OK I am not a SAGE professional, nor am I a SAGE developer, however, I would like to be able to access correct documentation online and actually speak to others / find out if something is correct…

The requirement

The requirement is simple, connect to a SAGE line 100 system via ODBC (DSN), then run a simple query on the data (stock information – read only of course) and then do something with that information (in my case call a secure web service and update it with the stock information). Simple, half a days task you would think…

It is a tad more complicated than that, as the requirement is for this to run as a windows service, scheduled in to run a number of times during the day. This in itself isn’t a problem, however checking up on error messages can be an issue – as you are reliant on interacting with the Event log (again nothing wrong with this. However you will see why this added to my problems)

The SAGE ODBC problems…

Ahh here we go. Well first off the SAGE ODBC drivers aren’t great (well not for SAGE 100). This caused no end of issues with just trying to connect to the database. There isn’t that much help online and to top it off, many discussion groups etc post questions but no one any real answers. My first problem was that the System DSN that had been set up didn’t appear to work. Using .NET 3.5 to connect to this just wasnt working. My event log was stating a number of issues, which when following the calling stack highlighted an “unsupported driver request”. With this in mind, I then adopted a DSN less connection approach, using a connection string.

My next problem isn’t really to do with SAGE that much, more lack of communications. You see the SAGE line 100 connection string isn’t your typical connection string, rather it needs pointers to particular files. I unfortunately had been given some slightly misleading information on the location of these files (though this may be more of a break down in communication than anything else).

At last I got connected. However, my next problem was that I couldn’t set the SQL command, nor more importantly execute the SQL. Again the SAGE driver was very very particular about its SQL and format, to the point that my SQL went through numerous iterations when to be frank, it was fine in the first place.

The big problem…ODBC read / fill

Everything was now finally moving along or so I thought, but then more problems. This time an unhandled error being raised in my code with the event log only giving me the following message “Event log messages can only be 32766 characters long”. Now thats quite an error message that wasnt getting displayed. I am very particular about my error handling in code so was surprised to see that I had an untrapped error. Anyway, I have spent many hours adding event log debug code after event log debug code and added error messages only to find none of them were getting called…

This meant I would start to post information messages to the event log stating where I was in the code (not great as this service will run forever and a day dealing with 1000s of items a number of times during a day). As I followed my event log I could see that my code was executing and behaving as expected almost all of the way through, then out of the blue an unhandled error. Refering back to my code to the location, it all seemed handled correctly. I have looked at this so hard that I even started to think maybe a timing issue was causing the problem…

However, no…The error is simple. All of my code works fine, but the SAGE line 100 drivers don’t. Why you ask. Well simple, I have read out all of the records placed them in my dataview and returned this to the calling function, all fine, but then there it is my un-handled error….Its great really, basically in my finally statement, all my ODBC objects are disposed and set to nothing. Alas, without any additional error handling around them. It appears that the ODBC reader once disconnected and disposed from SAGE (.dispose)  triggers an error message for every item that it has read, hence my event log unable to display me my message (maybe if it could, I would have had this solved earlier – but that’s not my point). This then caused a further error which meant my lovely windows service stopped working…

Something to remember

If you are using a SAGE Line 100 ODBC driver with .NET basically you need to trap every call and handle everything. This includes simple dispose and setting objects to nothing. The ODBC driver is ODBC 2 compliant so only use ODBC 2 compliant calls (this may mean some of the features you want to use from ODBC within .NET are unavailable). However, sticking to these and things should work fine(ish).  You can use the standard ODBC.open and then ODBCReader.read methods, but remember to trap all your code especially when destroying connections and objects….

For quite some time I have been a strong advocate for larger organisations taking control, and responsibility, for their own scanning processes. I have nothing against outsourced scanning organisations, it’s just that organisations are entrusting what could be their most sensitive data to a third party, and not only that, they are relying on them to deliver it back to you as good accurate images and more often than not along with key associated data.

