will be some issues in terms of managing the current search module's existing index alongside the new index.
And finally, for single click notifications to work, you will again need to ensure the extensions are updated to incorporate that.

So, overall, the new features are indeed useful, especially in an enterprise context. But a lot depends on extensions you plan to use and so make sure you plan well in advance. Consult the Web CMS Report for more details on potential gotchas here.

Finally, if you are upgrading your existing Joomla! installation or plan to deploy it for a new initiative, this would be the time to push extension developers to update their code.

Top Trends in Payments: A Year in Review

DOCUMENT articles — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0000

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What’s in a Color: Creating an Emotional Impact to Incite Action

DOCUMENT articles — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0000

@import url(/Media/AdvancedRTFTool/maincss.css); In a sluggish economy, businesses of all sizes are squarely focused on two things: sales and productivity. But in the era of information overload, the burden is on the consumer to distill meaningful information from the noise, including the nearly 3,000 marketing messages the average person is exposed to every day. Employees face a similar challenge as many struggle to stay focused on priorities amidst constantly refreshing social media feeds, a 24/7 news cycle and phones that serve as a pocket-sized entertainment system. For bottom-line oriented businesses, the answer to both of these challenges may lie in color. In a color survey conducted by Xerox Corporation, 69 percent of people said that they understand new ideas better when presented in color. Seventy-six percent of those surveyed say they can find information faster if it's presented in color. And the benefits don't end with productivity — color can also give companies a leg up in competitive differentiation and sales. For Bing, the right color choice was the million dollar difference — or $80 million to be exact. Microsoft's research team found that blue engaged people the most, so they tested various shades of blue in user groups, and determined that Bing's previous paler shade of blue lacked confidence. As a result, Bing decided to switch to a shade of blue similar to the one used by Google. Based on user feedback, it is estimated Bing's blue could generate $80 million to $90 million in advertising sales. Color as a Sales Differentiator According to Jill Morton, color psychologist and branding expert, when color is used correctly, businesses can draw the right attention to marketing collateral, signage and business documents. It's tempting to select color based on personal preference, but keying in on the colors that illicit the desired emotional response can pay dividends. By using Morton's color symbolism and selection tips below, businesses can create documents with the appropriate emotional impact to incite reader action. Understand the basic formula for all colors - dark colors are professional and trustworthy; bright colors are youthful and energizing; light colors are peaceful and delicate; and muted colors are sophisticated and calming. Colors resonate differently across generations — like the color purple for example. An older generation may look at purple as mysterious and magical simply because it is a hue that rarely occurs in nature. A younger generation may automatically associate the color with Barney the purple dinosaur. Bright colors like yellow reflect more light and are great for grabbing the reader's attention on a flier promoting a sale or a document with an urgent task. Yellow and black combined attract more attention than any other color combination out there. Colors like blue or gray are soothing and would be appropriate for use on customer documents that report on annual charity giving or a letter on customer appreciation. Most document designs only need two to three colors to deliver a consistent look — three being the best. Using more than four colors causes visual clutter for the reader, which can lead to confusion and distraction. Documents should have a strong contrast between the text color and the background to ensure readability. Yellow text on a white background would be considered a bad contrast because they are both very light colors and cause strain on the reader's eyes. A deep purple text on an off-white background would be an example of a good contrast because of the ease the reader will experience while reading dark text on a light background. Businesses can engage their readers, create a positive first impression and help their message stand out from the marketing noise by creating color harmony in document design. A document with smart, strategic color application will ensure communications are delivered with maximum value — impacting the company's bottom line with increased productivity and sales. SHELL HAFFNER has more than 17 years of experience in high technology product marketing managing hardware, software and service offerings. Currently, Mr. Haffner leads the product marketing team for the Xerox desktop product family, including the ColorQube family of solid ink printer products.

