Future Of Productivity: People information

People are better informed

People are better informed, but not because the quality of information has improved, but information can be found more easy and accurate. Most data is non structured, very hard to capture and easy mistaken for information. If organizations knew what they know Innovative initiatives would pop up more frequent and turn out to be successful more easily.

Classic data

Classic data driven systems capture structured data derived form predefined activities in designed processes. Organizations however do not communicate and collaborate trough this structured data, but in a way more fluid way. When we start a project we write a project initiation document, we send a email to a supplier, a design is written down and presented in a presentation during a meeting online.

Classic (My) document management

Systems designed to capture information from non structured data sets like a document management system are meant to fill the gap. And sure they do in several ways. Data in a document can be captured by index the data in an intelligent way, categorize the subjects. If the data is only a picture systems can recognize these characters as a step before indexing and categorizing.
By adding workflows the system can more fluidly build additional information about the data, a bit like the systems supporting structured processes did before. So this helps organizations in their first step towards a combined structured and non structured information approach of capturing information from data.

Besides all those nicely designed systems that supports these organizations, there are people. It has been very hard to decide what to capture and how to store all that information. When time goes by, we often discover we have more information than we can find, or should I say information is devolving to data again. Well I mean, is information still information when we can't find it and can't give it a meaning?

Data is the new platform, and social is the intelligence

Gavin Michael, global managing director for R&D of Accenture gave his vision (*) on data as the new platform and the importance of social to use it intelligent. He has consolidated the results of research into 8 trends:

• Data takes its rightful place as a platform.
• Analytics is driving a discontinuous evolution from business intelligence.
• Cloud computing will create more value higher up the stack.
• Architecture will shift from server-centric to service-centric.
• IT security will respond rapidly, progressively—and in proportion.
• Data privacy will adopt a risk-based approach.
• Social platforms will emerge as a new source of business intelligence.
• User experience is what matters.

People are key

A more important factor of knowledge in the future of productivity is being able to keep finding information, help people in organizations to find and use the information meaningful.

(**)People are not unique in their exploitation, however we can reason and understand things. And even if we don’t understand, we know that there are others that do and if the need arises, we can study their understanding and learn from them.

The abstract thought isn’t inventiveness. Man didn’t invent fire; he witnessed it through some natural occurrence. Just as he noticed a round rock was easier to roll than a square one. The abstract was in seeing how both of these could be used to advantage.

People are key, they have certain passion, experience, expertise, the abillity to see and understand the use. Systems that can capture this people profile and combine these components with the structured data and the more unstructured and workflow driven and captured information from document intensive processes, will support future productivity of organizations.

Social, people focused information can put to use, ranked, commented, recommended and found through peers, in a social network of people working together apart. Fluid organization supporting changing demands and processes.

(*) Blog Cortney Fielding - Data is the new platform and social the intelligence
(**) Blog John Souter - The people Business



Published in this Future of Productivity series:
Document Dynamics
Documents
The Cloud demands smarter devices, and cheap too!
Aan Het Werk! Aan de slag met Het Nieuwe Werken in het MKB
Office 365 walkthrough and more
Changing the game with Office 365
The Sweetspot of eReaders and Business Solutions
Small and Medium Business
Roadmap announcements BPOS

Future of Productivity: Five questions #HOC #HOC11

Thursday June 16th I will seek for the answer on five questions during the HOC (Het Outsourcings Congres). A congres focussed on outsourcing with the theme The Cloud. I will guide the discussion on the subject: Documents to The Cloud: don't forget unstructured data. Five questions will be leading.

Five questions

1. What is a Document?
Paper as a information carier has changed. The Concept Document is chaning rappidly too. Wikipedia describes the document as: a work of non-fiction writing intended to store and communicate information, thus acting as a recording. Strinking in the following is the way a document is described in classic types like a thesis, a whitepaper, a brief or an invoice. Nowhere a describtion of the claim: ...and communication information.

2. Do Documents support collaboration and interaction?
...intended to store and communicate information. I agree on the idea that a document is intended to communicate information. I have a hard time to believe that a document is meant to store information and thus degrade the information to data. Storing data or documents is not a goal. The goal is finding usefull information and get informed.