 I now hear cries of “what’s wrong with that?” Well a number of things actually…

1. Just who are the people carrying out the scanning? Who has access to these files
2. What skills do they have in identifying key parts of a document?
3. Compliance issues / complications
4. Quality control
5. Speed

Let’s look at these one at a time.

So who is actually doing the scanning and indexing tasks? Well in-house you have control over this, basically you choose who to employ. However, when outsourced you have no idea who has access to these files, sometimes you don’t even know what information could be found in these files (if sent directly to an outsourced document capture organisation), let alone then what sensitive information is being read by who.

Let’s be honest, being a document scanner is not the most thrilling of jobs, so outsourcing companies will often employ “lower skilled staff” (please don’t take that the wrong way) and staff working on a project per project of very temporary basis.  This brings me on to point 2…

What skills do your outsourcing company staff deliver? Have they any experience of scanning or indexing and if so, do they understand your business and what content to expect / look for in scanning documents?

Compliance is a big thing here and even I sometimes get a little lost with it in regards to outsourcing. For many markets, compliance means you have to know where all your data and content is stored at any point. Now if you are using an outsourcing company, does this mean you need to know what machines that content is being stored on? Where those machines are? With regards to cloud computing this is a big problem as organisations simply don’t know exactly what server is holding what information of theirs…so does the same apply when outsourcing your document capture. Worth taking some time to think about that one….

Quality control is a big bear of mine. In IT circles remember “shi* in, equals shi* out” and that’s so true with document capture. If your image quality is poor, or the accuracy of its accompanying data, then when trying to locate that content, you will find it rather hard, and your great document retrieval / ECM system will be almost pointless…

Ahhh, speed. This is often, along with cost, the big factor for organisations choosing to outsource document capture, but is it any quicker? In my experience the answer is no. I have worked on numerous projects which have used outsourcing companies for their document capture, only to find it has taken an unexpectedly long time to get the images into the retrieval system (based on the data received / postal date of content for example).

So get centralised

It’s cost effective for larger organisations to get their own centralised scanning environment. Not only will the business process of capturing this content be smoother, but also the quality of your images and accompanying data will be better. With greater investment in scanning software and the automation of data capture (OCR / ICR, Forms recognition, Auto-indexing etc) organisations will find it easier than ever before to reap the rewards and enjoy a quick ROI.

There is already currently a trend back towards centralised scanning. A recent AIIM industry watch article highlights this. Have a read here; http://www.aiim.org/research/document-scanning-and-capture.aspx, then ensure you take ownership of your own document capture requirements…

For a good place to start when thinking about document capture and scannign solutions, read one of my earlier posts on Document Capture success….

http://andrewonedegree.wordpress.com/2009/05/14/successful-document-capture/

Silverlight delivers RIA

Many corporate intranets require typical web functionality, but also they are often used to deliver application type solutions to the user without the hassle of maintaining any installations on the client PC. So what’s my point….Well my point is that web applications provide great value to administrators of systems, but they really do detract from a user’s experience. So how do we make what should / could be a thick client application, work well within an intranet environment?

User Experience

We all have used web based applications, some great some very poor. However, with almost all of them they are delivered in an old fashioned way. For example, a user makes a request to the page, something happens on the server, the page is recreated at the server then sent back to the client updated in its new state….Great. However this can take time, which isn’t always great, but more importantly it can become limiting and frustrating to users. You also have to think that changes to the look of a page still have to be processed and completed on the server. At the end of the day, standard web applications still feel, well, a little “clunky”, no matter how much fancy Javascript you can write…

Often because of this, users don’t give great feedback on the intranet itself, which is wrong; rather they should be giving negative feedback on that particular application / service delivered through the intranet (there is quite a big difference).

