There comes a time when all companies realise the value of investing in a good enterprise content management (ECM) solution. This normally means a big investment, not only financially, but also in terms of time, resources, disruption and the risk that it might fail. A well-implemented ECM solution makes a big difference in the way that organisations do business – not only by providing knowledge workers access to relevant information at the right time, but also protecting the digital assets of the company.
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Organisations start to experience problems where access to relevant information is a problem as unstructured content normally resides in multiple information silos within a company. These could include e-mail servers, file stores, SharePoint sites, filing cabinets, various departmental content repositories, line of business systems, individual laptops/workstations, flash media and shared network drives to name a few. This also hampers collaboration within teams that need content for their daily work. In fact, team members that do not have a decent collaboration platform are responsible for multiple versions of multiple documents residing in various locations.
Another major challenge faced is that content is growing at an exponential rate across the enterprise. There are various statistics available to support this phenomenon. An example of this is an IDC study which suggests that the digital universe will double every two years — from 130 exabytes in 2005 to 40 000 exabytes by the year 2020. That is 40 trillion gigabytes…
Controlling access and protecting all of this information is absolutely impossible which causes a huge risk to organisations. Questions such as who is looking at my information and is it being shared to unauthorised parties outside of my firewall are being asked.
Information is the lifeblood of any organisation and with proper classification and control it can be leveraged to increase productivity of workers, as well as reduce cycle times on business relevant decisions. This has a direct impact on the bottom line of organisations. Content needs to be leveraged to realise the true value thereof.
To ensure the success of implementing an ECM solution in your organisation the following six guidelines need to be followed:
1. Find a trusted adviser to guide you through this mammoth task at hand
There are various consulting companies that specialise in the journey to ECM. Partnering with the right company ensures the success of starting out this journey in the right way. They will assist in defining an ECM strategy that is aligned with the needs of your organisation and even finding the right solution to satisfy your needs and wants.
2. Choose the right technology
Do not try and build it yourself. There are various vendors that play the ECM game and invest millions of dollars every year in research & development of these technologies. A good start is to look at the Gartner Magic Quadrant for ECM and understand what the strengths, weaknesses and roadmaps of each of these products are. Seeing as you are going to make a huge investment in this technology you need to make sure that the vendor you decide on will walk this road with you. Also, make sure that the vendor is well-represented in your territory, as things will go wrong down the road and you need that warm and fuzzy feeling that they are just a call away.
Other than the standard ECM functionality and security, make sure that the product you decide on has the following:
- A proven ROI with reference sites – preferably in the same country and vertical as you
- Advanced integration capabilities as you can leverage the content stored in this system in your various LOB systems
- A mature and flexible UI. This is how the users will interact with this new system. User adoption is key to the success of your project
- Mobile functionality. The new user wants to be able to work from any location using any device. Your challenge is to make sure the information is protected, even outside the safety of the corporate firewall.
3. An experienced implementation team
This could very well be the same company that you used as your trusted adviser. As mentioned earlier, ECM is a very complex technology, and (if done right) can change the way your business operates and save you a lot of money. But, if it’s done wrong, it will cost your organisation a lot of money and waste the very important time that could’ve given you the edge over your competitors.
Use a partner that understands your business and takes a strategic approach to these kind of implementations. Make sure that they use best practice methodologies, and, as with the product, make sure they have client references and previous projects that can vouch for their success.
4. Do not over-complicate the requirements
All the top enterprise solutions available in the market give you the ability to easily customise the product, within limits. The trend is to make more customisation available through configuration and less through development. Try and stay within the limits of the product as over-complicating the requirements will most definitely cause custom development and extending the solution outside of its intended scope. This will cause problems for you down the line as your upgrade paths will definitely be impacted. There are too many overcustomised systems out there that are 10 years old, outside of maintenance and three major releases behind.
5. Change management
The biggest risk of rolling out a brand spanking new ECM solution is that the users may not adopt it. Users are scared of change and they are very protective of what they know and what they are comfortable with. Engage with a team that can define how the change will be managed. A team that will identify key players, strategies and outcomes and provide a basis for monitoring the change.
6. Embrace the change and use the technology
There are many components that make up an ECM solution. Content management, rights management, digital asset management, retention, capture, intelligence services, document generation, business process management, case management, sync & share and more.
Your challenge now is to use the new technologies that your organisation just invested in. Do not fall back into the old way of working after three days, weeks or months. Make sure that your information is being stored in the right place. Use the collaboration platforms. Do not keep on using email as a collaboration platform or a document store. Motivate and challenge your team to do the same. By doing this, organisations will realise the investment made. They will keep on updating and staying with the latest trends.
A well-implemented ECM solution makes life a lot easier for organisations as well as the individuals working for them. It takes teamwork, from various internal and external parties, to make this journey a success.
