Zia's Director of ECM Solutions, Kristen Harris, presented "Enterprise Integration" at the 2013 Zia Content Connected Summit. Here she discusses how to get the most out of your Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution by using it in more places across your organization. Presentation points include:
-Understanding the opportunity
-Approaches to driving and building integration
-Some real examples
-Scenario: Sales Team + Enterprise content
Video of this presentation can be found on our event website at www.ziasummit.com
2. • Understanding the opportunity
• Approaches to driving and building
integration
• Some real examples
• Scenario: Sales Team + Enterprise
content
Session Agenda
4. Unstructured Content Chaos
User adoption
of consumer-
focused
tablets for the
workplace is
'tyranny,' one
IT exec says
- Computerworld
We have spent
millions on
websites and
content storage
systems that
aren’t working.
- A fortune 500
Our team has minutes
or hours (at most!) to
find and leverage
knowledge to solve
problems, not days
or months.
- Telcom network provider
Content
classification
standards and
retention
management is a
corporate
problem.
- A fortune 500
We can’t find any appropriate
information on our shared
drives. We don’t trust the
security and we won’t use it.
- A frustrated employee
6. Integration Approaches
• Alfresco Share, Alfresco Workdesk, Office Workdesk
• Easy ECM:
• Opening up new ways of working directly with
content (WebDAV, CIFS, FTP, NFS)
• Mobile
• Email
• Direct Integration – a custom purpose
• Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) – a strategic option
• Connectors – packaged for specific scenario/purpose
7. A scenario: Alfresco for Salesforce
Connecting Salesforce with Alfresco
allows for richer content collaboration
at a lower overall cost.
Support sales with content and processes
from across the enterprise and outside the
organization – with less swivel chair.
Potentially save money by eliminating
duplication of content, storage costs, and
maintenance across separate repositories.
13. The details: Alfresco for Salesforce
• More details from Alfresco
http://www.alfresco.com/products/features/sales
http://www.alfresco.com/products/integrations/salesforce
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnSKrdmF0Dc&feature=youtu.be
• Available on Salesforce AppExchange
http://appexchange.salesforce.com (search for Alfresco)
• Download for no cost
• Sync up to 10GB of free storage
• Need more?
Add some additional services if your scenario is more
than the packaged connector provides
High level definition of what we mean by enterprise integration as it relates to ECM.How do you make more of your investment in ECM and in Alfresco – use it in more places with more purpose.Open up the content you have as a service, connect the tools your employees are using with the repository, push or simply expose the content from the repository to another place for use.And use the metadata, security, storage, retention models as standards across your organization.What are you trying to do with Alfresco?Heard from the presenters throughout today already -- streamline, connect, save money, leverage investment.Content creation, content Leverage, Content Connection -- where those people work.Stop the Swivel chair effect.That is Enterprise integration defined... bringing content to your people where they work.Make your content work for you --Make it relevant where and when you need itGovern and manage consistently throughout its lifecycleRetain or purge it to decrease your liability.Consistent and single sourced: compliance, version control, business process, security, records managementEnterprise Integration: it really depends on what the enterprise is trying to accomplishand it all starts with the process itself
Eightypercent of an organization’s data is unstructured (Gartner 2010)Gartner estimates that in 5 years, unstructured data will grow by 650% – this roughly equates to 50% year over year growth.By 2015, 60% of information workers will interact with content via mobile devices. (Gartner)EmailInvoices / AR / APIntelligent Document CaptureKnowledge base and IntranetMergers / Deals / other dataMobile AccessPortals, Case Management & MoreEnterprise ApplicationsERPCRMAccounting SystemsInformation ExplosionGain more value out of your investment -- what is your company's greatest asset ?Your people -- yes, but what do they create? Content, intelligence, knowledgefile sharing, syncing content, You have to unlock your content - move it out of the silos it is in, and make it useful as a Service --
How does the creation of content and a lack of strategy for it affect the organization?Loss of knowledgeSilos of intelligenceCosts for ITLack of standards for metadata and other discovery queuesRisks for liability – eDiscovery costs and exposureLack of standards and no enterprise classification or rentention policy across content “pockets”
What we have here is the non-connected enterprise, where a employees do their jobs in one silo – and oftentimes have to switch to another silo to do another part of their job.A guy in tech support – manages incoming tickets, but his knowledgebase to answer those tickets (with the most up to date articles and solutions to the problems) is in another system.So he swivel chairs over there….Then marketing comes in and adds some spin to the new product developed from the support ticket case – A patch or a whole new platform, and puts that content in the marketing database.Then sales comes in with their new, fancy swivel chair and says, hey, we could use that, and by the way, we don’t swivel, we just change the direction that we’re sitting in!And they then lock that same marketing and ticketing content into yet another silo.And the board is wondering why the enterprise is unconnected and inefficient.And everyone’s job is starting to look more like torture.That is Enterprise integration defined... bringing content to your people where they work.