An improvement…

Intranet applications that take advantage of AJAX do deliver a far greater experience – AJAX has ensured we are moving in the right direction, ensuring you don’t always have to wait for a page to be submitted and then returned – rather the page has a “conversation” with the server. This has improved the user experience greatly and has removed much of the “clunky” feel web applications can have. But there are still issues. Here are a couple of things I don’t like to be honest:

1. It still looks and feels like a web page (which can be a positive – but for more complex applications this is a big negative)
2. You are still navigating around and waiting for a web page to come back (when requesting new pages)
3. Users can request “back” in the browser (unless the application has turned this off) or worse they think they should be able to go back…
4. Limitations on the application behaviour
5. Occasionally the server is still being used to deliver client side features (conversation that attracts data then updates a data grid on the web page)
6. Flexibility as a developer / ease in which to control the application

So let’s be honest, a web application still cannot compete with a good old fashioned “thick client” application installed on the PC for usability / user experience and performance….

The solution?

Well RIAs (Rich Internet Applications) hold the key. They bridge the best of both worlds in regards to thin client administration and thick client usability. This is more apparent for an intranet solution; there really is no excuse for keeping to old html based solutions.

In an intranet environment you can really go to town. You can deliver massive sized RIAs down to the client machine as you are on the network. More importantly with a little “caching” by your browser, the application need only be downloaded when an update has been made to the software.

Silverlight provides a great RIA platform, and allows intranet solutions to deliver the best of both worlds to businesses. Silverlight has many features built in that allows developers to manage how the application is delivered down onto the client machine, parts of the application can be split up and downloaded in the background ensuring the user doesn’t have to wait for areas of the application. Basically as a developer, you have almost a “thick” client environment to play with, allowing applications to behave just like thick client applications and provide the user with a far greater experience. This ensures processing that is done at the client end (such as displaying data) still all occurs on the client machine – with the client processor doing the work). There is a real separation between client processing, data, and server interaction (especially as the application utilises a Service Orientated Architecture)

However, you can also utilise the benefits of typical web pages, allowing state to be stored by the browser, navigating around in pages (if desired) and more importantly, not having to worry about client installations.

An issue – there can’t be?

There is just one problem with intranets being written in Silverlight or demanding Silverlight based RIAs. Most in-house IT departments will find they have any number of people who can “play around with HTML” or claim to be a “web developer” when really their skills are limited to modifying standard HTML. Even with typical ASP.NET and AJAX solutions, you will find that people with a basic understanding of HTML will be able to modify certain aspects of a web page / web application. With Silverlight, you need skilled individuals. This means companies have three options

1. Employ people with the skills (not cost effective)
2. Provide training for current employees to get some basic skills (again is this the best option?)
3. Utilise software companies on an ad-hoc basis (best on a retainer of some sort).

The Silverlight RIA payoff

Silverlight provides the possibility for intranet solutions to work as well (if not better) than typical thick client applications. This ensures usability, flexibility and scalability of solutions and opens up a new way of interacting with business applications through your intranet. There is no reason for intranet solutions to deliver “clunky” applications that users will not like to use, instead, provide “real” applications that empower your staff to do their work while keeping your IT administration to a minimum…

Now I’m in no way an economics expert, nor am I a stong member of any political movements, however, I am a Director of a company trying to make its way in this current economic climate, and as such, I like many others, will be paying attention to today’s pre-budget announcements…

On my drive to work this morning I couldn’t but hear lots of discussions with regards to the current economics of our situation and the current politics that now goes hand in hand with it. This is one of my many concerns of the present situation, that politics blinds the actual economics required in situations like this.

The cold facts

There is a lot of talk about trying to tax the mega wealthy, which too many people sounds like a great plan. However, the cold facts of life are that these people are highly mobile in regards to where they can work, but also that they will, and always will be, great at finding ways in which to pay less tax. It’s a cold fact, that Margret Thatcher extracted more revenue from taxes than previous governments by actually taxing less. This is simply because the lower tax meant the mega wealthy didn’t try to avoid it, plain and simple. Today I have heard tax bands of 50% and people calling for even higher tax bands, however the cold economics is that this will only lead to less revenue coming into the government…

