Year: 2006 (Page 5 of 43)

Is your web site any good?

I bet that question made a lot of you cringe and start down a guilt spiral of rationalizations about why your web site isn’t really quite what you wish it was. If you have a bad web site, it’s because your organization is producing a bad web site. And no one who is visiting your site cares why. They don’t care about the bickering between marketing and IT over web site control. They don’t care about the 18-month argument about who gets a link on the homepage, or about the 30 years of history which makes it “impossible” for all the various programs and offices in your organization to cooperate in order to create the integrated web presence that your site visitors long for. They don’t care. But, everyday they are clicking away on your site, frustrated, trying to do business with your organization and trying to get information from your organization. And your organization continues to dither. By rationalizing low quality, you are prioritizing your organization’s bad habits over your customer’s and constituent’s needs.

For a business or an organization with a clearly articulated mission, the intent and purpose of its web site(s) should be obvious–expressed most clearly as a high quality web product. The mission should also be front and center for those producing the organization’s web site(s)- expressed as a coherent set of strategic policies and tactical standards for web site product development. But, we all know this is seldom the case. Web site quality is frequently at the mercy of some set of ill-thought-out, status quo web production processes and a lack of strategic oversight by senior management. All this for what is most likely the first point of contact for individuals interacting with your organization.

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Every organization, regardless of size or market, shares a common set of goals: generate and grow revenue, satisfy customers, and operate at optimum levels of efficiency. In recent years, executives and boards of directors have put another critical mandate on the plate for management: regulatory compliance ranging from Sarbanes Oxley to SEC mandates to HIPAA. This mandate is daunting. The number and scope of worldwide laws, regulations and standards is staggering and continues to expand. Overlay geographic and industry-specific regulatory environments, and it’s easy to understand the frustration and concern within all global companies.
Implementation deadlines, audits, and high-profile non-compliance prosecutions have created a “culture of fear” in organizations that is counter-productive to standard corporate goals. Many regulations are complex, subject to interpretation, and lack best practices.
A culture of compliance strives to bring “order to disorder” by focusing on three tenets for overcoming corporate challenges: focus on people, process and technology. Shared, enterprise-wide understanding, business process optimization, and infrastructure content technologies are some of the key components to this approach. Join us on Thursday, November 9, 2006, 11:00am EDT for my panel discussion with Omtool CTO Thaddeus Bouchard and HP Financial Services Solutions Manager Joseph Wagle to discuss how to make compliance practices a seamless part of your business processes. Register here.

Leonor is quoted extensively in “The Rocket Science of Technology Procurement,” a piece on fallout from a recent bid process at NASA. Leonor addresses a few of the larger issues associated with acquisition, such as the trade-off between going with existing solutions versus introducing new technology. On the one hand, incumbents have established relationships and “processes [that are] deeply entrenched in a buyer’s infrastructure.” On the other hand, alternative solutions can bring new and different capabilities that enable true innovation in addition to improved efficiencies.
Leonor also points out that while choices may be made jointly by business and IT, the two groups are not always in agreement. A timely observation, as more and more suppliers of content technologies add new features that make it possible for business users to bypass IT and control content themselves.
Strategies for dealing effectively with the tensions surrounding technology acquisition will be one of the topics that we’ll cover during the analyst debate on Wed, Nov 29, at Gilbane Boston 2006. Add a comment to this entry with acquisition issues you’d like our panel of experts to address, or send mail to mary@gilbane.com.

From the Microsoft Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Team Blog:

The ECM Starter Kit updated for B2TR is in the process of being published to MSDN. But in the meantime, just thought I’d post an “unofficial” version.
The samples are pretty much the same as in the Beta 2 kit, but there are a few additions:
Whitepaper: How to Add Activities to SharePoint Designer
Records Management Sample: Sample Barcode Generator
ECM Workflow Activity: FindManager activity
Also, the workflow templates come with some WSP solution package files to help with bundling workflows for deployment on production servers.

Link

Just a quick reminder that today we’re moderating a web panel discussion on content, relevancy, and online customer experience. The event takes place at 1:00 pm ET.
Topics include aligning business objectives and customer goals, segmenting audiences and creating personas, presenting content that’s tailored to those personas and steps in the customer life cycle, and accessing information in the age of relevancy.
Panelists are Jeff Ernst, FatWire; Bryant Shea, Molecular; and Paul Sonderegger, Endeca. If the actual event is half as fun and enjoyable as our dry run, the webinar will be one of the best hours you’ve spent this week. Special thanks to FatWire for hosting.
Register here, and join us later today.