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25
ENTERPRISE CONTENT MANAGEMENT
Most ECM
systems use a
location-based
paradigm
for storing
documents
– the idea
that you put
something
in a folder to
classify it
Greg Milliken,
vice president of marketing,
M-Files Corporation
Continued...
we think that’s a fundamental part
of the future.”
Stumbling blocks
The other two really big stumbling
blocks with traditional ECM, claims
Milliken, are the need to migrate
data from a file share or legacy
system to the new system and the
need to train up and overcome the
resistance of people who might
have been perfectly happy with the
old system.
“If you could truly integrate
and unify information you would
lessen the need to migrate data
and maybe eliminate it entirely. You
might ultimately want to migrate the
data, because you want to get rid
of a legacy system and you don’t
want to pay for two systems, but
the idea that the first step doesn’t
have to be migration, which is often
expensive, is a really key point,” he
said.
“Then, once you’ve chosen to
use a new system and you begin to
migrate your data, you have to train
up all those people who are happy
with the old system in how to use
the new system. That’s very often
even bigger than the migration
problem and where a new project
gets derailed, because people are
resistant to change and just aren’t
going to shift.
“What we think’s really
interesting is that innovation in
companies usually comes from
smaller groups – someone in legal
decides they need to handle their
contracts better, someone in HR
wants a better system for managing
employee information, someone in
accounting has to deal with invoice
processing and accounts payable in
a different way. Enabling one small
group to innovate on a process
without forcing everyone else in the
company to change enables faster
innovation and productivity.
“We think the future will
encompass the idea that one
can do that innovation while the
content remains in other systems,
undisturbed. This is the idea that
one group could utilise that data in
a wholly different way to how others
are using the same data in another
system, allowing different groups to
be doing that simultaneously based
on their needs, without incurring
all that migration and change
management on a large scale.”
Metadata layer
M-files eliminates many of the
problems highlighted above
through a metadata layer. Most
ECM systems use a location-based
paradigm for storing documents –
the idea that you put something in
a folder to classify it, a ‘customer’
folder or a ‘project’ folder or a
‘contracts waiting for review’ folder.
Milliken points out that systems
of this nature are flawed because
the organisation of folders and
files is so subjective. “Do you have
marketing, sales, administration
and then under those North
America, Europe and Asia? Or
do you have North America and
then marketing and sales under
that? It’s a very subjective choice
and each company really does
things differently, each individual
even. Then, you’ve got to teach
people that subjective thing and
that’s what we believe leads to
imprecision and dark data. If I think
this should be in the customer
folder but somebody else thinks
it should be in the project folder,
where is it? And what if it’s in
different systems? Then, what
about if it needs to be in more than
one place, if it needs to be in both
the project folder and the customer
folder?”
Milliken says that this is where
context and M-Files’ metadata-
driven approach brings benefits. By
adding tags, in this case ‘customer’
and ‘project’, the document can
show up in more than one place.
“We often use the analogy of the
iPhone. When you put music on
your iPhone, it shows up by genre
or artist or album or date, but it is
still only one piece of music,” he
said.
If, over time, the document
becomes associated with another
project or customer you just
add their name as a tag. It is
completely dynamic and completely
objective.
No silver bullet
Milliken admits that M-files’
approach is not a silver bullet.
There are still aspects of it that
people might find fault with, such
as the need to add metadata.
“The area where there might be
some overhead is adding the
metadata. How does the metadata
get defined? You could argue that
some people might think ‘I don’t
want to tag things’, which is why
in the past they would just put
things into a network shared drive
without going into the ECM system
– because they could just throw it
in there. Then you don’t remember
where you put it and nobody else
can find it.”
How, then, do you address
potential resistance around tagging
things with metadata?
Traditionally, creating the
metadata has been done by
manually tagging a document or
using semi-automated methods like
scanning and OCRing content and
identifying a part number within a
document or reading a barcode and
classifying it on that basis.
Milliken says that in the future
this will be done automatically,
using analytics and emerging
technologies like natural language
processing and machine learning.
He describes this as the Holy Grail
and says that with tools like IBM
Watson and Alchemy from HP it is
now within reach.
Repository neutral
M-Files is not alone in this
thinking. Analysts like Gartner
and Forrester also recognise that
changing customer requirements