In the past 13 years the size of the public sector has grown and grown, so much so that now figures state there are around 7 million people employed by the public sector. This is a hell of a lot of people and puts a great strain on the government’s resources, but does this mean the government should try to extract more money from the tax payer to accommodate this level of spending or should they look at other ways of improving their situation? I have worked with public sector bodies and unfortunately, many people will disagree with this I am sure, the public sector has it easy! The fact of the matter is that the quality of life working for a public sector is far better than that working in the private sector, though arguably the rewards in the private sector can be far greater (arguably). Please don’t get me wrong, doctors, nurses, bus drivers these people don’t get an easy ride, but people forget just what the public sector is. It is much more than the people you and I meet on the “front line” so too speak.

Efficiency

As a director of a company and as a BPM consultant I am constantly looking at ways in which companies can raise efficiency to increase ultimately their profitability. In times like these, efficiency is key to survival and growth, not the amount of money you turn over, or in the government’s case “bring in”. From just my own exposure and more importantly, people I know working in the public sector, it is clear that there is so much that can be done from an efficiency point of view. Ironically this may mean greater investment in areas, however that investment will ultimately raise efficiency of the public sector and therefore decrease its burden on the government.

The public sector is a prime example of a company (or in this case government) working with dis-economies of scale. This basically means they are so big, and when they continue to grow, they become even less efficient. Why is this? Typically this is because of the increased level of “red tape”, administration, lack of people wanting to take responsibility, and even worse, people looking like they are working but actually not contributing much. In organisations of such scale, it’s very easy to keep on board a lot of “dead wood”, simply because its hard to grasp who does what and what actually needs to be done.

Any solutions?

If you looking for an in-depth budget here please look away, all I believe needs to be done is to address the efficiency level within the public sector and the economy as a whole and to put money into people’s pockets. If people have money in their pocket, they spend, if they spend the economy grows. Simple…. The key in doing this is to make things as simple as possible and where complexities are required, ensure these are broken down into smaller more simplified chunks (simple business sense really). Here are some simple ideas:

1. Scrap tax credits etc – in-place address the income tax bands and NI contributions people pay. Lower wages and people currently on tax credits simply aren’t taxed. There is no need for the added red tape of administering tax credits.
2. Increase the income tax bands – there is nothing wrong with more and more bands that come into effect the more you earn. It has always struck me how odd it is to have people charged at 40% who lets say earn £50,000 per year, and charge people who earn £1m a year again in the 40% tax band….
3. Utilise VAT correctly – this is effectively a tax on spending, which is ok, however if too high people don’t purchase products at the end of the day. It is therefore essential that this is kept at a rate that brings in as much revenue as possible, without stopping people purchasing items. A VAT sliding scale (in reverse) could be an option. With goods that cost more having a lower tax rate.
4. Address stamp duty on housing. The problem with stamp duty is that it hinders the house market, which is one of the big factors in any economy. You don’t see any houses on the market for £255,000 for example, simply because in effect with the added stamp duty the buyer has to spend another 3%. In this situation how can the housing market be truely effective and help economic growth?
5. Promote growth and small businesses by introducing a sliding scale for corporation tax. In addition, help small businesses employ people by reducing or removing small business contributions on PAYE and NI.
6. Look to promote other industries within the UK. At present we are a services economy, which has many good sides and downsides. Ideally the economy should be more “rounded” and include manufacturing for example. Taxation in this country and unions make it hard for manufacturing to survive, this needs to be addressed.
7. Reduce the amount of admin across the public sector. If needs be invest in IT and technology to raise efficiency. This ultimately will lead to vast reductions in the cost of running the public sector. This more than likely will result in reductions of staff, however, it should not impact front line services / people, in-fact it should free up greater investment in these areas.
8. Invest in the country’s infrastructure. This is a classic example of spending to get the economy running. By making investments in the country’s infrastructure you put money in the workforce pocket, and you build greater future efficiency for the country. (Infrastructure need not be just roads etc).

