We are living in times when old knowledge is no longer adequate to comprehend or adapt to the dramatic changes emerging before our eyes.

Not just a cute slogan rather a statement of the current transformation business as unusual truly reflects the philosophical shifts occurring in today’s marketplace of exchanges.

Unusual reflects the fact that change, as we are witnessing, has little historical perspective to create meaningful assessment as to outcomes. Rather what we are witnessing is radical, deep and widespread transformation in how people think about the human exchange and subsequent commercialization of those exchanges.

The New Human Economy Is Emerging

Umair Hague writes in his new book Betterness: Economics for Humans:  The paradigm we casually call business is just one approach to human exchange. It was built in an industrial era, and for it. Its fundamental assumptions—shareholder value creation, mass production, hierarchical management, disposable goods made for consumers—are today less profitable, useful, worthy, and beneficial than ever. Betterness, in contrast, isn’t just a slightly better way to “do business”; it’s the art of bettering prosperity so it arcs through the stratosphere of an authentically good life, bettering human potential so it unfurls into accomplishment and, at its outer limits, transforms human possibility radically for the better. Haque, Umair (2011-12-15). Betterness: Economics for Humans (Kindle Single) (Kindle Locations 78-82). Perseus Books Group. Kindle Edition.

Rather than an economy based on production we are entering an economy based on meaning driven by human intentions fulfilled. When human intentions are fulfilled without constraints or tricks then productivity goes up. Productivity in the sense of human exchanges with purpose, meaning and both driven by social, intellectual and spiritual capital. The end result is a new kind of business fueled by human exchange of ideas that fulfill human intentions seamlessly.

The New Business Objective: Betterment

Forget the end result focus on the aim, betterment. If business focused on bettering people’s lives than radical transformations would happen including:

1. People would gain meaning out of doing business with you
2. The meaning gained would pull many others to you
3. Buying would no longer be a burden rather a pleasure
4. Vision and mission would be boiled down to what and how can we improve lives for whom
5. Traditional strategies would be replaced with unusual strategies

These are just a few of the radical changes swelling on the horizon. To learn more about what these changes and how our thinking about business must change I highly recommend Umair Hague new book Betterness: Economics for Humans. This is a must read for those interested in a better future.

Their relaunch gives the viewer a more “personalized local and weather experience with an emphasis on the social nature of weather.” There are now new widgets that allow visitors to share their opinions on the current weather, which is then analyzed to track sentiment along with local and national trends for viewers. Weather.com also now features multiple ways to engage in weather conversation over the various social networks. 

While tweets about the weather may seem common place and boring if the weather is boring. But what if it is not? I recently wrote about research on what makes a tweet be retweeted. These researchers concluded, “The research suggests that it doesn't fully matter who you are or how many connections you have, but what you're saying relative to the existing conversation is what really matters in spreading knowledge online.”  So I concluded, that if you want to reach a lot of people write about what they are interested in at the moment, which could be the weather. The Weather Channel got over 54 million unique visitors in March. I was one of the tem. Adding social capabilities should only up that number. 

The HCIR Symposium (formerly known as the HCIR Workshop) has run annually since 2007. The event unites academic researchers and industrial practitioners working at the intersection of HCI and IR to develop more sophisticated models, tools, and evaluation metrics to support activities such as interactive information retrieval and exploratory search. It provides an opportunity for attendees to informally share ideas via posters, small group discussions and selected short talks.

The Sixth Symposium on Human-Computer Interaction and Information Retrieval will be held as a two-day event on October 4 and 5, 2012 at IBM Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We are delighted to bring the event back to its birthplace (HCIR 2007 took place at MIT), and even more pleased to announce that our keynote speaker for the symposium this year will be UC Berkeley professor and search user interfaces pioneer Marti Hearst.

