The AIIM Blog
Keep your finger on the pulse of Intelligent Information Management with industry news, trends, and best practices.
Capture and Imaging | Document Management
Document Management Service Companies are the Rodney Dangerfield of the ECM industry -- they just don't get no respect. Or maybe a better way of saying this is that they are the great hidden treasure of the document management industry.
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Before consulting on any SharePoint project, a little detective work on the IT department can really pay off. One reason for this is that SharePoint has a reputation for being a "disruptive" technology. Let's deconstruct what this term means with respect to IT office politics before getting to the wrecking strategy detailed below. First, we must acknowledge that SharePoint doesn't really fit any of the standard categories used to manage IT applications. It's not an ECM system in the sense of being exclusively focused on that function alone, though it can be used to manage content. It's not a search engine, though it can search across many types of content. It manages web content, but it manages lots of other content too. And finally, the straw that we always grasp at, it's a "collaboration" platform, which is fuzziness itself when bean counters try to measure its ROI.
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Making an ECM implementation successful requires planning and attention to detail. The best way to create the right solution is to identify organizational goals and priorities. Learn how to manage a successful implementation in our free guide.
Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
1. Make sure to include only high-level managers in the planning stages. Don’t let anyone who actually does the work anywhere near the process. They are “too busy” to be bothered. Senior managers know all of the step-by-step processes, of course, and they have lots of opinions on how these can be made more efficient. (Plus, one of them probably has a brother-in-law who sells ECM software.) 2. Do not appoint a project leader. Or, appoint several and let them fight it out. You can also appoint one, and make sure they don’t have any actual authority. These are all good. The point is to avoid leadership and accountability at any level.
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Enterprise Content Management (ECM) | Sharepoint and Office 365
With the release of SharePoint 2010 in beta and the anticipated production release sometime in the first half of 2010 (one source says it will be released late in Q1, but that’s a full-blown rumor, so don’t hold me to that), it is time to provide an update on the latest incarnation of Microsoft’s collaboration/content management/business intelligence/portal/ECM/records management tool. In an earlier post, I listed Eight Things SharePoint 2010 Needs to be a True ECM System, and, at first glance, the new version looks very encouraging from an ECM perspective. As I’ve said before, I get excited by anything that can help my clients better manage their information, and SharePoint has the potential to be a transformative platform bridging structured content, unstructured content, and social computing in one flexible package. SharePoint 2007 does a decent job of this, but it has some deficiencies when it comes to managing all content in the enterprise.
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Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
OK, you’ve found what appears to be a great software product that solves a critical business issue (and at a great price), so you talk to a “decision-maker” – this might be your boss, the CIO, or maybe a regional controller. You present some of your findings (based on a “live” demonstration), and before you can finish, they want to know everything about the software vendor…not a bad thing, it’s part of the due diligence process. Unfortunately, because the software vendor does not appear in Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant” or is not considered a “Top 5” player, your idea is quickly dismissed because “…they’re too small and therefore too big a risk for our company.” You feel a little intimidated; maybe even embarrassed that you suggested the idea and are thinking this might be the last time you stick your neck out. Obviously, you don’t want to play high-stakes poker with your employer’s money – so is your idea that crazy (simply because it’s a small software vendor)?
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Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
Gather high-level enterprise business requirements. Once you have high-level direction from your stakeholders on scope, objectives, and success factors, you will be well-positioned to start defining your ECM strategy and implementation plan. Conduct document surveys with key representatives from each business unit/organization to understand what content your company has and what content needs to be managed. Use this opportunity to gather high-level requirements as well as possible improvements in managing the content. Also, meet with regulatory representatives and understand their perspective on content across the enterprise. This initial work will set a base for the enterprise implementation strategy as opposed to departmental implementations.
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