I’ll finish there…..This is far too long a post that isn’t work related and some of us need to get back to work to ensure ends meet…

Well it had to be just a matter of time before Bing Maps started using Silverlight to deliver the richest mapping experience on the web. Since the start of November I have been playing around with the Silverlight Bing Maps control which far out-performs the AJAX control and for me the HTML version on the actual Bing website.

The payoff

Microsoft's Bing

Well for the end user, the Silverlight experience is far smoother and allows you greater control. For example zooming into an area on the map using the wheel of your mouse is a nice touch, but the app renders smoothly. In addition you can mesh together traditional map views with aerial photos. There are also nice features such as the street side walker – which currently isn’t available in that many areas, but it allowed me to jump into the map and then walk around parts of the world I have never seen (well visited now….).

With the Silverlight version, everything just feels so much more professional, it’s a real jump forward in terms of the functionality that is capable and the experience it provides the end user. Why not see for yourself, you will need to have Silverlight installed. http://www.bing.com/maps/explore/ NB If you don’t have Silverlight installed I suggest you get it asap.

Microsoft has also followed on a trend of offering “app stores”. A new application gallery will be available allowing developers to include their own information on a map.

The biggest pay off though is the capabilities this provides to other developers and websites that want to use mapping technology. I have already seen a number of demonstrations showing how you can overlay / highlight “areas” within a map. One great demonstration shows the New York marathon route, it not only shows you this route and the “area” covered on the Bing map, but also shows runners moving along the route – comparing their relative times etc….Not bad….

The .NET framework…

I have to say that I like the way Microsoft is going, building everything on the .NET framework or a subset of it. It allows more powerful applications to be built and integrated with each other. This is another great example – Silverlight, which is a subset of .NET with a WPF subset as a presentation layer, combined with the Microsoft Live web services (again delivered in .NET) delivering a feature rich experience for users. More importantly though, working in this way provides the development community with the tools they require to take things further.

By combining the Silverlight Bing Map control with the Microsoft Live web services, it is now a quick and rather simple(ish) task for any .NET developer to deliver powerful mapping / mapped based services to clients that look and perform great.

As I was shifting through my usual amount of mails this morning, I spotted a google alert regarding an article titled “BPM must integrate people, documents”. Now I thought that’s a tad obvious, and promptly went to read the article thinking I had missed something….And basically I hadn’t…

A good point was raised though, that most BPM software targets business analysts and project managers. There are usually options to utilise SDKs but these are often a low priority as the main selling point is almost always “out of the box” demonstrations aimed at business analysts. However, am I the only one that sees a flaw in this?

BPM design tools. Are they flawed?

Now putting together demonstrations and targeting analysts are all good things to a degree, however in the world of BPM I still maintain that too much is done to show a great demo, allow analysts to “model” processes and not enough is done to provide real integration and back end flexibility. What do I mean by this? Well, systems integration in the “real world” often require a lot more work than simply setting up some connectors with common integration points. Often you need to call functions from other systems, pull in data from more than just a single source, carry out some complex processing, update multiple systems etc all within a single step. Can you really do all this from a fancy modelling tool….My guess is no.

Modelling tools give power to the business

This is so very true. Business can make tweaks to their processes and make them happen immediately, which is great. Many BPM solutions almost live and die by their modelling tools / facilities and spend vast amounts of time, effort and money in making these better and more flexibile. There are so many benefits which many other articles will and have talked about. But again, in my experience, many larger systems aren’t just “out of the box”, nor are many smaller systems. They have applications written in .NET for example, that use the process map for guidelines and routing business rules. The application itself then contains its own “business layer” (if written well) which contains certain inbuilt business rules – typically regarding calculations and integration with other LOBs.

I have worked on numerous BPM projects that work in this way, providing lots of applications for different steps within the process map, using the process map for merely setting statuses and routing information. The application itself holds all the business logic and integration code. Even on the more complex solutions, an application was delivered in place of any out of the box front end components. Business rules were built into the application to interpret the process map, which in theory did give back more power to the process map, regarding statuses, routing, cooling off periods etc.

