Geek Speak Decoded: The Acronym Series, Part 1
The more research I do about CM, BPM, and ERM systems, the more I realize that the information management world is full of acronyms. Acronyms that only mean anything if you know what they are talking about to begin with.
When I was younger, and hip-hop and R & B were very popular (while I was not), there were acronyms in SO MANY songs. I specifically remember being baffled by the lyrics of Boys 2 Men’s “Motown Philly”: Boys to men, ABC, BBD; the East coast family. My cool brother helpfully informed me that “ABC” stood for Another Bad Creation, and “BBD” for Bel Biv Devoe. I remember how dumb I felt hearing after this since I knew those groups, but I didn’t know that’s how people referred to them. I also HATED feeling dumb — hated it enough to stop listening to this music.
I think that one of the worst things that you can do when you are trying to educate someone is to make them feel dumb. Unfortunately, this is the effect when you consistently use acronyms referencing unfamiliar concepts, especially when the context can’t always help you decipher the meaning. To that end, I hope this series will demystify many of the more common acronyms. As I started uncovering the jargon juggernaut in our industry, I realized that this needed to be a series.
Stay tuned as we uncover groups of acronyms, what they mean, and what they mean to you.
Part 1: ACRONYMS, OVERALL CONCEPTS
DM: Document Management. A system used to track, manage, and store documents.
ECM: Electronic Content Management. Tools and strategies that allow for the capture, management, storage, preservation and delivery of content within an organization.
BPM/BPA: Business Process Management/Business Process Automation. A practice enabling paperless work processes by modeling, automating, measuring and optimizing business activity flows.
AI: Artificial Intelligence. Intelligence demonstrated by machines. In our applications, this is a situation where a computer perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its charge of achieving its goals.
IIM: Intelligent Information Management. A new acronym for ECM based on new technologies such as blockchain and Artificial Intelligence.
RM: Records Management (Paper or Electronic): Management responsible for the efficient and systematic control of the creation, receipt, maintenance, use and disposition of records.
ERM: Electronic Records Management. Doing the above with the use of specialized (online) tools.
KM: Knowledge Management. Efficient handling of information and resources, or a disciplined process of identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving and sharing all of an enterprise’s information assets.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it’s certainly a few of the terms that you may run across as you try to determine the best place to start on your quest for less paper in your office.