2010 Info 360: AIIM Expo + Conference; Part III of III - Future Vision for Software Partners
A much anticipated AIIM keynote address is the State of the Industry delivered each year by John Mancini, President of the Association of Information and Image Management. Here are a few of his thoughts. While directed at all corporations feeling the onslaught of information, I sense they are ever more pertinent to printers and the graphics imaging industries as they grapple with software concerns.
As this new decade begins, many would say that strategies for Enterprise Content Management are at its tipping point. There are major drivers for change - SaaS, Cloud, SharePoint, Open Source, and Enterprise 2.0. Yet most organizations still struggle with the daily deluge of information to be managed. Information volume is far outpacing storage capacity and technology. This suggests the increasingly trepidatious decision of choosing what to keep versus what to delete.
This information chaos of supply/storage/access/manipulation/security brings home the increasing dependency corporations have on their enterprise software vendors. AIIM surveys its members and has begun to hone in on user restlessness centered around software concerns. In order of priority for users;
- High cost of ownership – 91%
- Difficulty of upgrading – 87%
- Poor cross functionality – 86%
- Applications don’t match business requirements – 80%
- Inflexibility limits process changes – 75%
In conclusion enterprise software has stopped meaning business tool and facilitation and has come to imply bigness and complexity. The net result is what Mr. Mancini suggests the need for a
Business IT Manifesto
- No more investment in legacy systems that do not support future business requirements.
- No more paying for upgrades that are simply “fixes” to existing software problems.
- No more long implementation cycles.
- No more being locked into bundled hardware/software vendors.
- No more browser incompatibility.
- No more custom (programming) work to automate standard business processes.
- No more paying for costly custom programming that holds you hostage.
- Increased risk sharing.
- More standards, openness, flexibility, cloud-based … and cheaper.
The printing industry has evolved in my career from hot metal composition to user-initiated type from letterpress to offset to digital printing. While printer’s enterprise software is standalone, application specific software has been bundled by a number of the digital print engine manufacturers, for example. Software – both enterprise and application specific - and its astute use are helping create distinctiveness for many leading printers. While many printers have mastered some of the most mechanically complex production equipment in producing extraordinary printed products, their mastery of information technology as an integral part of the current print production business and work flows has been sorely lacking and typically delegated well into the bowels of organization.
Unfortunately many printers have too few resources, outdated versions, too limited knowledge of, and no IT vision resulting in a complete dependence upon a software sales pitch and therefore often a frustrating vendor-client relationship. For example, hardware/software leases written by third party financing entities are rarely perused by an independent leasing expert retained by the user and therefore are agonizingly one-sided. Negotiating an equitable lease does not solve the problems enumerated in the IT Manifesto above. But it helps, particularly if the elements of the manifesto were considered at the time of the original due diligence.
The On Demand Conference has been held in conjunction with the AIIM Conference for a number of years, which is pretty smart because of the many shared vendors on the trade show floor. In future years I hope more printers would consider attending these AIIM keynote sessions that I write about here.
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