Topics for discussion and presentation at the symposium include, but are not limited to:

• Novel interaction techniques for information retrieval.
• Modeling and evaluation of interactive information retrieval.
• Exploratory search and information discovery.
• Information visualization and visual analytics.
• Applications of HCI techniques to information retrieval needs in specific domains.
• Ethnography and user studies relevant to information retrieval and access.
• Scale and efficiency considerations for interactive information retrieval systems.
• Relevance feedback and active learning approaches for information retrieval.

Demonstrations of systems and prototypes are particularly welcome.

We are also excited to continue the HCIR Challenge, this year focusing on the problem of people and expertise finding. We are grateful to Mendeley for providing this year’s corpus: a database based on Mendeley’s network of 1.6M+ researchers and 180M+ academic documents. Participants will build systems to enable efficient discovery of experts or expertise for applications such as collaborative research, team building, and competitive analysis.

In addition to the Challenge and a small number of research presentations, we will leave plenty of time for what participants have consistently told us that they find extremely valuable: informal discussions, posters and directed group discussions. Finally, we are extending our previous format to include a few full-length, fully-refereed archival quality papers that will be indexed in the ACM Digital Library.

We have extended the event to a second day to accommodate more presentations (including the full papers), and to leave plenty of time for discussion and for interaction around the poster session.  There will be a reception on Thursday evening.

Please consult the symposium web site,  http://www.hcir.info/hcir-2012, for full details. But here are some important dates to keep in mind:

• Deadline to request access to HCIR Challenge corpus: Friday, June 15
• Submission deadline for position and research papers: Sunday, July 29

This event would not be possible without generous support from industry and academia. This year’s supporters are IBM Research, LinkedIn, Microsoft Research, MIT CSAIL, and Oracle. Microsoft Research is also providing funds for a limited number of student travel awards. Information about these awards is available at  http://hcir.info/hcir-2012/student-travel.

Looking forward to seeing you in October!

While few companies, if any, have made it so far as to create an actual dark datacenter (the ultimate no-hands-on-deck automated scenario), many companies have invested heavily in various technologies to get the job done with as few people as possible in and out of the datacenter.

While that is all well and good, it’s not the end of the quest.

For one thing, those recently purchased technologies are not in full use in most companies.

There are still loose processes and stacks of paper yet to be incorporated in automated systems.

For another, the concept of full integration is not yet a reality although several combo plays, such as tying BPM to ECM, and the constant improvement of frameworks, most notably the recent release of the umbrella framework COBIT 5, are certainly moving us in the right direction.

What Does It Mean To Be Lean

But a truly lean organization is so much more than a datacenter full of software and a sea of abandoned cubicles.

It is a business philosophy that permeates every level of operations.

Lean means wasting no effort and no money on anything that does not relate directly to customer value – that is, directly to something the customer is willing to pay for.

At least, that’s how it is defined in manufacturing.

Just cutting staff isn’t lean. Cutting staff to save payroll dollars just leaves you short-handed.

Lean, on the other hand, means you’re working at optimum efficiency and staff reduction is done to preserve efficiencies and not to muck them up.

Manufacturing has learned a lot about being lean and manufacturing leaders have retooled both their thinking and their processes to make the most of lessons learned.

As a result, manufacturers have become ideal role models for corporate and small businesses alike.

For example, here are three things manufacturing does to be lean that you can adapt to fit your company:

1) Don’t Tie Money Up in Waste

Just-in-time production is the concept now known as lean manufacturing.

It sprang from the Toyota Production System (TPS) which sought to improve profits by eliminating waste, increasing quality, ensuring consistency (quality control), and capitalizing on workers’ ideas.

You can find full details in the paper “Toyota Production System and Lean Manufacturing” by D. Jorge Leon of Texas A & M University.

TPS is credited for enabling Toyota to successfully compete for U.S. buyers, despite heavy import tariffs and deeply entrenched competition.

To achieve this astonishing feat, Toyota developed a system where parts and supplies arrived “just-in-time” to make the product – sometimes as late as mid-assembly. Thus there was no waste in supply or warehousing and no drain on the bottom line or the checking account that month!