Catching on to Cloud-based Customer Communications

DOCUMENT articles — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0000

Change is scary. And not just a little – it’s really, really scary. What else (besides money) explains why entrenched technologies continue on way past their time? Let’s face it, “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” is still in full force ... even all these years after the whole TQM (Total Quality Management) thing rampaged through our corporate cultures. We’re all gun shy when it comes to pulling the plug on “the old way” and jumping into something new with both feet. Just consider for a moment the current buzz about the cloud. We see it mentioned in TV commercials, in trade publications, books, etc. But strangely enough when it comes to implementing cloud-based customer communication systems many highly experienced people in our industry drop back and start spreading FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) about it. I recently read a posting on an industry discussion board that said in effect that design tools used by various VDP systems will need to stay in the thick client world because of the ever-changing requirements for HTML and web browsers. The writer made the point that browser-based design tools will face the same issues as design tools based on things like MS Word – that because the base product is controlled by another company who (like all software companies) is continually changing their product. He’s correct in pointing out a concern that many people interested in implementing cloud-based systems will have. However, as we’ve seen so many times in the past, concern over a perceived “weakness” of a product, service or new invention only serves to slow down the inevitable – it never brings it to a halt. And sometimes in retrospect the FUD is just plain goofy. FUD has a distinguished history. Let’s consider for example the Abbott of Sponheim, AKA Johannes Trithemius. During the period when Johannes Gutenberg’s invention was gaining wide acceptance throughout Europe, the Abbott had a very profitable enterprise that employed several monks at reproducing Bibles. While the Bibles they produced were quite literally works of art, you can imagine the Abbott’s concern when he found print shops using Gutenberg presses to produce seemingly unlimited copies of the Bible at costs that dramatically undercut his prices. He decided the best way to fight this threat was to write a treatise on the evils of the printing press. Like others at the time he said the press was the invention of the devil and its use put people in jeopardy of eternal damnation. Interestingly he decided that in order for it to be effective he needed to get his message out as quickly and to as many readers as possible. To accomplish this he had it printed! History doesn’t tell us if he saw the irony in this. Let’s move ahead several centuries to the early days of World War One. In 1914 Marshall Foch, the commander of French Forces said, “Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.” That same year a German soldier serving on the Marne made this note in his diary, “The French plane dropped a bomb. Three soldiers and seven horses were killed. We have no idea how to protect ourselves from this hell from the sky.” It seems to me that lowly German soldier had a much better idea of how airplanes would change warfare than the great French general. But then again, he was on the receiving end of the “bad news”. Now we’re jumping ahead just a few more years – to the middle of the 20th century. When that great prophet, Groucho Marx was asked what he thought of television he said “I find television to be very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book”. Of course we all know that Grouch’s career had a second act because of his show ‘You Bet Your Life’ on television. Finally, we’re into the later years of the 20th century. When asked a question about the potential for home computers Ken Olson, the founder of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) famously said, “There is no reason for an individual to have a computer in his home.“ Oops. While DEC was responsible for developing what were arguably the most powerful mini computers of their time, Mr. Olson obviously missed this one. DEC was absorbed into Compaq (irony again raising its head) who was subsequently acquired by HP. And while there are no DEC computers in homes there certainly are HPs. And my personal favorite. Years ago I sold ‘black boxes’ that did translations between incompatible word processing systems. In those days, just prior to PCs bursting on the scene, there were approximately 130 different types of word processing systems available. Things like CPT (Cassette Powered Typewriters), Xerox 860, IBM Displaywriter, Micom, NBI (Nothing But Initials – no I’m not kidding), etc. Our translators allowed users to type a document on one system and communicate it to another for further editing. And I’m here to say it was a great business. Our technology was the basis for the very first electronic mail system implemented by Ford Motor Company. There’s not enough space here for me to explain it in detail and you’d probably think I was pulling your leg so just trust me – it was wonderful technology for its time. When PCs with software like WordStar, Mulitmate and Samna came along we had a lengthy debate about whether or not they would replace WP systems. In retrospect it’s hard for me to admit this but I came down squarely on the side that believed WP systems were here forever. I figured that PC keyboards were all wrong for word processing applications (they were but GUIs took care of that) and WPs would hang on for ergonomic reasons. It only took another year or so for me to understand just how wrong I was. A year or so after that you would have been hard pressed to even find a WP system – they’d all gone away. So when you hear someone spreading FUD about cloud-based client communications just remember what an illustrious career it has had throughout history. I suggest choosing to ignore the folks who are spending their time spreading this information and spend your time learning how you can leverage this new model. I’m pretty sure it’s going to catch on. SCOTT BANNOR began his career in the document industry in 1980 and has held sales and marketing positions with Exxon, Philips N.V., Racal-Milgo, FormScan, Moore, Bell & Howell, Johnson & Quin, PrintSoft and GMC. Currently, he is the Midwest Regional Manager for Elixir Technologies. Mr. Bannor is a noted industry observer, author and regular speaker at Xplor Globals, Regionals and other industry events. He's also authored several articles for a number of industry publications on topics ranging from forms automation and variable data document production through the history of print and transpromotional document production to cloud-based document production. For more information, visit www.tango.elixir.com.