Controlled or Valuable? That is the question

I got the following feedback on an article I'm writing for KMWorld (which arose out of my The Long Tail Of Enterprise Content Posts) and thought it was interesting enough to share the feedback and my response to it:



Comment:

Ok, there is something bothering me about the word “Value” all content within an organization is valuable, that is the point of SharePoint, our connectors and search working together. Is the left axis really value or “Controlled”.



My Response:

I agree that organizations have typically “Controlled” ( the 80/20 rule I mentioned) content in the enterprise to varying degrees, the question is how what is controlled is determined. It is in answering the question of what to control and how the long tail theory applies to content in the enterprise that I’ve used the content’s value which can be determined through computation e.g. risk analysis. We are also in agreement that all content within an organization is valuable, however I believe the relative value of content differs ( i.e. some more valuable than others) hence the tail of the curve, although it tends to zero it never touches the zero value line (i.e. the x-axis).

Content to control, in my opinion, is determined by the value of that content to the enterprise e.g. if regulation requires that the content be placed under control and there is a penalty for non compliance, then the relative value of the content is higher than content not subject to the regulation. Other factors as I indicated in the article can also be used to determine the value of a piece of content and hence if it should be controlled or not.

If, as you are suggesting, you graph the decision made after the content’s value is determined i.e. what goes into the Advanced ECM systems (typically the controlled content in the enterprise) versus what does not (typically the less controlled content in SharePoint and other non Advanced ECM repositories), you will not have curve let alone a long tail. You will end up with a bar graph or pie chart of categories of controlled content which does not lend itself to analyzing The Long Tail theory and it’s applicability to enterprise content.

The Long Tail Debate

Anita Elberse's recent piece Should You Invest in the Long Tail?, Harvard Business Review July-August 2008 has stirred up a debate among long-tail enthusiasts and critics. Prof. Elberse's academic work on the Long tail is great for the Long Tail theory. With such academic challenges of the Long Tail theory, Chris Anderson - who coined the term/theory - gets a good chance to defend the theory giving the new context and data presented by challengers. It is through such challenges that the theory gets refined and the boundaries of the theory's applicability defined.

Prof. Elberse's research validated the Long Tail theory and reveals additional patterns about consumption in the long tail: (1) the long-tail is long but extremely flat and (2) light users have a disproportionately strong preference for the more popular offerings. Her definition of what constitutes the "head" (and hence the tail) of the power curve is certainly a point of contention/difference between the Long tail theory and her analysis. She defines the head as the top 10% of titles in her data set while Chris considers the head as akin to the amount of content that can be shelved at the largest wal-mart store. I believe his definition is a better base-line especially when considering how the internet is lowering distribution cost and the fact that this is probably the theoretical limit of a brick and mortal store.

In her advice to producers and retailers she offers nothing new in the way of strategy implication/formulation which I was looking forward to. Overall it was a good piece and I'm only surprised at the level of criticism especially since she didn't invalidate the Long Tail but rather offered some new data to support it as well as tease out some additional conclusions.

Enterprise Content LT: Getting a Handle on it

Given the challenges of the LT of enterprise content, organizations are probably tempted to manage the long tail by controlling its spread. This is a losing proposition at best, organizations need to put in place an content management strategy with the following components (1) Content repository Agnostic; (2) Make all content available available (3) Help Employees find the available content in the organization and (4) Multi-product solution.

Content repository agnostic solutions are harder to come by chiefly because each vendor tool stores data using proprietary formats. In addition these applications are tightly coupled to a chosen repository. One way to work around this issue is to invest in adaptors to help connect the different systems in use.

Making all content available and helping employees find the content can be achieved by deploying a search solution along with a taxonomy/folksonomy solution. These should allow access to the disparate data/content repositories in the organization from a single search user interface.

Employee content management needs may vary by various dimensions (functional grouping, department, tasks etc); therefore a short-list of enterprise content management tools to be used and supported in the organization should be provided for employees to choose from based on their needs. Adaptors may be needed to ensure that content can be accessed across these systems.

Enterprise Content Management & The LT Challenge

LT forces in enterprise content, (1) Democratization of Content Creation (2) Democratization of Content Distribution (3) Connecting Supply and Demand, gave rise to the vast amount of content and digital assets created in the course of doing business. In essence, these forces drove content creation towards the tail of the content-value curve.



The x-axis of the graph is the amount of content and the y-axis indicates the value of the content as defined by the organization, this value will vary across the organizations and between organizations, examples of value to consider include (1) Risk Factor; or (2) Regulation factor.