In this case you can see that the modelling tool gives power to the business on when and where to route work for example. Even such things as options the user can select, cooling down processes, awaiting other tasks etc. However, the real integration and bringing people / data together, happens in the business application, written by developers specifically for that client requirement.

But what happens if the business analyst wants to make a change to the process that involves carrying out additional calculations at a particular step or pulling in more content / data from other platforms. He can make the changes as he sees fit in the map, but what about the actual rules etc? More often than not a “change request” is raised and someone in the development team has to make a modification to the code of the application, which then obviously needs to be tested in a model office environment before being released. So even though the business feels like it has ownership of the process map, it doesn’t really have great ownership over how the map actually works as a process for the business. In this scenario the actual time taken to make the change is quite lengthy. Let’s break it down:

1. Business identifies the need for change
2. Business analyst is involved and investigates the options
3. Business analyst provides a new solution
4. Business analyst updates / creates a new business process map
5. Change request is made and passed on to the software developer
6. Business analyst updates the process map
7. Software developer makes the required changes
8. Process map is then tested (UNIT test)
9. Software is then tested against the new map (UNIT test)
10. Software is then sent back to a testing environment
11. Testing environment tests the new map and all the related applications / scenarios
12. New process map and application is released to the live environment

As you can see that’s quite a list of things that must happen.

What’s the answer?

It’s simple. Let’s let people do the jobs they are supposed to do, and let’s let software provide us with what it is designed to do, nothing more and nothing less.

So with this in mind. imagine a business analyst who models the business process. He / she put together a complete map with users, groups, security, calculations identified, function calls to other LOBs etc. They then model this in Visio for example with some accompanying documentation.

Once this is all complete, let’s move this over to the actual BPM software, which should allow all these things to be included into the “map”, even execution of complex code, calculations and integration etc. Please note, the BPM engine shouldn’t be confused with the BPM front end at this stage. The user will never see the “engine” as such. So our BPM specialist (which is more than likely at this level to be a developer), makes the changes to the BPM map, codes the required calculations and integrations and completes the map. This is then “tested” before being published. Please note, no application code has changed, there is no need to test the applications etc, rather just the map itself.

The last part of our solution is our front end. This should be written to only present data to the user and allow them to interact with that data, people or other systems depending on the BPM map (which holds all the rules / calculations etc). Because map changes are made in the map and are completely separate from other deliverable code, namely our actual application / front end, the whole process of making a change to the process map and having it made live is far shorter, less likely to fail, far more flexible and in the end, much cheaper.

Let’s review:

1. Business identifies the need for change
2. Business analyst is involved and investigates the options
3. Business analyst provides a new solution
4. Software developer updates / provides a new map
5. Process map is then tested (UNIT)
6. Process map is sent to testing environment
7. Process map is made live

We could even add in: 8. Full testing of the process map and application; and we are still 4 points shorter in our list of things to do. In addition, each point in this second implementation is not as time consuming as those in the previous list…

The downside

Because this type of BPM system / solution doesn’t display a great map for business analysts with lots of feature rich BA tools, it doesn’t really quickly and easily demonstrate BPM. A system like this won’t allow a BA to make a change to the process map and have it published immediately. All of this means that this kind of system, though in many ways far superior, may be viewed in a demonstration as a simpler tool with fewer capabilities.

Conclusion

When choosing your BPM platform, really focus on your actual requirements. Have more than just a rough idea of your processes and desired outcomes. If you have an in-house IT department, make sure you bring along a senior member of that team to any demonstrations / meetings.

Remember, a demonstration is not the same as a solution and don’t fall for the statement, “we have an SDK you can use to integrate”. This almost always means you need to build those more “complex rules and calculations” into your own application / step processor, not in the process itself.