But there are other things they incorporated in that system and you’ll find them in the paper I referenced above.

The key here is to eliminate waste wherever you find it be that in supply and warehousing, shelf inventory, job duty overlap, over production, under production, or wherever.

In order to do this, you must first see your business with new eyes.

Really study how your company does things and what it costs to do those things and why the processes exist in their current form.

Find the waste and restructure your processes to eliminate them.

Once your processes are redefined for efficiency, then automate them to the max. The end result will be higher profits gained from recouping dollars previously lost to waste, and through new efficiencies gained by creating a leaner organization.

2) Don’t Allow Tradition to Choke Profits

Ditch the idea that just because your company has always done things a certain way that it must continue to do so now.

Manufacturers held on to traditional assembly line production methods until those no longer worked.

Your company needs to look not only at streamlining processes but at whether those processes are still needed at all.

Similarly, forcing existing processes into canned software programs doesn’t make sense if you are merely replacing one bad process with another.

Consider developing new processes, adopting standardized processes, or building a hybrid.

For example, GE’s appliances business combined lean manufacturing with a statistical analysis system called six sigma into a hybrid it calls “lean six sigma” in order to benefit from the features of both.

You may find hybridized processes and systems deliver more value than just using one. Or, you may find a standardized process to be the very fix you need for an antiquated legacy process.

3) Buy Technology for Profit, Not for Comfort

Manufacturers did not deploy robotics because of their cool factor or because it made the work easier. They bought robotics because the machines can be directly tied to increased profits.

The same is true of other machines such as the newest in manufacturing, 3D printers.

Robotics are machines designed to improve an existing process whereas 3D printers are machines designed to change and disrupt the process.

With robotics, manufacturing assembly line production was improved. With 3D printers, mass production is succumbing to mass customization.

The best way to create and maintain a lean company is to work from the assumption that nothing is sacred and unchangeable.

Change processes as needed, improve existing processes where needed, but always and forever do with a firm grasp on the affect on profits.

Avoid technologies that simply make work easier and look for those that make less work more profitable.

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Markets have dramatically changed and thus old strategic thinking and related methods are no longer relevant to the market. They simply don’t work anymore.

So Now How Should You Think?

Creating a road map of how your organization will succeed is more about learning to think differently than following any specific strategic process. Customer satisfaction is no longer enough organizations must think about exceeding customer expectations. To learn how to exceed expectations means one has to throw out all previous understandings of satisfaction. Satisfaction is no longer a differential rather it is the foundation for winners to understand how to exceed expectations.

Today both complaints and praises are in real-time and transparent for everyone to see and hear. Anything placed on the web enters the digital library and the more conversations that reference your business the more visible it is to Google, the universal library. The higher the visibility the easier it will be found by others. Both unsatisfied and delighted customer sentiment are easily found. It is the delighted sentiment that moves markets because if the markets are unsatisfied or even satisfied the customer is not moved.

The web works based on a rate of change and a rate of interest. Which gets you the highest rate of return? Satisfied or delighted customers? What thinking will help your organization produce delighted customers? Think about it.

