Innovation and Business Transformation need Metadata to Happen
In a recent CMSWiRe article by Boris Kraft, several examples of content management outcomes are proffered. What’s extraordinary about the examples is that none of them have anything to do with marketing, accounts payable or insurance (go-to uses cases in blogs and articles for some reason). It’s also cool that the examples have to do with people accessing content via mobile devices, away from the office. Read the article; it’s good and the use cases are pretty interesting.
Mobile devices, apps, platforms, and content-as-a-service are keys to innovation and business transformation. However, for them to work properly you need metadata and well-designed / understood repositories. This post is about the importance of metadata in making the magic described in the article happen. I’ll use a project I am working on to provide some context.
The client I am working with builds electricity transmission infrastructure and one of the projects on the go is to digitize their field reference guides. Their current process is to find the manuals/guides you need, print them out, put them in a binder, and hope you’ve got the right ones. If you don’t have the right information with you, it can be a really, really long drive to go and get it. Proceeding without it is not an option as the consequences could, literally, be fatal. Even if no incidents occur the organization could be penalized for all sorts of regulatory violations.
There are four broad categories of manuals/guides: 1 – Health & Safety; 2 – Environmental; 3- Maintain, Repair, & Replace; 4 – Engineering Standards. The documents are required reading by staff, contractors, and business partners at all of my client’s locations. The specific docs that one must read / use are determined by:
- Your role;
- Whether you’re an employee or not;
- Where you are / will be working;
- What specific task(s) you will be performing;
- What equipment you will be using;
- The weather and season;
- Environmental considerations.
Currently, the information that’s needed is stored in SAP, several SharePoint sites, a geomatics database, a health and safety tool, an engineering project management tool, and a couple of purpose built in-house applications. Getting the information requires searching the repositories you have access to, and asking others to search the repositories you don’t have access to. Oh, enterprise search is a foreign concept. There must be a better way …
Well, there is and that’s what I’m working on. We’re at the phase one part of the plan, which is a portal. I don’t like the portal approach because it’s cumbersome, it sits on SharePoint, it doesn’t provide access to all the required information, it’s not built for mobile field access, and it still requires too much effort of the user. But hey, that’s what was scoped and budgeted for in the first phase so that’s what they got.
Where this client, and any other organization with similar requirements, needs to be is at a place where the solution does the work for the user. If I’m about to jump into a helicopter to go and wash resistors (or whatever those white ceramic things are) on a 500kw line 150’ in the air, I should be able to pull the work order (using my mobile device) and have my phone or tablet updated with all the safety and procedure manuals I need. I should not have to access up to seven different repositories to print out documents that I hope are current and correct.
The truth is that the technology to automatically provide health & safety information to field workers exists. The problem is that organizations don’t understand the scope of the challenge, nor do they understand the potential long-term benefits. I’m not implying that there is some sort of magic button or potion that’ll make things happen; there isn’t. The key to making it happen is metadata. Without metadata nobody would find anything they need in a timely manner, leading to all sorts of negative consequences including increased costs, compliance violations, outages, and potential injury or death. With a properly defined and implemented metadata model the opposite is true. In addition to helping people find the information they’re looking for, metadata helps systems communicate with each other to pass information back and forth, execute workflows, and secure information.
Defining an organization’s metadata is not a trivial task, but it is certainly doable. It requires a team made up of IT, subject matter experts, end users, and information management specialists. Metadata should be defined with specific business outcomes in mind, but framed with good information governance practices. A good metadata model contains attributes that control the content (security, workflow, retention) as well as properties that describe the content.
In addition to defining and implementing a metadata model, organizations also need to figure out their content requirements. It’s all about understanding what information you have, where it’s located, how it’s described, and how you’re going to get it to where it’s needed. It’s also about understanding what information you’re missing and how you’re going to get it. For more of a detailed explanation take a look at the Principles of Holistic Information Governance (PHIGs).