ApproachesGeneric examples:Direct Integration: Example: Integrate specific piece of siebel CRM with alfresco – connect to the content using webscripts to show content inside the CRM in a frame.Not a solution driven by the enterprise, but more of a point-to-point focused solution. Alfresco is the backbone, but the users “live in CRM”.Custom – can adjust at both ends of the scenario – CRM and Alfresco. And you need to support it on both ends.ESB: Example: Integrate with publishing content from Alfresco to another end point – website or other.Need and will benefit from an abstraction layer between integration points. Leverage a structured ESB that is already in place. Something that will be used for more than one integration, and you may require other services that the ESB can support as services – transformation, normalization, messaging, etc.Work with another team in the enterprise might be more challenging, so asking them to use the ESB as a standard, is more strategic and they will have less concern about a custom point-to-point integration that they would need to support going forward.Connector: Example: We’ll talk more about one in the next few minutes, but a connector is a productized integration that jump starts the implementation of an integration.Usually tuned to support a specific scenario (and some of those may be just enough or may be able to be configured.)Pro/Cons of each
Why: If you don’t use/know salesforce, think of this as the concept of connecting content with applications where business processes are happeningIf you do know/have seen salesforce, follow along with the sales person’s interaction with their process and how alfresco fits in seamlessly
This is the opportunity view – the heart of SFDC for the sales person.Under opportunities, you will see content stored, in Alfresco, and associated with this opportunity.So how did that content get there?At the bottom of the panel there is a button to Add content.
Add many content types to the opportunity. Remember these types, as they are important for business process .This content is richer due to the content model in Alfresco.Support for important Salesforce CRM objects – Accounts, Opportunities, Contracts and Cases
Typical and standard document preview in Alfresco share – Note, this is now uploaded to the Alfresco Cloud instanceThere is great connection of the metadata fields from SFDC to Alfresco (Properties)At this point, there is secure access to the content, even for users who do NOT have SFDC accounts. ($$$)Keep all metadata associated with your content as it moves between Salesforce and Alfresco in the Cloud.Collaborate securely on sales content with people inside, or even outside, your organization, even if they are not a Salesforce user, without any hassle getting through the firewall.Save on storage costs by keeping your Salesforce content in Alfresco via secure integration. Maintain all your vital sales content on-premise and in-sync, with the Alfresco One unique Hybrid ECM solution.Full Document Management Support for Sales teams and their collaborators. Access to robust ECM capability, including upload of files, versioning, tagging, sharing, editing and deleting.
The content is social … The Chatter view of SFDC. This is an Opportunity – the heart of the CRM from the sales side.Notifications make sure everyone is in the loop immediately, with Chatter Integration alerts inform of changes and additions to content associated to specified opportunities.Unleash the power of your mobile workforce by granting access to content and workflows on your organization’s smartphones and tablets.
Improve efficiency by automating manual business processes, based on document type and opportunity data.Extend your content with business process automation that you can’t easily do in sfdc – such as automated workflow, and simple rules, set in the UIRemember you don’t need LEGAL to have accounts in SFDC to participate in the process, edit and approve content or even create/initiate content!