The Head of the curve is where you will find content that an organization considers high value, access to this content is typically restricted, a retention policy is applied to the content and it tends to participates in one or more business processes. Organizations have managed thise content by deploying advanced enterprise content management (ECM) systems such as IBM FileNet and EMC Documentum.

The Long Tail of the graph, which I believe contains the vast majority of content created in the enterprise, is the domain of several other applications most notably of which is SharePoint/MOSS 2007. This tail is the result of a combination of (1) the availability of content authoring tools especially Microsoft Office; (2) the lowered cost of distributing the content created and; (3) search technologies which allows all content stored to be indexed and searched. The deployment of these applications was largely limited to the departmental levels in organization and the central IT groups did not pay much attention. The deployments of these applications became so widespread that several niches developed and most of the valuable content that IT investments in Advanced ECM systems was deployed to cater to was no longer finding its ways to the advanced ECM systems.

The growth of the tail presents several challenges to the organization. For central IT groups, it is an infrastructure/support challenge, largely because the applications that enabled the tail where not central managed. Central IT is reigning in the uncontrolled deployments of these applications by incorporating them into the organization’s IT infrastructure and planning its deployment across the organization.

The LT is also a risk management and compliance nightmare for organizations. Organizations continue to struggle with what to do about the content in the tail as the value of content increases i.e. moving the content in the tail to the head. Companies would like to leverage the capabilities of their advanced ECM platforms and years of investment in developing business process, retention policies and compliance initiatives for these platforms. CIOs want to mitigate the risk and address compliance concerns while allowing employees to continue to collaborate in the knowledge creating activities which drives innovation and business results.

The challenge for organizations can be summarized as follows (1) moving content from the tail to the head as value increases (2) making all content readily available within the constraints of the access rights established for the particular content and regardless of the system in which the content is stored and (3) helping employees find content to promote sharing of best practices and reuse.

The Long Tail Forces in Enterprise Content

In my previous post I introduced the idea of The Long Tail (LT) of Enterprise Content, in this post I'll discuss the tree LT forces in enterprise content.

- Democratize Production
- Democratize Distribution
- Connect Supply and Demand

Democratization of Content Production
The democratization of content production in organizations started with the release of word processing software for the PC. As the use of PCs as a productivity tool increased with deployments across the enterprise, employees began to do their own word processing tasks. Further advancement in the PC hardware and software industry: (1) inclusion of hard disks in PCs (2) networked computers (3) Windows OS (4) Computer Server significantly lowered the cost of producing and storing content which led to more content that ever been created.

Democratization of Content Distribution
With the release of Portal/Collaboration software such as SharePoint Portal Server and Plumtree, employees began to collaborate in ways they were not able to in the past. Granted, employees had been able to share content through e-mail or by putting them on file servers, the content on these file servers were however not indexed therefore finding anything was a nightmare. Portal/Collaboration software however democratized the distribution of content, employees can now share and collaborate on content in ways they are not been able to do before. For example with SharePoint Portal Server (SPS) any employee can create a document library ( a repository for content), invite others to collaborate on the content and the content in the document library is available to anyone using a web browser.

Connecting Supply and Demand
Another effect of Portal/Collaboration software was that is connected previously un-findable content to the demand for the content through the enterprise search solution that was a common component of the portal software. For example with SPS, employees could now search for content stored on either file servers, SPS Document libraries, Exchange Servers, Lotus Notes and several other repositories by simply entering a search term in SPS search UI. The search component of portal software helped to connect the supply of content with the demand for it.

The Long Tail Of Enterprise Content

Organizations have applied the 80/20 rule in addressing the challenges posed by the vast amount of content and other digital assets created in the course of doing business. CIO's have generally focused their enterprise content management efforts on content considered to be highly valuable ("the hits") to the organization. A content's value was largely determined by one of the following factors; (1) an organizations need to mitigate risk; (2) expert opinions (3) regulations governing the organization's industry and (4) participation in business process automation applications.

The "modest sellers" of enterprise content, content deemed not so valuable, as defined by the organization, was largely left unmanaged; at best some organizations provided a file server where employees could store this content. In recent years however, organization have come to realize that the combined value of these modest sellers was equal to the value of the highly valued content. This is the Long Tail (LT) of enterprise content and managing the volume of content produced by employees is a huge, enterprise content management, challenge for organization.


Chris Anderson coined the term “The Long Tail” to describe how the internet has made possible a world in which the combined value of modest sellers (in the world of movies, books and music) equals the sales of the top hits. The long tail has been applied to other industries and I will explore its applicability to enterprise content and in defining an enterprise content management strategy.