Paper is a temporary state of information
Here's a scary thought: a survey by AIIM showed only 26% of mid-size businesses surveyed had ever heard of "enterprise content management." Only 47 % recognized the term "electronic document management." The big winner was "document imaging" which was recognized by 66%.
I'm a CMO, not a techie, but these stats are frightening -- even to someone like me.
This week, after keynoting Visioneer's reseller partner meeting in Cancun (more on that later) I sat down to listen to AIIM's John Mancini who shared good news and bad news about the ECM space. On the plus side, he said document management has finally found a home in many IT departments. On the downside, it's still the domain of big companies, and most small and mid-size businesses do not yet understand the value. That was seen as an opportunity for the 150 resellers in the room.
To do its part, AIIM changed its tagline from "AIIM: The ECM Organization," to "AIIM: Find, Control and Optimize Information." I can relate to that, coming off of Xerox's recent re-branding effort. We too had to change the way we project ourselves in the marketplace to reflect who we are and what we do today. I covered that in my keynote and also touched on the power of partnerships, color, sustainability and innovation as differentiators in today's increasingly commoditized world.
Murray Dennis, the visionary CEO of Visioneer and all around good guy, is on the same page. He and his team have transformed Visioneer from a small, consumer-oriented scanning company to a significant player in the business market. And, if the resellers at his meeting are any indication, he's on to something big. Visioneer likes to say "Paper is just a temporary state of information." Xerox supports that statement and we are proud to have Visioneer as a brand licensing partner for Xerox DocuMate scanners and as a technology partner for our higher-end solutions.
In the end, a couple of things were clear to me: Cancun is not a bad place to be in mid-February. And we all need to do more to engage the IT community and educate the market on the value of "enterprise content management" even if we don't call it that.
There's big prize for vendors, resellers and customers if we do it right.
Mike Mac Donald
President, Marketing Operations
Xerox Corporation