The PHIGs aren’t about metadata; they’re about managing information for business outcomes. However, metadata is a big part of that. The key to metadata is to get detailed enough without getting bogged into analysis-paralysis. A government I worked with spent more than six years trying to develop an organization wide model. Big, big mistake. They should have focused on something more specific like a process, department, or content type.
With the trend of going mobile first or mobile only, metadata takes on an even greater importance. I’m convinced that the way forward is apps built on top of content-as-a-service platforms. In order for that path to lead to anything resembling success, the underlying content platforms need to have rock solid metadata to support them. If metadata and geolocation services can be used to tell you what to listen to, what to wear, what to eat, and what the weather’s going to be, there’s no reason they can’t be used to help you do your job and protect yourself. There’s no good reason why someone should have to search for manuals, guides, or procedures. There should be no more effort required than to submit a work order number (or other identifier) and show up at the work site. In fact, do it right and the order of the two actions doesn’t matter.
Metadata a la Box
On August 6, 2015 Box announced the release of their Metadata Template Editor (MTE). I’ve been looking forward to the release for a couple of reasons: 1 – having to rely on Box to set up metadata templates is inefficient, to say the least, and; 2 – the announcement is, in my opinion, another step on Box’s journey to being an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) platform. I also think that MTE will help Box stand out from others in the space that don’t offer strong metadata capabilities.
I played around with the metadata template editor au naturel. That means I didn’t have any integrations, interfaces, or anything else of that nature. I tried it on my Box Enterprise instance, completely standalone. Also bear in mind that this is Box’s first cut at the feature; I fully expect that it will mature and improve over time.
Before I get into my thoughts and observations about the metadata template editor, I’m going to take a few words to explain metadata a bit.
Metadata is data that tells us about stuff. It can also tell us what to do with stuff. When I talk to clients about metadata I break metadata into two broad categories: 1) Descriptive – tells about the object, and; 2) Administrative – tells what can / must be done with the object. Sometimes a metadata property can be both descriptive and administrative. E.g.: “Vendor Invoice” can tell us what the object is, as well as provide guidance on how we’re supposed to manage it.
In addition to describing an object, metadata also helps to determine what security settings to apply, what workflows to use, and what retention rules to apply. It also, and this is really important, helps to find the objects we’re looking for.
Without further ado here’s my initial impressions of Box’s Metadata Template Editor.
Creating Templates
Very, very easy to do. Major caveat is that you better model out your metadata before creating any templates. You’ll also want to not repeat what Box already provides in the file metadata. You’ll have to have an account type (biz or enterprise, I think) that can enable metadata templates, and admin access.
Applying Metadata
It’s easy if you’re doing only a few files at a time and they’re all in the same folder. You’ve got to go to the previewer and add the templates from there. It will be a pain if you have to do more than a handful of files at any one time.
What I’d like to see in subsequent releases:
- Inheritance – files should inherit properties from the folder they’re in, as well as properties unique to the individual files.
- Intelligence – being able to drive security and retention properties based on selected metadata values. Being able to trigger / route workflow actions would be cool, too.
- Expand the list of data types – Currency would be an awesome addition.
- Dependent choice lists – If I select Canada as country, province selection should be limited to Canadian provinces.
- Apply metadata upon ingestion – best practice for metadata is that you apply it at the point of capturing the content.
- Master template – have a master template that I can then modify as needed, to apply to content.
- Automation – adding metadata to content is purely manual at this point. I’d love to see some sort of automation enabled to make it easier for the users, and to enforce some consistency.
- Security – it would be good if security could be set to allow users to see the content and metadata, metadata only, or nothing. This is important in some scenarios.
- Retention – when deleting / destroying content via retention rules, it would be useful to be able to select whether or not to keep some or all of the metadata associated with the content. There are a number of scenarios where this is useful, e.g.: analytics and compliance.
- Mobile – it would be really handy if the mobile apps supported managing and searching on metadata.
