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My first post on this forum is to provide an introduction to Priscilla Emery and why I Dance in the Land of ERM.  I say dance because dancing has both discipline (ala ballroom, ballet, etc.) and artistry and I believe this industry needs both.  Creativity is an essential skill to successfully deploying ERM practices, processes and technology – a skill many people tend to forget when getting down to the grind of putting together retention plans and implementing the tools to support these efforts.

I am a consultant and the founder of ECM Scope (aka e-Nterprise Advisors).  The practice provides custom consulting and analysis services to Fortune 1000, government agencies and high technology companies.  Prior to establishing ECM Scope, I had positions with AIIM, Gartner / New Science Associates, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Connecticut (now Wellpoint), American Can Company / Primerica (now part of Citicorp), Combustion Engineering (now ABB), Blue Cross / Blue Shield of Virginia (now Anthem), Frito Lay, and Bell Telephone Laboratories.  In short, I’ve been around this industry for quite a while.

Most of these positions involved the introduction of new technologies into the fabric of the company and making sure they provided a reasonable return on investment for the effort made.  All of these efforts involved the management of change (both emotional and technological) and I continue to use these experiences to guide my consulting efforts for my present day clients.

Of late, I’ve been wrestling with the challenges of how to make the terminology and practices that we in the ECM and ERM world take for granted more easily understandable and employable to the general public.  How do we get to a place where others outside the industry understand what we are talking about without losing the discipline and essence of what really needs to get done?  People get iPads, Droids and even the Cloud but they don’t “get” ECM.

Secondarily, and as an adjunct to these thoughts, where does the SMB market fit in this space?  Too many smaller enterprises are foregoing the implementation of ERM practices and technology because it is too complex and too expensive – yet they still need it.  Is there a scaled down, price-point effective approach that can be used for this market segment?  I think there is and I’ve been doing some informal research on how to get there.  I hope to add my thoughts about these issues in future posts.

So I’m dancing in the land of ERM trying to provide my clients with a balance of discipline and creativity and still get their business objectives accomplished in a timely and cost-effective way.