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Enterprise content management turns critical

Admire Moyo
By Admire Moyo, ITWeb's news editor.
Johannesburg, 04 May 2015
To leverage the benefits of enterprise content management, organisations should adopt a step-by-step approach, says Saurabh Kumar, MD of In2IT Technologies SA.
To leverage the benefits of enterprise content management, organisations should adopt a step-by-step approach, says Saurabh Kumar, MD of In2IT Technologies SA.

As data volumes continue to grow at an exponential rate, enterprise content management (ECM) solutions have become increasingly critical for assisting organisations with the capture, management, storage and preservation of digital content.

So says Saurabh Kumar, MD of In2IT Technologies SA, who points out that without the ability to store, organise and manage vast and growing amounts of information effectively, organisations can quickly become bogged down in the data, reducing efficiency and creating a host of other issues.

However, Kumar notes, when implementing ECM, many organisations opt for a 'big bang' approach that typically fails to deliver in the expected manner.

He believes that to leverage the many benefits of effective ECM, organisations should adopt a step-by-step approach, beginning with process definition, to create a solid foundation upon which to build an ECM solution.

Peter Reid, SharePoint Solutions head at Intervate, a T-Systems company, says ECM solutions are one of the most difficult software implementations, and therefore most vulnerable to failing to realise the expected benefits, for a number of reasons.

Chief among these is that, while significant effort is put forth into selecting an ECM vendor, many organisations then relinquish the entire project to the vendor and take no further role or responsibility.

"While it is not guaranteed that this type of 'fire-and-forget' approach to an ECM project will fail, it certainly adds to the list of factors counting against success in an already difficult process."

Reid notes it must be stated up-front that the most critical factor in a successful ECM project is choosing an experienced ECM vendor, and choosing the right technology. He adds successful ECM implementations rely on so much more than just vendors and technology - they need a passionate, involved and interested organisation that will invest not just money, but time and energy into the project as well.

"Often a C-level stakeholder can allocate budget to a project, but when asked if they could allocate a few days of their time per week, for weeks on end, the decision is more difficult," says Reid.

Kumar concurs, saying when implementing ECM, there is one common mistake that typically results in these benefits being lost.

The most critical factor in a successful ECM project is choosing an experienced ECM vendor, says Peter Reid, SharePoint Solutions head at Intervate.
The most critical factor in a successful ECM project is choosing an experienced ECM vendor, says Peter Reid, SharePoint Solutions head at Intervate.

"Often, organisations will purchase an off-the-shelf ECM solution and then attempt to align their organisation with the standard functionality of the product. However, every organisation is different, with its own unique challenges and processes, and this 'big bang', all or nothing approach inevitably leads to disappointment," Kumar says.

He believes that ensuring the successful implementation of ECM requires that organisations find a solution that fits them, instead of trying to fit their organisation to a solution.

When correctly implemented, with due care and thought given to ensuring strategy aligns with business and process, Kumar says ECM has the potential to become a critical tool for business success.

Benefits include the ability to define deliverables and service levels across the enterprise for both internal and external customers, more efficient data search capability, and the creation of a full audit trail of documents, authors and changes for compliance purposes.

"The concept behind ECM is to create a business ecosystem around data, and in a world driven by data, where information is money, this can only lead to improved profitability and business efficiency," he concludes.

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