Search
Search is okay. The addition of metadata templates to the standard Box search box is welcome. However, it’d be cool if I didn’t have to do a standard search first (i.e.: give me a dedicated metadata search UI) and if I could apply multiple templates (I’ll very briefly explain why this is important later). As it is, searching on metadata is really about applying filters and “searching within” after you’ve run a general search.
Other Considerations
I think that the MTE release opens up opportunities on the services front. Box Consulting and Box partners ought to be engaged in modeling and implementing metadata for clients. The truth is that too many organizations have neither the skills nor the time to do a decent job when it comes to defining metadata models, and then implementing them.
Box’s approach to metadata can seem a little weird to those of us who are used to ECM platforms from OpenText, Oracle, and other vendors. However, this is not a bad thing. In fact, after playing with Box’s version for a bit I can see how I’d go about modeling and implementing it for a client. The key is to chunk up the metadata into multiple templates for various purposes. Start with tombstone type metadata that applies to all content types, then get more specific.
Box’s MTE is a v1.x release and it shows. However, it’s obvious that the real value will come from the metadata API and integration. Metadata is such a vital part of managing information and extracting maximum value from it and I’m pleased that Box is taking it seriously. That said, I’m looking forward to seeing what improvements they make to MTE over the coming months. For now the biggest improvements I’d like to see are in assisting the user to apply metadata and having metadata search available on the mobile (iOS) app.
For a little more help / guidance on using Box’s metadata template editor, check out this post from cloudfind.
A Day with Box – Quick Thoughts
In late February of 2015 I attended Box’s analyst day in London. As many of you already know, I am quite a fan of Box and I see them as a contender to eventually displace legacy ECM vendors. What I heard and saw in London from the various speakers and panellists (Box and customers) just makes me surer that they are on the right track.
An example that really stands out to me, because I’m a parent that’s sent off a couple of unaccompanied minors, is that of a transportation provider that’s using Box to handle authorizations for getting kids on their conveyance and picked up at the destination. A couple of tweaks could be made to make the process a little smoother for all stakeholders, and really put something innovative out there. What struck me is the absolute simplicity and elegance of the whole thing and that it didn’t take weeks of requirements, design, development, testing, and deployment. A guy with a phone and Box credentials had an idea to make things a little easier and it was done. How friggin’ cool is that?
It’s awesome, but the information governance geek in me cringes a bit. Yes, I know Box comes with all sorts of tracking, auditing, and reporting capabilities, but they’re not enough. If I’m going to put Box or any other platform in front of my clients as a viable option, and I have, I need to be certain that the governance and compliance requirements can be fulfilled. And this is where Box currently has a bit of a disadvantage.
People like Box because it’s slick and easy to use. However, when you start adding in things such as regulatory compliance, metadata, records management, workflow, and eDiscovery, you need to add more rigour to how the platform is deployed and used. When you add rigour you remove flexibility and, more often than not, positive user experience. Things like metadata, Information Architecture, and repository design become extremely important. The usual result is that users lose flexibility, have added tasks, and generally have a poor experience in doing their jobs with the platform. The trick for Box will be in making sure the governance pieces get taken care of without sacrificing the experience that users have gotten used to. I think they’re on the right path.
Between Box for Industries, a burgeoning services organization, and the recently announced ACE (App Configuration for Enterprise) Standard, Box is ticking a lot of boxes (Oh jeez, pardon the pun). Of those three things, the least exciting to me is Box for Industries; everyone’s doing it and Box has to in order to compete. It’s important, just not overly exciting. I think the services and app aspects have the potential to be exciting.
I love the idea of apps that do just one thing and do it really well. I love the idea that an app can create a “tunnel” from my device to a managed repository somewhere and that I don’t have to worry about anything other than getting my job done. Whether it’s the end user organization or a development shop, ACE ought to simplify the job of building process and task specific apps that sit nicely on top of Box and maintain that slick experience we’ve grown accustomed to.