BPM mapping tools are great; they deliver a powerful and rich environment that is fantastic for demonstrations. But make sure the BPM map itself has the capabilities and flexibility to meet your requirements without the need for you to build essentially what should be process rules into your own step processor / front end application…

Even with BPM there is still a process that you must follow to get your BPM system to work for your needs…

Ever since I first started to use Silverlight, back at version 1.0 and the managed code alpha 1.1, one of the big appeals was the multi-platform support. For me, multi-platform support in this day and age needs to include more than just a Windows machine or an Apple Mac, it needs to include all flavours of operating systems, including those used by phones. One of the big problems, even for the so called “media rich” iPhone, is that video streaming from websites that use Flash video players, just simply doesn’t work….

Streaming video – no flash…

Recently I got married, and as part of our video package our videographer put together a highlights video. This is great fun, and obviously we wanted to share it with a number of our friends and relatives. Our videographer uploaded the video to a popular video sharing website (not YouTube) and we shared this via Facebook etc. However, a number of friends tried to access it straight away from their iPhones, alas they couldn’t view it because the player used was written in Flash.

Now the iPhone has been quite strict about allowing flash to be supported. A number of reasons exist for this, namely that Flash often slows down the website loading time, or can cause all sorts of problems (crashing etc). However, it seems that Apple maybe supporting Silverlight very soon.

In a report for Betanews.com, Scott Fulton stated that he watched an impressive demonstration of an iPhone streaming video, using Microsoft’s Silverlight technology.

Silverlight-powered streaming video on an iPhone – image from Betanews.com

It seems Microsoft have been working with Apple to make this possible, basically getting to a point where Apple is happy having media streamed with Silverlight onto their phone.

So why Silverlight and not Flash

Ahh well, though Adobe claims 99.7% of web browsers are capable of displaying Flash content, Flash is widely criticised for being an antiquated, less than optimal platform. Silverlight content is based on its own flavour of XML (XAML) and without getting all geeky, means Silverlight is a more modern technology that is more powerful, more flexible, more compliant and less likely to crash than Flash. As a developer, Silverlight provides a greater wealth of possibilities and because it is built on .NET (the engine), it means it can be leveraged for more than just multi-media content, it can be used for powerful applications – yes, even mission critical business applications….

Here is a post I wrote on why we choose to use the Silverlight technology; you may find it quite useful. http://andrewonedegree.wordpress.com/2009/04/03/why-we-choose-silverlight/

For many years I have waved the banner for single application experiences for end users. If you can deliver a single application that allows the end user to carry out all their work, gain access to all the files they require, interact with many other LOB applications (without knowing it), just think what a positive impact that would have on any organisation. Think how better informed that user will be, how much improved their decision making will be, how much customer services will be improved along with customer satisfaction, and also, think how much of a gain that organisation will make in efficiency, productivity and ultimately profitability…

Integration has long been the key to this ideal, and ECM and BPM often show how this can work, integrating with key LOB applications.

Problems…

The problem is that people want everything to integrate without putting any effort in. This means that organisations spend a lot of money in getting applications to integrate with other companies applications and software. While this can be great for the customer (if you have the same selection of applications and software) it isn’t always practicle. Throw into the mix different operating systems, different versions of software and the daddy of all, different business requirements from that integration….All of a sudden you see how muddy the water can get and just how complicated system integrations can be, and why that single application experience is so hard to achieve…

Progress

With the bright invention of XML has come a whole host of ways of integrating applications. It has provided the bridge between old COM and COBRA components, interopability between application components, and most importantly, delivered us XML Web Services and Service Orientated Architectures (SOA).

I love XML Web Services and the capabilities these alone can open up to organisations. If applications deliver good APIs through web services, then integration is made so much easier, be it integration “out of the box” with connectors, or more efficiently through actual developers and professional services.

Is Social Media leading the way here?

Yes…There you go, a nice short answer. Basically Social Media is leveraging web services (especially RESTful services) to allow integration between web sites / applications. Take the recent joining of forces of LinkedIn with Twitter. LinkedIn can now pull in your “tweets” and have these shown as status updates within your LinkedIn profile. Now think back to a business environment and you can see how using one application therefore effects data / content on another application / area of the business. This type of seamless integration is what adds real efficiency gains across an enterprise.