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]]>Jay DeragonBlogsEnterprise 2.0MarketingWeb 2.0Social ComputingContent Management SystemsWeb Content Management (WCM)MashupsCollaborationCloud ComputingGoogleWeb ServicesRSSTwitterAnalystsReviewsOpen SourceKnowledge ManagementSocial MediaBusiness Process Management (BPM)Tech RantsMarketing RantsSocial BookmarkingSocial NetworkingOnline CommuntiesResearchWord-of-MouthSocial Technologieshttp://blog.contentmanagementconnection.com/Home/36317#0Tue, 29 May 2012 11:09:00 GMThttp://blog.contentmanagementconnection.com/Home/36317http://blog.contentmanagementconnection.com/Home/36317http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cmcposts/~3/MpJ1r3x3X_E/36316The answer is yes according to some recent studies reported by Doug Gross on CNN, Experts: Most people will make purchases via phones by 2020. He reported that nearly two out of three respondents to a (65%) Pew Internet &...<div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/cmcposts?a=MpJ1r3x3X_E:cLrgectYAOQ:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/cmcposts?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/cmcposts?a=MpJ1r3x3X_E:cLrgectYAOQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/cmcposts?i=MpJ1r3x3X_E:cLrgectYAOQ:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/cmcposts?a=MpJ1r3x3X_E:cLrgectYAOQ:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/cmcposts?i=MpJ1r3x3X_E:cLrgectYAOQ:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/cmcposts?a=MpJ1r3x3X_E:cLrgectYAOQ:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/cmcposts?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/cmcposts?a=MpJ1r3x3X_E:cLrgectYAOQ:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/cmcposts?i=MpJ1r3x3X_E:cLrgectYAOQ:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/cmcposts/~4/MpJ1r3x3X_E" height="1" width="1"/>The answer is yes according to some recent studies reported by Doug Gross on CNN, Experts: Most people will make purchases via phones by 2020. He reported that nearly two out of three respondents to a (65%) Pew Internet & American Life Project survey that most people will have fully adopted the "mobile wallet" as their day-to-day means of paying by 2020. This leaves 45% as doubters.  Doug added that, “in a December report from comScore, 38% of smart phone owners had used their phones to make a purchase of some kind.”

There are obvious security questions but the article that smart phone technology is no less secure than the current credit card technology. In some ways it might be more secure it does not leave a physical paper trail.  I was recently overseas for a while and turned off my smart phone so I would not getting any calls from the US that might be expensive. I missed the ability to play music and share pictures. I am sure there must be a way to use the phone for these non-telephone purposes while the telephone part is turned off.

I can see the utility of this as my smart phone has reduced the number of other device that I have to carry around. However, I do not think it will ever replace a wallet just as credit cards have not replaced cash. It will likely cut into credit card use but not replace it. Just as there are cash only signs at stores, there maybe cash and card only signs depending on how they handle the service fees to merchants. It will be interesting to see what happens. 2020 is not that far away.

I can remember many situations that took this view and the firms were rewarded and then there were many others who took the opposite view and got little productivity from their workforce. On the positive side, I was involved in building a knowledge management system for a logistics company. Our client manager wanted us to be happy. First, of all he, he actively participated in a very positive way. We would also go out to lunch with us on occasion and even to a blues bar at night a few times.  He knew we were all on the road and away from home so he said to only be on site three days, that way he can focus on his other work on the other two and we can be productive at home doing aspects of the project. When he heard we were interested in playing basketball after work, he drove us by a court and loaned us one of his son’s basketballs. We all wanted to do great work for this guy. The project won a CIO Magazine 100 award for innovation and was written up over 20 times in trade journals.

In contrast, another firm treated consultants as second class citizens who worked in the basement. We always had to take the first flight out on Monday morning and the last one on Thursday night. They were most interested in getting their hours from us. I could go on. But this work had many overruns and met with little success. It was not because my team did anything less and half of it were the same people as the top example. It was simply the atmosphere of the entire place and the lack of positive direction from the top that spread through the organization. 

Bad spelling drives me bonkers.

The Oatmeal keeps me happy.

Lawrence Hart

Now, on to the links!

• Automation Levels High, Satisfaction Higher

  by Craig Le Clair @ The AP Channel

“If your organization has implemented accounts payable automation, chances are you are satisfied with it.”

• A Callous Disregard for Compliance

  By Ron Miller @ Fierce Content Management

“New documents mistakenly released last week by Goldman Sachs, show a callous disregard for compliance and regulations that lead directly to the financial crisis.

