Software

The Creepy, Kooky, Mysterious and Spooky World of Information Management

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  • July 8, 2009

My grandfather made his living after the Great War writing catchy jingles for shows like The Addams Family and Green Acres. He was an absolute perfectionist in his craft and thankfully a micromanager when it came to his music. I’ve been told that not only did he write the score for The Addams Family, but he actually directed the opening credits, wrote the now classic lyrics and insisted on singing them himself. He’s revered for leading a fight for residual rights for musicians and I’ve always admired him for that.

However, when the nineteen-sixties rolled around and Elvis and the Beatles began redefining pop-music, my grandfather was reluctant to welcome the change and over time became disillusioned, bitter and jealous of the new musical trends. He was such a great talent, certainly still is, but he resisted innovation and fell out of the limelight.

Lacking musical genius, what was a simple Records Management Consultant like I to take from this troubadour’s history and legacy into the world of records, document, and content management? Quite simply it’s the lesson he had failed to pick up when confronted with the new wave of rock music, the benefits of accepting and embracing change and innovation.

Of course, my background was quite different from Mr. Vic Mizzy’s. After all, I worked in bookstores, libraries and as a law firm records manager for the majority of my adult life. One thing we had in common, undeniably, was a commitment to our industry. Yet as I came to understand the details of his biography, I recognized the underlying power of his discipline but also the mistake he made by not respecting emerging trends.

It was around this time that I was consulting with a top film finance entity in Hollywood. The outfit, run by a sharp young man in his early thirties, was redefining the way that investment deals were structured in the Entertainment Industry. The CEO was an educated man, respectful of the risks taken by those of his predecessors and emboldened by the financial savvy he had picked up on Wall Street just a few years before. He was an innovator, and unlike my grandfather was open and enlightened by new ideas and approaches to the business he was married to.

At the time, this client was interested in finding an affordable document management solution. Despite his corporation’s unparalleled success in its field, his company was horrified at the prospect of paying an arm and a leg to manage their records and workflow needs. I presented them with a number of solutions ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, and one after the other, they rejected my proposals. They were shrewd and knew what they wanted, and even though nothing was out of their price range, they demanded a good deal, which happens to be one of the secrets of their success.

Finally I gave up and in a half-hearted and off-hand manner proposed building them a system to their specifications. To my surprise they agreed and told me to design for them exactly what they needed and build them the perfect document management beast.

The very next day I found myself sitting behind my Touchsmart wondering how to approach building this company a sophisticated document management application. Nevertheless, I couldn’t disappoint them and gratefully accepted the challenge. At the time they were one of only a few clients I had and I felt like a Venetian painter, indebted to my patron and pleased with my pittance. Suddenly, here they were offering me what I viewed as the opportunity of a lifetime, the chance to design my own information management application.

Initially, I contacted a plethora of programmers from New York to the Silicon Valley eager to assist me with my project. I wanted to get this developed in the United States because after all, it had given me this opportunity. The devotion was short-lived though as I collected bids that were not only far out of my price range but little more than a sales pitch.

I began searching for an offshore company to handle the development. I had a vision of what I wanted; a simplified document management solution that worked in unison with a records management system, but it needed a professional and intelligent architecture behind it. Luckily, I had made many good friends in the information management community, from ARMA to AIIM, who were generous in their advice and recommendations.

Eventually, I decided on partnering with a popular online outsourcing service and posted a proposal on their site. The responses were overwhelming, from all corners of the world from the Ukraine, to China to New Delhi.

After two months I finally selected a developer from a lesser known region in New Delhi. The process was tiring, from signing Non-Disclosure Agreements to testing, but it was well worth it. The effort and expertise they offered was far and beyond anything I could expect from some programmers in the United States. They were delighted to work my team as we were with them. Our interactions with the good people of India have provided us with a fresh, genuine and positive perspective on globalism and mutual cultural prosperity.

After three years of development, over 14,000 man hours, and a thousand calls from antsy investors, we finally had our answer to comprehensive document, content and records management, and we call it Unified ECM. In building Unified, our mission was and is to embrace the future of Enterprise Content Management, while respecting the innumerable contributions of archivists, librarians, records managers and others to the field of information management in all of its previous incarnations.

Information is our music, and it lives, breathes and must adapt to change, as “creepy and kooky, mysterious and spooky” as it may seem from time to time.

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