Keeping track

Frank Gilbane, Editor Director of the Gilbane Report, talks to Business Management about the role of ECM, the opportunities it can provide an organization and the industry's future growth potential.

Since the late 90s, Enterprise Content Management (ECM) tools and strategies have been gaining momentum, providing users with the means to effectively organize a whole range of content types from the traditional (such as word and office documents) to the new electronic objects including email and web contents. Organizations are catching up on to the importance of managing documents. 77 percent of end users believe that the effective management of documents is more important now than two years ago according to AIIM research. This is a trend set to continue especially since regulatory requirements are making compliance a necessity.

BM. Why is enterprise content management so important to companies? What are the opportunities to gain advantage from better data management?
FG. First, let’s talk about what ECM is. The term ‘ECM’ is actually used in many ways, and it is sometimes implied that an ‘ECM system’ can and should manage all content across an enterprise. In reality, there are no ECM systems appropriate or capable of managing all enterprise content in ways that meet the varying business requirements of different departments. ECM is best thought of as a strategy, which gets implemented in various ways with a variety of tools and processes across an organization.

ECM is important simply because companies have huge amounts of important content, some of which is mission-critical to their business, some of which requires management by regulation, and some of which allows employees to accomplish their jobs and communicate with customers more effectively. Unlike most structured corporate data, unstructured or semi-structured content is not managed in any disciplined way. There are opportunities for improving both the top and bottom line and reducing risk all across most companies with content management.

BM. Why should businesses look at the complete lifecycle of data? How important is transparency and ‘traceability’?
FG. Well of course it depends on the business and industry you are in. Some information has to last, and be readily accessible for decades, for example aircraft documentation and engineering information. Not having an audit trail of who did what when and what documentation they used to inform their actions can open up huge liability risks. Some information also needs to be destroyed either because it has been replaced with more accurate data, or because it is no longer useful and managing it is an unnecessary cost. And of course, compliance and regulatory issues are much more stringent these days.

BM. Do you think organizations are becoming more aware of the need to manage documents?
FG. Without a doubt. However, organizations still have a lot to learn about how to manage documents. It requires some effort because there are many different tools and techniques that are appropriate to different types of documents and applications.

BM. What should organizations consider before choosing a vendor?
FG. The very first thing organizations need to do is to understand what content they have and what they do with it. You would be amazed at the differences between what management often assumes about what content they have and how it is managed (or not) and what is actually taking place. Also, simply understanding where the content comes from, where it goes, how it is used/re-used, and how it could be used/re-used is important. There are a huge number of vendors with a wide variety of tools, and most companies totally bewildered and make mistakes by choosing a vendor before they understand their needs. One consideration that is often underestimated is domain expertise vendors have. For example, some vendors may know a lot about your business application because they have a lot of customers in your industry with similar needs. This, in turn, may mean their product has a set of features appropriate to your needs.

BM. How easy are ECM technologies to implement? Is there a lot of staff training or IT support needed?
FG. It depends. There are hundreds of ‘ECM’ products ranging from simple check-in/check-out repositories for document or web collaboration, to platforms that require a lot of custom development and integration with other enterprise systems (e.g., ERP, CRM etc). There are certainly cases where there is a lot of IT support and staff training necessary – in these cases it is critical that the users of the ECM be included early in the process of deciding which tools to use and how they should be deployed.

BM. In your experience, how adequately are enterprises implementing ECM? What are the common mistakes made by CIOs when implementing a strategy?
FG. The biggest mistake enterprises make is making a top-down product decision. It is tempting to think a single solution will bring efficiencies in purchasing and IT support, and indeed there can be some efficiencies, but inevitably there will be forced-fit solutions in some departments which will not be accepted by the system users and some groups will simply find a way to build or buy their own system.

BM. How can users better understand what they need from an ECM solution?
FG. As recommended above, they should first understand their content, its use/re-use, and workflow, and then look at solutions others in their industry have built for themselves, and third, learn about the latest developments in content management technologies from conferences, consultants, and vendors.

BM. What is the future for ECM?
FG. Content management technologies are now mainstream. IT is significantly more knowledgeable than they were even a couple of years ago, and business managers have a much greater understanding of the importance of content management. However there is still a long way to go. The good news is that in spite of all the industry consolidation (which is sometimes positive and sometimes not) there are new tools and product companies entering the market almost every week. It is a healthy segment of the software industry, and businesses will benefit from all the developmental energy. Content management functionality will be included up and down IT infrastructure and application stacks, and will be much more powerful as the platform vendors continue to add the ability to manage and integrate content.