I’m excited about the services aspect because I am a services guy. In the Box context services are going to be critical on a number of fronts. First, planning and setting up a managed content repository is a basic task and is not easy or trivial. More than one ECM (Enterprise Content Management) deployment has failed right out of the gate because someone got the basics wrong, for whatever reason. By making services available Box takes a portion of the burden off the end user organization.
Services, if leveraged properly, can serve another couple of critical purposes to Box. An effective services organization can be a boon to product development. By bringing back requirements, complaints, and other intelligence from the field consultants are instrumental in informing product development and strategy of what works, what doesn’t, and what’s missing. Additionally, and this is pure speculation for now, I think an effective services organization can play a part in determining what apps are built, how they’re built, and who builds them (kind of a nice thought in light of the ACE announcement).
While I love the fact that Box is growing its services organization, I am curious to see how they’re going to sell it and price it to clients. Are they going to do what so many vendors, including a couple I’ve worked for, do? I sincerely hope not. In my utopian view, services are there to make sure the customer and the platform succeed and grow. Is Box going to use services as part of a one-and-done approach or are they going to foster partnerships / trusted advisor relationships. The chats I had in London lead me to conclude the latter.
One of the things that I’ve noticed over the years is that vendor services organisations are generally composed of consultants that are really, really good with the technology. What’s missing is consultants that know business and managing information. I hope that Box does not make this mistake.
Odds and Sods
While I was in London had breakfast with the CEO / Founder of cloudfind. Cloudfind is a service that looks at your cloud stored content (Dropbox, Google Drive, Salesforce, Box) and creates tags for it. I tried it out and it’s pretty good, but it’s too early for it to be very useful to me. That said, I got some insight into what the roadmap for cloudfind is and it’s pretty cool. Based on my conversation with the CEO / Founder I can envision the day where cloudfind could be used to help in eDiscovery, taxonomy design, and repository design. I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with in the future.
I’ve never liked Box being referred to as Enterprise File Sync and Share (EFSS) or Enterprise Content Collaboration (ECC). So what should it be called? I’m of the opinion that Box fits into some slots in the Information Governance (IG) market. I mentioned this to one of the executives in London and she wasn’t thrilled; not because I’m wrong but because IG just isn’t sexy. As far as I’m concerned there’s something tremendously sexy about a platform that appeals to the users, satisfies IT, and can grow into satisfying the regulators.
BoxWorks2014 – Quick Thoughts
I attended BoxWorks2014 in San Francisco, from September 2nd to 4th. It was fun. It was great to reconnect with some folks I hadn’t seen in a while, and to meet some people face-to-face for the first time. This paragraph feels like one of those “what I did during summer vacation” essays.
Before I get too deep down any rabbit hole … this is quite possibly my favourite thing that I saw at the conference last week …
Two Guys and a Messenger Bag
As I’m wandering around the floor late Wednesday afternoon I got accosted by some guy who overheard me say I am an analyst and consultant. To be honest, I though he and his partner were just two guys and a messenger bag waiting for happy hour. It turns out that they weren’t. They were the founders/creators/geniussesses behind Collected. What’s Collected? It’s this cool little service that hooks into your existing content (Word and PPT for now) and throws up snippets of stuff based on what you’re currently writing. The premise is that it will save you time when you’re creating content because you’ll be able to reference and reuse on the fly. If it works in the real world like it did at the show, it’s gonna be pretty cool. I can definitely see the applicability in a few things I am currently working on. Anyways, check it out.
It’s Inevitable
One of the things that struck me as I wandered around the trade show area was the number of vendors competing against each other. There were multiple variations of security, analytics, collaboration and a couple other functions present. So what? Well, there’s a fairly major “what”.
As Box grows and more enterprises adopt it, there is going to be consolidation. Enterprises are going to want assurances that partner apps work with Box. They’re going to want assurances that when Box changes, anything attached to it changes with it. In short, they’re going to want a Box “stack”. Whether that stack is based on an industry (see the Box for Industries announcement) or on a function (see the Box Workflow announcement) enterprises are going to want assurances that their investment is not going to be jeopardized by changes to the core pillar. If moving to the cloud were just some fantasy this wouldn’t be an issue. However, the viability of cloud and SaaS is real. More and more organizations are heading there; maybe not going all in, but enough to be doing more than just testing the waters. There are some major organizations putting big chunks of key processes into the cloud and relying on Box and other services.
