The shift from Knowledge Management (KM) to Enterprise Content Management (ECM) took a few years. Today it seems there is a convergence of Business Process Management (aka Workflow or Enterprise Workflow). 

 Are you seeing this too?  Where and how?

By Vertical industry or from a Horizontal perspective too?

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Also, the term "Information Worker" is something that I've only heard in the last 12-18 months.   

But, I don't think the "concept" of BPM is anything new - I remember some topics at university (1991) relating to "process re-engineering" - ie. when computerising and installing new systems, to make the software FIT to the business.

 ie. don't just automate what-you-got : make it better while the opportunity arises.

I guess the tools are more refined, and easier to use - and the availability and cost of systems such as Sharepoint has led to greater adopition - and thus MORE of it around.

And you're right - the realisation of business process around "knowledge" - and "content" is far greater these days.  Competitive organisations wanting an "edge" - the same goes for the explosive growth of BI (business intelligence).

"Processes" have always been in manufacturing and construction - safety aspects, etc.  The "white collar" world is now seeing it much more.   Better tools - and better technology - for an "old" concept.

 

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Cheers,

Chris O'Connor
chris@devk2.net

jeff, personally i find it fascinating that there has always been this strong drive to find a relationship between content management and workflow in organizations that will converge/merge/become one.

True, people think about process when they think about creating and managing content, but that does not mean they are long lost related twins, trying to find one another to live happily ever after.

What about procurement, customer service, logistics, employee services, ad-hoc social and collaborative behaviors, event driven decision trees, manufacturing, and, and, and... when do they converge with process/workflow platforms. What if each of them does? do we end up with 10 process solutions in our organizations? one can argue all information is content, but it becomes very theoretical when trying to then define ecm as a set of related features.

process and workflow logic is as inherent to how organizations run and exist every day as is invoicing customers and collecting payments. I would imagine when the very first transaction between two people happened millions of years ago there was a decision and a related action involved (i give you this, then you give me that, then you go and use that while i use this to get another that from someone else...)

content management is just another set of organizational information that we need to manage by moving tasks between people, based on logic and context.

i truly believe that if we are looking for a specific convergence point between content management and workflow we will lose scope of what workflow/process can do for other areas of the organization. process solutions focusing only on content convergence tends to be weak and fall dramatically short when they need to manage organization wide logic/automation.

In a way it is similar to asking when SharePoint Lists/Storage will converge with SQL Server tables. The answer is never. they both store data, but one is a solution build on a generic feature rich data storage platform.

BUT....  workflow plays a super important role in content management (ecm) in the same way that an enterprise storage platform like sql will play behind a portal solution like SharePoint. We cannot underestimate the continuous need for content based solutions to depend on better structured and unstructured process platforms.

in other words, in the same way that data storage and management platforms need to provide a wide range of features to facilitate true enterprise applicability (storage, sql language features, reporting and analysis, backup and redundancy, and, and, and) next generation process engines need to do exactly the same thing to empower a wide range of technical and non technical users to rapidly solve business problems by empowering them to assemble dynamic business solutions/applications from re-usable building blocks across a wide range of solutions and systems of which ecm is only one (hell man, i should be in marketing )

i hope this helps to provide some insight into what we were thinking when we were looking at what we wanted to deliver across all the blackpearl skews this year. each skew will empower people in ways we have never seen or experienced before, and the core of that innovation is based on the community that lives on this site.

Thanks for participating in k2underground!

always have fun!

a3aan

I guess I'm confused by this topic, as it's apparent to me that they've been pretty tighly related for at least the last 10-15 years, maybe longer...granted maybe not in the Microsoft-centric world we all play in.  I think the only difference today is that SharePoint finally provides the basis for a compelling alternative to the traditional players in this space, with an assist from complimentary partner technologies.

It's also clear to me that the "ECM is only one of a multitude of systems that may participate in a process" (...I'm paraphrasing) is an argument that is at the core of why we have seen few, if any, enterprise deployments of SharePoint (...as a ECM solution, not portal) and partner Workflow/BPM solutions in large organizations.  We've been busy automating leave requests, capital expenditure requests, expense reports, and other non-mission-critical processes that provide an organization with little or no return on investment...in the end they are almost always about cost avoidance and not revenue enhancement.  The former is hard to sell because there's nothing tangible that you can tie back to an improvement in the productivity of your mission critical processes or customer service.  Will a customer be able to process more loans if their leave requests are automated?  How about customer service improving once expense reports are on-line?  No, No, No!  They are all inconsequential processes that result in very little, if any, improvement in a organization's well-being as a result of automating them.  I would argue that in some cases they are actually a detriment as they take focus away from automating the mission critical processes that can actually have a meaningful impact on an organization's bottom line.

In my opinion, ECM is the logical starting point for a discussion with an organization around their Enterprise Workflow/BPM needs because it's easy for an organization to take an enterprise view of process-enablement when it's tied back to their unstructured content...becuase it's everywhere!  It's in boxes, warehouses, public folders, network shares, tapes, optical discs, desktop drives, etc.  Own the content and you own the customer, period!  Achieve that and you can go in there and help them automate inconsequential processes and "ad-hoc social and collaborative behaviors" (...sounds hard, painful, and maybe even something you could get arrested for doing) until your head explodes or they run out of services dollars, whichever happens first.

That's all I have to say on this subject unless someone comes back with a reply that provokes me into reply, at which point I will reply with something to provoke another reply from them and we will do this until one of us tires or the world ends.  Would that constitute an "ad-hoc social and collaborative behavior"?