As companies contemplate “what’s next?” in their business, the answer often entails becoming digital.
Digital Enterprises dazzle us with exquisite products and services that blend the physical and digital. How do they do it? They create a digital workplace, collaborate in a digital value chain and operate with a digital mindset.
Drive a Tesla and you feel like you are driving “what’s next.” Order food from DoorDash and you get a taste of a “what’s next” business model and digital value chain. Use Periscope or LinkedIn and you are participating in “what’s next” user experiences that iterate daily and harness data to drive engagement and productivity.
Digital is inevitable.
The Role of Content
Content has a vital role to play in the digital journey.
Content is the form factor for knowledge in the digital workplace. There are three kinds of knowledge. The first kind is knowledge that is yet to be discovered. Next, knowledge that is discovered, but resides inside people’s heads. The third kind is knowledge that is outside of people’s heads and is captured in some form of content. Digital Enterprises enable seamless sharing and enhancement of knowledge through the power of content.
Content is the unit of communication in the digital value chain. All the interconnected parts, within and without the organization, communicate via some form of content be it email, social media, documents, video or voice. Digital enterprises leverage content to enable effective secure communication and create value.
Digital enterprises operate with a “digital mindset,” thinking of data as the fuel that powers insight and action. Content is a form of data and often the largest body of data in any organization. Content is what fuels data-driven organizations.
Content is vital; but, the next generation of content solutions requires a different approach than what we have used in the world of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) for the last two decades. In fact, the future of content requires a very “un-ECM” approach in order to match the needs of the digital enterprise.
An Un-ECM Approach: Project Horizon
These needs are what prompted , which we just announced at EMC World 2015 during Momentum, the Enterprise Content Division’s annual conference. It is the manifestation of a multi-year vision for supporting the digital enterprises of the future. It is both a next-generation content platform and a marketplace for apps and solutions to drive a digital agenda. Even the approach to get Project Horizon off the ground is completely different than the industry standard and entails a co-innovation program with customers and partners involved in aspects of development.
As “un-ECM” as this seems, it actually builds upon the many lessons learnt in the world of ECM over the past two decades.
Operating with the mindset of a challenger in this space, we have already started the journey to give content the prominent role that it deserves in the Digital Enterprise.
Have you?
Rohit’s commentary continues on the Spark Blog in The Future of Content is on the Horizon
