Brilliant Leap

Documentum/ EMC Proven Professional Certification- Does It Matter?

With the economy faltering and the supply of Documentum professionals at an all-time high, people are calling and asking whether becoming certified would give them an edge.

My answer is "no"; I have never had a client list it as a requirement or even as a "nice to have", and because I work on filling more than 100 Documentum-related jobs a year, I think I have a pretty good view of the marketplace. But who knows, your experience may be different.

Selling ECM in a Recession

I got a call from an ECM Solutions business-driver the other day; he asked me to advise him as to whether he should take a job building an ECM Practice or not. "Why wouldn't you?" was the first question I asked. I had watched him build two large ECM practices in the past dozen years (one during the .com crash), there was no doubt he could both architect great solutions and outsell most of the competition. "Because there doesn't seem to be much software being sold," he said. And when I asked him what "not much" meant, he answered in single digits.

Now, of course, I do know that there is a recession and that companies have substantially less money to spend; but, in the sales school I come from, an economic downturn that means that I have a little more time to understand my customers' business and their needs and to discover how the products and/or services I sell can produce a win for them.

Those of you who have been selling in the Document Management space for the last dozen years should be familiar with the sales and marketing strategies of Geoffrey Moore. His book Crossing the Chasm was required reading at many of the Documentum partner firms at which I placed executives from 1993-2000. Maybe it's time to look to him again for a strategy.

Not quite a freebie, but it's pretty close: Join AIIM- you name your price! (offer expires 6 PM EST March 17)

For any of you who might be unfamiliar with AIIM, it's the membership association for individuals who work with Enterprise Content Management (ECM) technologies and for the organizations that create them. You might say, it's a vendor-agnostic, all inclusive hub for the ECM community. (What's up with the AIIM acronym, you might be wondering? The association was formed before the web and technologies like Documentum became mainstream; A=Association, I=Image, I=Image, M=Management). AIIM has since re-branded itself as the Association for Enterprise Content Management.)

In any case, the folks at AIIM are responding to the recession in a creative way; instead of asking you to scrape up the $125.00 membership fee, they're inviting you to name your own price when you join.

If you're wondering how belonging to AIIM might benefit you; here are some things to consider;

Hands Up, Baby, Hands Up

Maybe it's because I grew up in Virginia, or because I'm a first generation American, or because I spent too many years as a member of the National Honor Society, or something; but I've never bribed anyone to do anything, even if it's cost me some business.

Why not? I think that's an interesting question and, in my case, I think the answer is as much about value as virtue. More simply stated, if the product/service I provide can't stand on its own, then you shouldn't buy from me. How do lap dances, fridges full of steaks, and kickbacks add value to my company's business offerings? I don't care what other people do to win business; I need to make sure that the services I provide stand on their own. I like to believe that the people I partner with operate in a similar fashion.

So why am I writing about this on an ECM blog? Because yesterday it was all over the press that the U.S. Justice Department alleges that EMC provided improper payments and other things of value to systems integrators and other alliance partners on contracts with government agencies. As of this posting, a ComputerWorld article on the subject has received 309 diggs. That's a kind of popularity nobody wants.

Documentum Brand Management 2.0 a la Chuck Hollis' theory in practice

EMC's Chuck Hollis says that Twitter can be both a "collective brain hum" and a place where "real-world brand management" and "corporate brand marketing" can happen. He writes that through tweets:

"Many thousands of people are continually forming impressions around you and your company, and it's done in an entirely unstructured and organic manner."

What are people saying about Documentum on Twitter? Here's are the tweets I collected a few weeks back (job postings, press release announcements, and analyst coverage have been omitted.)

"Documentum is sooo slow that it is not funny......how is this attributable to productivity at work???"