I can envision the day that Box finds itself in the same position as Microsoft vis-à-vis their partner ecosystem. As much as this will be a good thing in terms of creativity, innovation, and choice, there is going to be the inevitable requirement to “certify” partner add-ons. We can talk about innovation, cloud, disruption, etc. all we want, but the reality is that enterprise CIO’s and CTO’s want assurances that the tools they’ve chosen will work. At some point Box is going to find itself having to figure out which of its app partners they’re going to be tight with, and which they won’t. As someone who makes technology decisions for your organization do you want to sort through the haystack that is currently available, or would you rather choose from a “best of” selection?
The trick for Box is going to be in selecting the lucky few app / add-on developers that will eventually get certified. It’s going to be like a Bay Area / Silly Cone Valley edition of The Bachelor. I suspect Box may be aided in this by some of their larger enterprise customers (playing the role of meddling, future mother-in-law).
The trick for IT shops is in turning into, or ramping up, app stores. IT shops can, if they really, really need to, start developing apps to work with Box. My advice, however, is that they forget about it and curate.
Workflow WTF?
You should probably read this before tearing a strip off me …
Unsurprisingly one of Box’s announcements last week was that there will be workflow. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!?!?!?
Yes, we all know that content without workflow is a shared drive and incessant emails. That said, I would have much rather seen Box partner with someone like K2 to provide workflow. Now, I am thinking about workflow beyond simple check-in/check-out and content approval. I’m thinking about workflow that makes a significant difference in how business runs. In order for that to happen, businesses are pulling in content and people from multiple departments and repositories. The reality is that enterprises support and use multiple content repositories, some in the cloud and some on premises. In order for Box Workflow to succeed, either the content gets consolidated into the Box repository, or Box develops full blown BPM (please don’t).
Lastly, for now, workflow is really, really hard to implement in way that truly makes things easier for the users. In order for workflow to succeed, it must impose a certain amount of rigour, discipline, and rigidity. Metadata needs to be rock-solid and applied consistently – something users really aren’t very good at.
I’m really looking forward to trying out the workflow beta once it’s released, and to seeing how workflow matures.
Odds n Ends
- Box announced Retention Management – Will legal hold processing be supported? How tightly will retention policies and classification be coupled? How much work will be involved for companies that have hybrid environments? Can Box RM grow to become the central policy manager?
- Box for industries – which specific processes and use cases will be supported?
- Will there come a time when Box succumbs to the inevitable and, in addition to being what it is today, makes a play for being the view into on premises repositories as well? I.e.: will there come a time when I can use Box to view all my content, regardless of where it is?
- Why oh why does Box’s Windows 8.1 app suck so bad when the iOS version is so good?
- There wasn’t nearly as much Kool Aid at Aaron Levie’s keynote as I expected.
What’s New is Old, or Legacy 2.0 (thanks John Mancini)
Sometime in the future we’ll be referring to Box as “legacy”, until then I’m enjoying using Box and seeing what develops. Once we get to the point where Box is deemed a legacy tool, I can’t wait to see what we’ll have available to us.
Final Thoughts
I don’t often get excited about tools / software, but when I do I get really excited. This year I’ve gotten excited about two things (I think that’s my 5-year quota).
I’m excited about Box on a couple of levels:
- As a user I love how easy it is for me to manage stuff and get my work done, including collaborating with partners (I have an enterprise account, BTW);
- As someone that’s interested in information management and governance, I’m excited to see Box growing and maturing into what could, in time, be a viable alternative to the current incumbents in the ECM space.
The other thing I’m excited about is Jostle; they say they’re an intranet, but they are so much more.
