Let’s face it, most enterprise systems, the systems that employees have to use EVERY DAY to do their job, are painful interfaces to use. They are barely usable, let alone elegant.

Why is that?

And more importantly, what can be done to FIX this seemingly inevitable problem?

Is “elegance” to high a bar to ask that our systems, software, processes, products and services measure up to?

What is Elegance?

What makes a design elegant, and what can we borrow from design across a variety of industries, from entertainment to mobile devices, from manufacturing to ongoing learning, to bring elegance into our own companies?

The podcast interview today (below) features Matthew May (@matthewemay) author of the brand new book “In Pursuit of Elegance” (more information on the book at InPursuitOfElegance.com), as well as author of the critically acclaimed book “The Elegant Solution” published in 2006, and which I had a tremendously enjoyable time interviewing him about in early 2007.

The discussion is hosted by Dan Keldsen (@dankeldsen), Co-founder and Principal of Information Architected, and discusses the four primary components of elegance, as brought forth in Matthew’s most recent book.

Do You Have Stories of Elegance in the Enterprise?

If you have examples of elegance within your business, whether the elegance is found in the products you sell, the systems you use internally, or any other application of elegance… I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU, so please feel free to contribute your comments, concerns and questions, and together, we can work to make elegant solutions far more common than they typically are.

Is your Information Architected for Innovation? for Sustainable business? for Elegance?

Listen now!

Listen to the Interview: IAM Talking: Sustainably Elegant

Is your Information Architected for Elegance?

Contact us at 
617-933-9655 to discuss how you can reap the benefits of an architecture and design approach that will enable you to maximize the value of your content, information and knowledge without pursuing a painful and expensive re-architecting of your systems.

More details on our practices related to Elegance and Innovation can be found at:

• Information Architected for Innovation Management
  

ECM service providers are always at the ready to ride the coattails of the latest business trend. Do you recall the rush to Knowledge Management circa 1998? Suddenly every ECM vendor was a KM solution provider. For some it was a good move. For others not so much. Perhaps even more important was the damage it did to the reputation of KM overall, a blow that the KM industry almost didn’t recover from.

Well the same thing is beginning to happen with the green movement. Going green is a global focus, from the home to the office. Its good for the economy and good for the ecology. So of course, the ECM industry is busy positioning itself on the green band wagon (see earlier posts). Not a bad idea. It has legitimacy. But will it be leveraged responsibly?

Recently the State of Massachusetts, where I live, announced two changes to its Department of Motor Vehicles, aimed at going green and cutting the state budget. Good for you, and thank you Governor Patrick, was my initial reaction. But as I listened to the details of these program changes my opinion began to somewhat change.

First, motor vehicle registrations will no longer be printed on card stock. In the future State of MA registrations will be printed on less costly paper. OK, not a bad idea – but does it fall short? Ill come back to that. But before I do, the second change.

Currently, we licensed drivers in the state receive a notice in the mail (post mail that is) when our drivers license needs to be renewed. Well, in the interest of going green and saving money, the state has eliminated the service. As a result, the state will greatly reduce its consumption of paper (the green angle), and additionally save significant costs associated with the print production and mailing process. Well as a politically correct citizen of the state I say great. But wait, at what cost? We citizens are losing a much relied upon service. While the benefits achieved are commendable, the lose of service to the citizen is most unfortunate. More importantly, the lose is not necessary.

What the state is doing is a classic case of not looking at a business process holistically, failing to push the innovative process, and failing to leverage ECM technology – technology they already have. The same technology/application used to produce the paper notifications, could be tweaked to send an online notification, with a direct link to the state’s website where you can renew online no less. I understand that this would require that the state maintain a database of e-mail addresses of its citizens, but I for one would be happy to assist in this (i.e. fill out an online form, or provide my e-mail address the next time I interact with the state). The addition of a single database field (e-mail address) to existing databases is not a big issue. The end result – cost saving, a greener government, and virtually no lose of service to the citizen – one might argue an increased level of service. Everyone wins.

The state is not challenging process owners or IT enough. They are willing to make changes that show benefit at one level, without pushing harder to see if the benefits can be achieved with no lose of service to the citizen. They are not thinking strategically. Ah – there is the strategy word again. I have blogged about the evils of technology deployment without adequate strategy development before. Well, in this case, maybe this isn’t the issue. I have heard rumors (I repeat I believe it is only a rumor), that the state did think strategically. By not providing notifications, not only are they going green and saving money, rumor has it they are also banking on increasing revenue. Without reminders, there is the potential that a greater percentage of licensed drivers will forget when they need to renew their license, which will lead to an increase in penalties – i.e. increased fees. Now again, I state this is only a rumor, and I hope as a citizen that this is a case of lack of strategy versus a deviant strategy.

Now back to the car registrations. Why stop with the move from card stock to cheaper paper stock? Couldn’t registrations be maintained online, accessible via a barcode on the registration stickers we place on our license plates? When you are pulled over by the Boston Police today (don’t ask me how I know), they can review the status of your license online. Why not do the same with registration?

The bottom line of this rant is this – ECM holds great potential in assisting business and government in going green and cost reduction. But to maximize the return on investment, you need to think holistically, strategically and innovatively. Stopping at the first good idea you have can easily leave much opportunity on the table.