• 10 Tech Trends that will Change the World in 10 Years

  by Stephanie Neil @ Manufacturing Executive

“Here’s a snapshot of Dave Evans, Chief Futurist at Cisco Systems, ten technology trends that will change the world in 10 years…”

• Are You Focused Enough? (A Surprising Case Study)

  by Paul B Brown @ Forbes

“It turns out the best entrepreneurs (and leaders for that matter) have great ideas daily but decide not to do anything with them—because they have learned how to focus on what matters most.”

 
What were your favorite stories of the week?

A major telecom was faced with increasing competition and needed to cut costs and attempt to improve customer service. Their first time call resolutions were below industry standards, driving up costs and driving down customer satisfaction. Being forced to search through multiple databases, the reps had trouble finding answers to customer questions. They had to develop the skills of entertaining the customer on the phone while searching for answers at the same time. Something needed to change.

A knowledge management system was implemented that simplified access to content. Users were very involved to the initial design and its refinement. They were asked to name the obstacles that interfered with success on the call center measures and the knowledge system was designed to address these. I found this to be a requirement for success.

One of the interesting aspects of this story was a little different was the alignment of an additional motivation system with current practices. The strongest motivation remains alignment with the business strategy and key business processes. In the end, the reps would not continue to use the system if it did not help their performance. But how to get them started, especially with a workforce that was used to extra incentives?

Rather than invent a new incentive system, we asked about what was in place. There were two systems currently in use. One was successful and the other not. The unsuccessful one was designed to encourage suggestions for improvement but it took too long to provide the status and feedback on these suggestions. It was underused.

The successful one was simple and required a very rapid response to each employee’s input. It was designed to promote and reward great customer service. There were different levels of extraordinary service and different reward levels, from lunch with your supervisor to a chance to win a vacation.

So we aligned with this one. It was especially easy as the knowledge management system was designed to improve customer service. So examples of using the new knowledge management system to provide extraordinary customer service. along with ways to improve the KM system, were added to the existing incentive program. The people who ran the incentive program liked this addition as it expanded the coverage of their program. The reps liked it because the reward program was already well known and popular.

The KM program proved successful in pilot and was expanded. The motivation system was just one of a number of factors but it helped get things started right.

Here’s Where The Paperwork Gets Done

Now, everyone knows that Ford Motor Company is doing one hell of a job embracing technology and, especially, digital and social media. Scott Montyhas been leading the way and doing a pretty good job of it. Now I’m selling cars; Fords to be exact.

I’m not actually a car salesman, but I have a Ford dealership as a client. This is the biggest weekend of the year and it’s being kicked off with a yearly event meant to raise money for two local high schools. It’s called Drive One 4UR School and, for every qualified driver who comes in a test drives a new Ford, $20 (up to a maximum of $6,000) is donated to either Royal or Simi Valley High School. There is no sales pressure and the only requirement is to fill out a very short form before taking out the car, and answering a few questions on a survey after returning. That’s it.

So, as part of my efforts on behalf of Simi Valley Ford I have been spending more and more time on the premises. I told the President I didn’t believe I could do a credible job of representing his organization if I wasn’t somewhat a part of it, so he agreed to give me access to an office and a computer so I can be here, even if I’m actually working on other stuff.

I’ve been working on the test drive program a bit, and even took out a 2013 Mustang for a long and varied test drive. I’ve done a little bit of video that I’ll soon edit and put up on our Facebook fan page. I’m hoping to get a YouTube channel for us. Unfortunately, for now it would be blocked here on the premises, which I’ve been trying to get changed . . . so far unsuccessfully.

Right now I’m just enjoying being around a retail marketing event; something I’ve not experienced in this capacity for decades.  There’s Motown playing on a large sound system, American flags on all the vehicles, the weather is spectacular, and I’m sitting in my office waiting for a networking event (co-sponsored with the local Chamber of Commerce) to begin.

I’m going to have to leave early to attend open house for my 8 year old and then I’ll be back again tomorrow. I plan on spending time here over the weekend as well. That will also be something I haven’t done in years, although I work at home constantly . . . so it shouldn’t be all that weird. Ah – The Shirelles singing Carole King’s “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”. Guess I’ll find out!

