Turn on the Power with Agile ECM

Is your current ECM system a “golden oldie?” Resistant to change? Resource guzzling? Not providing the business insight and flexibility required for your enterprise to compete and succeed in today’s hyper-competitive business climate?

If so, agility is your answer. Not old thinking. Not archaic, costly and lethargic systems. You need insight – now – and the ability and flexibility to change. Can you? Or are you a prisoner to old systems or old leadership? Yes, you need to continue to cut costs, but at some point for your team to shine you need to improve the business processes that are foundational to strategic success. And you need to empower your team on the front lines to make improvements “on the fly” without compromising top-level data governance.

The bad news is: the world is moving much too fast to succeed being reactive. The good news is: you can shift your focus from cost reduction and consolidation to innovation and competitive advantage. You have aspired to this shift for years…but now Agile ECM makes it possible.

While recovery will not come to everyone at the same time, you can proceed with raising your enterprise productivity and creating the capabilities needed to lead today and be well positioned for tomorrow.

Contact Unity Business Systems today to discover how Agile ECM can transform your organization!

Ignorance is bliss, right? One of my favorite television shows growing up was “Hogan’s Heros.” The central theme was how Hogan and his team of “POWs” were not only truly running the prison camp, but were in reality coordinating an entire allied POW extraction organization. All under the noses of the bumbling, out of touch, Colonel Klink and his right hand man, “I know nothing!” Sergeant Schulz. The key to Hogan’s success was his intelligence network…which empowered him to always stay at least two steps ahead of Klink. He understood the value of intelligence, and leveraged it to his and his country’s advantage.

Today, with business moving literally at the speed of light, everyone is looking for an advantage. And the advantage, many times today, is locked directly under our noses – in our organizational data silos. “Data, data everywhere, but what does it all mean?” The problem for most is connecting the dots, or correlating the data, but harnessed properly and it can become the greatest of all opportunities. Probably the best known modern-day exploitation (and I don’t mean that derogatorily) or leveraging of business data is Google. We all know the story, so I won’t bore you with it. But Google is constantly introducing new tools and applications which are the direct result of analyzing the interactions and behaviors of its massive cloud of users. “Creating new economic value from unthinkably large amounts of information is its lifeblood” says the Economist magazine. And while the tendency is to think that “we cannot do that…” the reality is that everyone can take a page from the Google playbook. Every organization that has existed for any amount of time has data assets which can be intelligently leveraged. The key is, gaining the ability to correlate and learn from its own historical experiences…both good and bad. Visit our website today, www.UnitySystems.biz/businessintelligence for an overview of how Agile ECM can help you gain that precious competitive advantage.

The exponential explosion of social media is beginning to shake the foundations of large organizations and governments. Social media represents the ultimate in decentralization. In times past, organizations and nations could largely control their workforces and citizens from the top down, creating a sense of group-think, and enforcing a contrived “unity.” Decisions from the ivory tower were for the best interest of the whole, or at least were purported to be. And even in many instances the media has propagandized the interests of the government. But with the internet, and now particularly social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, that power is shifting distinctly to the masses. Is this good? And should there be limits to this new-found freedom of expression?

Our founding fathers did recognize that a pure democracy can be bad, and instead elected to establish our country as a representative republic. The idea that majority rules exclusively is destructive of liberty because there is no law to prevent the majority from trampling on individual rights. In the world of social media, we can point to many extreme examples of this, on both poles, that make the case for some boundary definition versus the purely laissez-faire approach.

The state of California has recently thrown its hat in the ring regarding this issue – and of course California is no slouch when it comes to regulation of any kind – by releasing this past Friday its “Social Media Standard.” According to the Statewide Information Management Manual, Section 66B: Tweeting and Facebooking can hamper employee productivity, strain Internet connections, cause “reputational risk to personnel, the agency, and the state,” resulting in the leak of sensitive materials and more. (Read the article )

But the real question becomes, is creating a policy to prohibit this new behemoth of creative expression the best course of action? Is it possible, instead, to enable individual creativity and input and at the same time keep them from driving off the cliff? Could a collaborative enterprise content management system be commissioned that would allow central boundary definition, but at the same time foster local creativity and empowerment?

Posted by Paul Neal.