3. Can The Cloud support productivity?
Doing your job in a knowledge intensive environment demands information, which has to be processed. Only than it could become knowledge. Interpretation of information, the processing and use to complete a task. A lot of data is very structured, much more is stored in an unstructured manner. Previously, borders as time and place were important limiting factors in the accessibility of information. The Cloud supports the removal of these restrictions and has the potential to improve productivity.

4. Will The Cloud structure our non structured data?
Finding relevant information is essential when it comes to productivity. Compartmentalized bins do not contribute to obtaining an overview. The world of structured data has not been proven as a route to the paperless office, also adding document repositories brought but limited lighting. Cooperation and interaction between people ask apparently an other kind of information. More natural you see for example this support from a platform which is developed towards a social (peer) network support. It is not or - or but the added value of and structured, and unstructured ... and the man himself. The factor that YOU and I together. WE are the power of the community enabling the better finding of valuable information.


5. Does The Cloud change information?
Information needs, giving a value judgement, the form in which this information is distributed and found is changing. The Cloud, social media hypes, the power of the community finds its basis in the sharing of information and searching and setting up collaborations. Knowledge is power includes the fear of a data security model, sharing is power, however, the belief that data only gets its value when we turn it into knowledge together.

Future of Productivity: Document dynamics

[wikipedia]

A document is a work of writing intended to store and communicate information, thus acting as a recording -


The term document may be applied to any discrete representation of meaning, but usually it refers to something physical like one or more printed pages, or to a "virtual" document in electronic (digital) format.

What is a document?

A document is a piece of paper!

Not that long ago we thought of a document as a piece of paper with text. If the text was very long and well structured we called it a book.

Still paper is not gone, but the way it is used is. It no longer has the purpose as a 'longterm' carrier of information, but as a mean to structure or support a discussion or a meeting. After the meeting is over, the paper has lost it's purpose and will be disposed.

The document however is still alive and kicking! Well... Depends on the way you look at a document

Dynamics of documents

A document is a living object!

I remember when my father was working in the office (we lived upstairs) and I went down there they had one IBM typewriter. It was an electronic one. It supported the assistant - Nelly was her name - to type a lot faster and even correct a piece of text when in error.
My father had no typewriter, but they had a machine to dictate a letter. So when a letter was dictated to Nelly, she had a few degrees of freedom only - when to jump to another line. That was about it. Rather static.

[wikipedia]

A living document or dynamic document is a document which may be continually edited and updated by either a limited or unrestricted group. A simple example of a living document is an article in Wikipedia, in contrast to "dead" or "static" documents, such as an article in a single edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
A living document may or may not have a framework for updates, changes, or adjustments. This type of document without proper context can change away from its original purpose through multiple uncontrolled edits.

This is different than an evergreen document that is written in a way that is relevant to a specific audience over a long period of time. This relevance comes from a universal acceptance or application of document contents. However, a living document may evolve through updates, be expanded as needed, and serve a different purpose over time.

Dynamics of Information

A document is information!

The dynamics of Information change dramatically when produced in a collaborative environment. Think of it the last time you wrote a report, did write it by your own, with a cowriter, did someone comment or correct it? That is just a start...

Did you publish a blog, anyone reacted, commented, ranked the statements? What was the last time you saw a webpage with HTML text on it? No?

NO! You only combined information didn't you? Picked a widget and mashed it with twitter feed, provided insight by using the geotags and publishing the data on a map, commented on it your self and published a link to the source which is provided by... well someone else you trust as a subject matter expert.

...and if you did not yet, you will consume and combine...

Documents supporting and fueling collaboration

A document is a platform!

Looking at these kind of dynamic documents it is designed to change with the need of information - real time. It attracts people to join and to share thoughts. A platform that helps to establish a community and supports interactivity and exchange of information can be very inspiring.

It is about people it is about YOU. What do YOU need and what can YOU give in return? So do I care about YOU? What does that mean to ME. How can I find YOU and what do WE know? HOW WE know?

Well we know because our peers value our thoughts, our comments, talk to you and me a lot and shared knowledge in projects with us.

Therefore information in our documents, our blogs and wiki's, can be of value to me and you. Lets work together!

Document knowledge

A document is just data!

Information, if captured in a document is still data if you have no clue how to value it. A document in all forms can be very dynamic and this value the information can provide is not only by consuming the information, but even more by adding information and interact with that information. Again, the data needs YOU. Then it can become knowledge and the document supports the interaction en exchange of information.

Can a document communicate?

A document is communication!