Given that this is an election year, the challenges associated with new technology investments – from the glimmer of a great idea to going live – has special urgency. Elections mean changes to staff and, more importantly, priorities. The effect of periodic election cycles is often a source for discussion, and CIOs are affected more than other government staff.

Long development and deployment cycles are common with government technology projects, and it seems to be the case now as state agencies prepare for healthcare reform and to replace legacy systems. The problem is there’s often a mismatch between the urgent need for better systems and the length of time needed to design, test and deploy those systems. In the meantime, government suffers as it tries to do the same work with less staff and aging systems.

Government has to be nimble in order to implement key technologies, keep ahead of changing political initiatives and support government work. Consider these principles as you select, design and implement government solutions:

Simplify, standardize, optimize and centralize – Whatever word you use, it’s a call to simplify your organization’s IT architecture, reducing the number of systems to support so you speed up deployment and continue building your expertise on smaller, more manageable applications. Start by reusing and building upon existing systems used by other departments to speed up discovery. This also means looking for solutions with horizontal potential – solutions whose core services many departments. Sharing solutions means building upon the collective development of your organization. In this case, simple means affordable.

Avoid custom-code solutions – Custom coding is the single greatest cost factor and must be carefully explored in current budget conditions, especially given the long usage of systems.

When selecting a solution, ask vendors the hard questions about their software, like:

• How many hours of service are needed?
• What configuration tools are used – especially for workflow automation?
• How long will it take to respond to ever-changing mandates the system must support?

Make sure you also talk with peers and check references beyond those provided by vendors.

Go mobile – Mobile solutions are key to engaging faster with your constituents AND providing better, faster service to them. Your solution must be able to easily support field staff without difficulty and multiple moving parts. As we replace the current generation of solutions, we need to take advantage of mobile capabilities to improve government service.

Cloud – Cloud solutions offer web-based delivery of computing and storage, and may be the answer for ECM challenges that need immediate solutions. This is because the software provider deploys, manages and maintains the solution while you focus on more important initiatives.

Things to ask vendors when considering a cloud-based solution include:

• Is there an available hosted option?
• Is it proven?
• How many deployments have been done?
• What security features are offered?
• Who owns the data?
• If you chose a premise-based solution, what’s the ease of migration?

Government isn’t known for nimble IT, which is understandable given the disparate legacy systems they run. Fortunately, our collective technical know-how is vastly better than it used to be – better code, applications, mobile ability and hardware. So, there is no reason government can’t move faster on IT deployment while surviving political cycles and changing regulatory environments. These ideas are just part of finding the nimble in government IT and making it successful.

It is no secret, especially to TV executives, that consumers today want anywhere-anytime access to both live and on-demand TV content. They want to watch American Idol on so-called “third screens,” namely their iPad tablets, smartphones, even gaming consoles.  Unlike their music industry counterparts, entrenched broadcasters and cable companies are not sitting idle for a company like Apple to kick sand in their faces. Cable execs know that the mainstream is tapping into the online stream.

Because of this, savvy innovators are jumping in to fill the technology gap left open for new applications of content management.

Apps that call for content transference -- from publishing broadcast-quality content to website video players, to the synchronization of content across all endpoint consumer devices: those iPads that exist today, and whatever else lurks in the future, such as the entire IP-addressed ‘smart’ house.

Nielsen just reported how 88% of U.S. tablet owners use them while also watching TV at least once a month; and 45% of tablet owners watch the tube while using their tablet at least once a day.

 “One of the biggest trends happening outside of anyone’s control is that people have the second and third screens open while they are watching TV,” says Alper Turgut, CEO of Anvato, which uses the cloud and proprietary software to publish TV content directly to web video players then syndicated to affiliates. “This is the opposite of what people previous thought about TV being replaced by mobile or by the PC.”

