Momentum 2010 Recap – Virtual Review – Current Priorities for IIG

While TSG didn’t attend Momentum in Lisbon this year, we did try the new “Virtual Momentum” offered to remote workers.  While the interface was sometimes slightly glitchy during normal business hours (viewing over the weekend worked best), the ability to see presentations recorded and synched to slides did work.  For the viewing of Rick Devenuti’s keynote, we watched with a long-term (11 years) Documentum client.  The post below includes the client’s thoughts was well as TSG’s.

Lots of new faces

As mentioned in other blogs and during his kickoff keynote, Mark Lewis is moving back to EMC handing over Chief Operation Officer duties of the Information Intelligence Group (Documentum) to Rick Devenuti (Microsoft Veteran).  Jeetu Patel (formerly with Doculabs) is now Chief Information Officer and Fred Monjazeb (formerly with IBM) is in charge of Sales along with many other new, from outside, or promoted from within faces.  For this post, we will focus on a Rick Devenuti’s afternoon keynote given the focus on priorities and our thoughts on the overall messages/roadmap.

Rick Devenuti – Chief Operation Officer – Current Priorities for the Information Intelligence Group

Rick began his key note with a good overview focused on customer satisfaction, quality and innovation.  While he didn’t present the results during the presentation, it would be interesting to see how IIG/Documentum is doing in customer survey’s in regards to “Would you recommend IIG Products?” – and the calculation of a Net Promoter Score.

In regards to specific feedback from the customer survey, Rick brought up four specific points that customers are requesting.

1)      A Deeper Relationship – customers would like to move from sales management to account management and longer term relationships.  Rick mentioned Fred Monjazeb’s change in organization and compensation for the sales force coming in 2011.

2)      More Business Value – while EMC is a platform company, customers want IIG to bring solutions.  Rick specifically mentioned a renewed partner focus for IIG.

3)      Reduce Complexity – Rick mentioned a change in licensing and pricing.  Look for an upcoming post for additional detail.

4)      Quality – a performance lab, quality group and other quality measures around the 6.6 release.

The client was somewhat skeptical in regards to the Account Management goal.  They thought changing the DNA of the existing sales force (particularly their sales rep) would be challenging.

Rick moved on to present three major priorities

1)      Information Management and SharePoint

2)      Case Management with Documentum xCP

3)      Information Management in the Cloud

Each one of these points will be discussed in more detail.

Information Management and SharePoint

We (TSG) were very impressed and agree with Rick’s take on SharePoint.  The client agreed that this is the “#1 thing Documentum users are asking”.  Encouraging points included:

• Customers are asking that, since SharePoint is in the Enterprise Content space, what are you (Documentum) going to do?  We (TSG) get his all the time – great to see that Documentum is focused on it as well.
• SharePoint as the “Lotus Notes of our generation” – good point against SharePoint in regards to runaway sites (he mentioned that 25% of SharePoint sites are abandoned).
• SharePoint as a front end and Documentum for retention or all the way to records management.  This is exactly what our clients are saying more and more (particularly in regulated industries).
• Rick clearly stated that Documentum is “in the ECM game with no intention of giving that space up to Microsoft or any other competitor.  “  Rick specifically focused on questions in regards to the marketing focus on xCP/Case Management and is Documentum “giving” ECM to SharePoint.
• Choice Computing – probably the best point was Rick’s point about how, while the PC is the default means to get at information today, in the future all the other devices (phone, iPad, car?…) would dominate.  Microsoft, given their Windows “DNA” will have a hard time adjusting to the other platforms.

Overall – Rick as an 19 year Microsoft veteran is the perfect point-man to really focus on SharePoint and take Documentum’s offerings to the next step.  Look for more in later posts as we got a sneak peak recently at the next MyDocumentum product for SharePoint but will include that in a separate post.

The client was somewhat skeptical again in regards to Choice Computing – they haven’t seen much from Documentum in regards to applications running on anything other than a PC or even support for different browsers.  We (TSG) pushed for some patience on this point as Rick and others have inherited much of the Documentum stack in a down economy so expectations of newer interfaces should be tempered.

Case Management with Documentum xCP

“Documentum xCP is the combination of structured and unstructured process, information and interactions to help make optimal business decisions.”

As we mentioned in our EMC World 2010 Recap, IIG continues to be focused on Case Management.  We were impressed with Rick’s vision that Case Management is not Collaboration where we (TSG) also like to put SharePoint.  Rick also mentioned that Case Management is not transactional, were he placed SAP and Oracle.

There wasn’t much new in regards to xCP.  We will talk during the review of other presentations but, typical with xCP, most of Rick’s presentation was to define Case Management and how xCP is the “new standard” for Case Management.  Examples were Account Management and Claims Processing.

Information Management and the Cloud

Rick concluded with a brief discussion about the cloud.  Impressively, Rick quoted that client discussions are really just discussion right now.  While release of xPlore and a continued focus on VMWare will help IIG with cloud concepts, clients are really just interested in the discussion and IIG is looking toward customers to help expand their cloud vision and alignment of products.

Rick quoted a leadship council for this purpose that included Fidelity, Eurobank EFG, Disney, The Hartford, Boeing, ESPN, Warton and JPMorganChase.  Clients should look for an upcoming white paper.

Overall Thoughts from TSG

Would have to say Rick’s keynote was a solid “B”.  Kicking off with a focus on client feedback in regards to quality, innovation and satisfaction was the right focus given our view of a somewhat recently disgruntled client base for IIG.   Also, the focus on SharePoint is dead on with what our clients are asking.  While not many of our clients are really asking about either Case Management or the cloud, we will give Rick the benefit of the doubt in regards to the discussions on Case Management/xCP as well as the cloud since he has inherited these priorities.

Key Challenges for Rick from our perspective would be:

• Account Management versus Sales Management – out client’s point was mentioned above but our joint experience with IIG Sales is that it is focused on sales commission, not customer satisfaction.  The client’s quote was “we can’t get our sales rep to return calls unless we are buying something”.
• Licensing – Looking forward to learning more about the new pricing model and how it will be rolled out to existing clients.  Rumors are that it is focused more on the server – the correct pricing model will be important to realize both Rick’s Choice Computing point as well as focus on the cloud.
• Innovation – Over the last two years, we haven’t seen true innovation from IIG in regards to products.  Most products (xPlore, TaskSpace, CenterStage, MyDocumentum) are evolutions of existing products versus truly innovative new products that reshape a customer’s vision and paradigm.  As pointed out in other presentations, partners are innovating – it will be interesting to see how IIG either productizes these innovations or leverages partners more efficiently.