One Degree of Separation

When I founded One Degree Consulting, one of my main aims for the consultancy was to be able to provide consultancy services and solutions that delivered a single degree of separation between the end user, the data / content, and the functions they required to do their job. This may sound a little idealistic, but it can be achieved and should be the goal of business decision makers in all organisations. To be blunt, to achieve this, application integration is key and should be at the forefront of any decision making when it comes to IT based projects and solutions.

If Social Media sites hadn’t have seen how powerful joining forces could be and had maintained a closed API that couldn’t easily be integrated, then the whole point of Social media and sharing may well have been lost….Businesses, take a leaf out of their book, think integration for everything…Its key….

Today’s post has been inspired by some web reading I have been doing earlier this morning. Open Text, (one of the largest ECM players) have made claims that ECM is still only in 20% of the available market, and that tools just aren’t being used by corporations. From my experience, this is probably true, and of the 20% that do have ECM, I would say 10% of these, just don’t use their ECM capabilities correctly if at all.

Is this a worrying fact for ECM?

Well probably not. ECM in some form or name (Document Management, Image Management, EDMS etc) has been around now since the 80’s, however, it is still an immature sector, and still seen as a very niche market place. Often customers of mine state ECM hampered by far too much jargon and far too much emphasis on out of the box connectors across the complete enterprise. This “enterprise” view, can often scare organisations away from looking at the benefits ECM can bring to each department for example.

Back to basics

Organisations and more importantly their users, sometimes don’t get how to use ECM correctly, and it’s not surprising. Many of the users, and business decision makers, will think nothing is wrong with saving files down onto their local machine (or network share), and organising these folders in a logical way. In addition, users when on their home PC won’t really be using anything that resembles ECM, though there are plenty of reasons why perhaps they should…

This is where education of what ECM can provide is really needed. The whole profile of ECM within the corporate world, and small business world, needs to be raised. Because of this lack of understanding or profile if you like, it is often hard to communicate to businesses just what a positive effect ECM would have for the overall running of their organisation. Of course over time, more and more businesses will grasp the many benefits and real world savings ECM brings to businesses, but hopefully this will not be so far down the line that the market place has only a few massive players left.

The large players provide really powerful solutions, and very powerful demonstrations, backed up with great consultancy work and number crunching to illustrate ROI and future efficiency gains and savings. However, sometimes you can take a good thing too far. Often the case for ECM should be a basic one, leveraged at a departmental level, as opposed to the complete Enterprise. By addressing an organisations needs, department by department, you vendors ensure real business requirements are met immediately and that they are not lost in the mass of other requirements when looking at an enterprise as a whole. It’s also worth  noting that organisations purchasing ECM will not be so worried about implementation complications etc. when only looking at an individual department, things are simpler.

Going forward

As vendors, let’s keep things simple, let’s try to raise the profile of ECM and its benefits, let’s try to remove some of the jargon behind ECM and let’s sometimes step back from the concept of a solution for the whole Enterprise. If we do these things, business decision makers will find it easier to grasp the many benefits of ECM and when this happens, ECM will be being used in many many more organisations. Correctly I hope…

The more regular readers of my blog posts will note that my little puppy isgetting a little older, well he just turned 3 months. I have to admit that he is becoming quite the handful; he loves to chew on anything and everything, including candles and the cat’s toys. Only yesterday I noted the remains of a cat’s toy being passed out of him in the back garden….lovely….

He will be off to puppy training hopefully this week. I am really hopeful that if he only learns one thing, that it is the meaning of the word NO! If he can grasp what this means, then I think we will be on track…

I am being a little harsh, as he has “sit”, “paw” and “other paw” mastered. He also knows to sit on the floor mat every time he comes into the house after his walk. Oh, and I must not forget that the little fella knows to cry and make some noise when he is in need of some toilet relief, ensuring he does this outside…..

All in all, things are going well….So far….I will keep you up dated.