You’ve seen the pictures. Mom, dad, the kids, each buried in their own laptop vortex, yet all sitting together on the couch. This new picture of the nuclear family will have big consequences on how commercials are served up. It’s only a matter of time before broadcasters team up with Facebook, the king of targeted ads based on user profiles, to pin custom ads directly to viewers as they watch TV. Collecting the IP addresses on mobile devices is all the information that advertisers need for unambiguous, sniper-like targeting.

Bringing the laptop into the living room is the best thing that has happened to TV advertisers. Coupons and incentives are made meaningful for the first time. A web broadcast commercial break during a video streaming of Glee can be customized for Sally, who is 16 and will respond to acne cream products. Her father will get a Dodge RAM commercial, and mom will be fed something by Anne Taylor or Walmart.

“The scenario we are observing is that when they check into the brand or content, they want to get something back—a coupon, recognition, reward points. They expect interaction,” Turgut says. “Marketing people cannot strictly rely on the apps on the TV and must get the word out and encourage people to interact with their brand. They need a way to synchronize the multiscreen consumption experience.”  Turgut says that large broadcasters such as Univision are investing in live broadcast-to-Web streaming with the help of his company’s software, which synchronizes the TV experience to a second and third screens.

“As you are watching TV, it’s synchronizing your application experience with the content,” he says. “For example, if you see a Disney ad, it recognizes it, and your application will get a message from Disney, push a coupon through, or interact. You can expect your app to react intelligently and know what you are watching at the same time.”

So what is arresting the meteoric rise of the content aggregators? Well there are several factors at play here but ultimately content is king. If people can’t get the content they want then they will go elsewhere. Cable companies are able to offer much more lucrative deals to content providers thanks to their subscription fees for customers. That allows them to demand exclusivity in some cases and so the content that is available for web based services like Netflix is limited. As it stands, if you want good news or sports coverage, or you want to watch the latest HBO show, then you need a cable subscription.

The truth is that content aggregators like Hulu are not doing anything that cable companies can’t emulate. The technology is accessible, they already have the customer base and they have strong relationships with the content providers. Cable companies can easily match and even surpass the experience being offered by their competitors if they are willing to change.

If the cable companies are prepared to start cannibalizing their content before someone else does, then they are well placed to wave off any threats. They can deliver a TV Everywhere service that will put the content aggregators out of business, but it will mean adopting a different business model that could prove less profitable than traditional cable subscriptions.

Is it a trade-off that cable companies will be willing to make? If they want to stay relevant and keep their customers happy then they just might have to.

Victor Cruz is a blogger whose articles have appeared in American Venture, CommPro.biz, Developer Tech, eSecurity Planet, Web Security Journal and others. 

 
Robert Tommy Jr., director of product management for global payment solutions at Fiserv, said ECM programs are now critical to banking, with automation extremely valuable for any of the companies that are considering adoption of the technology.

Addressing compliance concerns, records management needs, cost reduction, improved customer service-there are a myriad of benefits to be gained with the right technology.

And each organization will experience their own unique advantages.

What Should I Save?

Many companies think saving everything in their organization can be a good way to go, but having too much information can lead to compliance issues.

Too much information can mean chaos, even with a great document management system, so companies should look to clear out old, unnecessary documents regularly.

Preparing for Growth

In a piece that appeared on BobsGuide, one enterprise content management professional said banks and financial institutions are looking for ways to accomplish growth goals, please customers and improve technology while reducing risk and costs.

Thus, banks and financial institutions are aiming for a better way to manage and store content, while still maintaining compliance and minimizing costs and potential risk.

Although this isn’t an easy task, the right technology can allow these companies to have the opportunity to add efficiency and still appropriately address budget concerns. In fact, it can actually help address compliance and risk responsibilities of this increasingly strict industry through automation and enhanced reporting capabilities.

 
Ultimately, the right tools and technology will help the organizations that opt to invest become more efficient and offer much better customer service, two things the industry needs to help with the economic recovery.

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