In classic communication we learned that we need roughly three essential ellements: sender - medium - receiver... So can a document be all of that? We looked at the document in several ways. The classic paper document is still a wonderfull and much appreciated medium. It is not the sender and it is not the receiver. It is kind of a dead object.
We also experienced a document conceptual as a platform where YOU and ME become WE, working together with worthwhile information, leveraging this information to knowledge. That is communication aint it?

What is a document?

So here we are, wondering what a document is. We know what it was, we can all experience that things are changing rapidly but can we even imagine what it will become.


Published in this Future of Productivity series:
Documents
The Cloud demands smarter devices, and cheap too!
Aan Het Werk! Aan de slag met Het Nieuwe Werken in het MKB
Office 365 walkthrough and more
Changing the game with Office 365
The Sweetspot of eReaders and Business Solutions
Small and Medium Business
Roadmap announcements BPOS

Future of productivity: Documents

The first generation Document Management Systems (DMS) looked at a document in a classic way. It was a piece of paper, most of the time it really had a physical representation, even when 'stored' in the DMS. We believe a DMS helps to find information much faster, but we do not trust it to store important documents - we store them in a cabinet.

Still a lot of people look at a document this way, but the purpose of a document is changing rapidly. Information is accessed, collected, collaborated with and distributed in a much more fluid way. The document as we know it is dead.

We had a lot of control on our data sources, we even called these knowledge systems. Knowledge was the holy grail to better support the organization and to help it develop knowledge and support more productive processes. We were convinced we could manage these systems. The only thing we know however is that their should be a LOT of information in the system, but that's how close we often get to knowledge.

The first generation DMS took of in a time that the first word processors and spreadsheets became common. We stored most of these on a disk and now the network helped it to share it in a filesystem. We got lost and still are looking for a way out.

Email was meant to help us getting those nicely produced word and excel documents to another person. At first it worked brilliantly! We didn't have to walk over (and talk) to our colleague down the hall. 'Having' email was a privilege. The manager had mail access. He did not use it though, the assistent did. But when everybody had access to mail and a personal location to store data we discovered some drawbacks.

It got worse. We started to use email. We still use it in a way it is not meant. We try to support discussion and collaboration, while it only was meant to support the digital distribution of a message, like a digital postmen. When was the last time you talked to your postmen?

Bouncing around email with attachments like pingpong balls in a washing machine is not a good way to support communication and collaboration or to capture information that could be used to develop knowledge. Email systems evolved and now mimic a conversation in a thread. That looks oké from your point of view, but has no value at all when it comes to a conversation whithin a team.

Email systems even helped us to mimic the old fashion letter. Nice templates, fonts, pictures, it's all there. The email system became a wordprocessor and we used it like one. So now we have another source for our documents, don't we.

Some of us tried to start working with a DMS system the way it was meant to be or maybe better it has evolved to support the need of communication and collaboration. The DMS is dead, long live the DMS.

These systems look at communication and collaboration from the YOU point of view. Who are YOU talking to, what information do YOU need to fullfill your tasks, has someone sended YOU a letter about it.
From that starting point information sources and communication historie is assembled. It is shown in streams, social distance in your network to help you find information or knowledge more easy. The document is no longer the central object or source of information. The document is looked at in a way more conceptual way.

Structured data is often a central organized source. Central organized data does not guarantee quality, accessibility or being information however. Besides that...

...we know that information is not only stored in -structured- data (20%) but also in a way more non structured way (the other 80),

we often have no clue how to capture the information from it.

Development of technology took us by surprise (AGAIN). Today we quit mail (#WQM) and start to send over small text messages again. MICROblogs 'invented' by Evan Williams. The 140 char can be posted on a platform called Twitter.

So WQM and started to twitter, reaching a lot more people with neat tiny messages in one time, or snowballing messages to a big community. The platform has developed though and now we are able to shorten our messages by services like bit.ly making the message richer. Next we are also able to use services so we can extend our tweet length, we can attach files, photo's, use internal twitter services like Yammer that lack the 140 char boundary and so on. Brilliant we can hide a compleet document behind 140 characters or less!


You get the picture.

The neat start has become the next uncontainable source, looking to it from an information management perspective that is.

And if you think it is the only new form or source... think again. To make it easy for you, think about YouTube, Flickr, FaceBook and think these services combined...

Oh by the way, these are all services provided to you for free from The Cloud.