What Does the Typical ECM Technology Profile Look Like?

AIIM's recent State of the Industry survey reported on deployment patterns of major ECM technology segments in end user organizations. A look at technology deployment patterns by the “depth” of the implementation—from tactical to transitional to strategic—provides insight into the way in which ECM technologies are typically deployed in organizations.

Tactical users are those who indicated in our survey that they “have undertaken one or more document/records projects at the departmental level.” Transitional end users are those “currently integrating their document/records projects across departments.” Strategic end users are those who indicate they “are deploying and implementing an enterprise scale document and records management capability.”

The data suggests that as end users move on the tactical to strategic continuum, they become increasingly focused on documents from a process perspective rather than just an archiving perspective. For example, the penetration rate of recognition technologies—a key enabling technology in improving capture processes—increases by almost 100% as organizations move from tactical to strategic implementations. The use of workflow and BPM software also doubles, from 30% to 60%. These penetration rates reflect the anecdotal evidence surrounding ECM—as users get their information under control, they increasingly see this control as leverage in dramatically improving core processes.

As might be expected, those that have moved in a strategic direction are also likely to have been driven by compliance and litigation concerns. Hence the dramatic rise in the use of electronic records management from 30% of the tactical users to 40% of the transitional users to 64% of the strategic users.

Lastly, the data also suggests that as organizations get more ambitious about their information management challenges, finding and presenting that information rise in importance. The use of enterprise search increases from 16% to 42%. The use of WCM software to present information on the web increases from 38% to 50%. And the use of portals to organize and present information rises from 37% to 50%.