We asked  Australia/NZ organisations how they are dealing with the complex challenges of enterprise content management (ECM) today. Around a third of IDM readers surveyed have deployed SharePoint as an ECM platform, a third are using use SharePoint alongside another ECM platform for governance and risk, and the remaining third have not deployed SharePoint at all.

As part of our regular series of reader surveys, Image & Data Manager asks for your input to give some insights into contemporary information management.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is a broad term. A simple definition of Enterprise Content Management could describe it as Document Management "Plus." What are the elements that make up the "Plus?" What does ECM actually include?

There was broad agreement that a true ECM solution must incorporate Web content management, while enterprise search and collaboration also figured high in the list of shared responses (see chart below).

One Australian government CIO currently underway with a SharePoint ECM implementation believes the ability for staff to easily find stuff is the main expected benefit.

“ECM is the management of all records, regardless of medium - digital, hard-copy, electronic, video, audio etc.. ECM can deliver great benefits to the organisation - not least of which is ability to find records. It also helps cut down on paper use, particularly through implementation of good workflows and digital signatures.”

Dr Pauline Joseph teaches at Perth’s Curtin University and researches in the areas of design and implementation of electronic document and records management systems (EDRMS). Dr Joseph was an Information and Records Manager at Shell Development Australia Pty, prior to her career move to Curtin University.

Joseph believes that ECM should incorporate all line of business applications, i.e. SAP and any core business applications that manage staff leave, town council properties, student information databases, etc.

In addition to the accepted components of ECM, Joseph also lists knowledge management as an important element, as well as automated content recognition and links between various systems.

One industry consultant puts it succinctly, “ECM can help by delivering business information contained in documents to business decision-makers when they need it in a rapid and efficient manner that is integrated in the business processes, without any superfluous information”

As well as asking them to define what ECM does, we also asked readers to evaluate how ECM was actually helping their organisation. Not surprisingly, the top response held that ECM improved information access, followed closely by the key ECM selling points of improved regulatory compliance and faster information retrieval. Almost three quarters replied that ECM did improve employee productivity, an essential point in any business case. The organisations that responded to the survey came from a broad array of industry sectors.

SharePoint is being used alongside an ECM platform for governance and risk at one of Australia's largest mining and exploration companies, with more than 2500 IT users. According to the ECM Functional Lead, SharePoint cannot do it all.

“You need a matrix solution - SharePoint for collaborative information and for company records a traditional document management solution with archiving/publishing workflows.

“There are storage limitations for large organisations with the number of SQL Servers you require and also potential to have duplicated information across multiple libraries, you need a strict document management tool to manage retention and disposition of business records.”

Urbis
Andrew Mitchell, National Manager, Technology and Knowledge at property consultancy Urbis, recognises the benefits of ECM, but does not see the economics of a major deployment adding up for his organisation.

“We don’t have substantial record-keeping requirements, or the legislative imperative that some organisations work under, so we haven’t seen a major driver to get beyond fileshares. We do have an archiving issue and a storage demand keeps growing but that’s not an ECM issue, it’s more the impact on backup and recovery.”

The content that must be archived at the end of an Urbis project comes from a wide range of sources and is stored in a variety of different formats, e.g. contract documentation, email, graphics, 3D flythroughs, GIS data.

Until the point at which it is collected and archived, content stays within the main office fileshares.

Urbis has developed its own .Net intranet platform that Mitchell is looking to migrate to SharePoint.

“This will give us a native platform to support information sharing and collaboration as well as some basic workflow for well-defined processes such as staff on-boarding,” said Mitchell.

“But it’s not primarily about the technology; it’s about supporting changes in behaviour.  People are willing to share but need a better platform to do it on.”

Brookfield Rail
Collaboration has been the driving force for the deployment of ECM at WA’s Brookfield Rail, according to IT manager Graeme Strickland. Brookfield has been using the OpenText ECM Suite since 2009 and has 250 licensed users.

“Collaboration is the big key for us, as we suffered badly from management by email, with inboxes overflowing and getting up to 4GB in some cases, people losing information in email and unable to share within teams,” said Strickland.

“We are also using OpenText to open up sharing of key engineering information that has been locked up in spreadsheets.

Previously known as WestNet Rail, Brookfield Rail is a rail infrastructure owner and access provider with a long-term arrangement to lease its network from the WA Government since privatisation in 2000. It operates over 5000km of rail lines in the southern half of Western Australia carrying ever growing volumes of minerals and grain to the region's six government-owned ports.

The organisation had begun rolling out a document control and document management solution using SharePoint, but was not satisfied with the results. It is now using SharePoint as an intranet platform.

“We adopted OpenText ECM because of the version management and the ability to capture the document flow within the organisation,” said Strickland.

“It's not just used for filing and general administration but all the other issues in relation to information management. In the old paper filing days, if a new person came along and you wanted to share information about a topic or a subject you would give them the file and tell them to read everything. When everything lives in email you can’t share that information as easily and replicating the information through the business really becomes a problem.

“We wanted OpenText ECM to handle version management and make information available for sharing through workgroups. Our regional offices can be 600km away and they have a need to access the same information.

“We are using it to distribute links to documents internally and we have now implemented the Transmittals module to send controlled documents to contractors out in the field.

“It has changed people’s behaviour in the way they handle information.”

As well as general document management Brookfield has recently extended OpenText ECM with the Document Lifecycle Management for Engineering and Resources (DLM4ER) solution from Australian consultants Fastman.

The Fastman DLM4ER package will be used to manage documents, drawings and associated business processes to support the Midwest Rail Infrastructure Upgrade, a $A500M investment in rail infrastructure around the Geraldton region of WA.

DLM4ER is a rapid deployment bundled solution that includes a mixture of OpenText and Fastman product and which provides functionality supporting key business processes such as Transmittals and bulk data management for Document Controllers. Brookfield Rail is also moving towards adoption of the Microsoft LYNC platform for instant messaging, VOIP telephony and videoconferencing.

For one council records manager, reducing paper usage is one benefit of their ECM implementation, but not the sole justification.

“We never intended to be 'paperless'. If required, staff can print out as many copies of things as they like - we are more interested in business improvement/efficiencies and 'one source of the truth' where possible, rather than silos of information & duplication of records and effort.

“We are looking to implement SharePoint to use as a collaboration and intranet management tool. The ECM deployment is helping to reduce duplication & authenticity issues (version controlling); while providing records lifecycle management (destruction/archiving etc).

“We are still working on integration with other business systems, and trying to reduce the inherent duplications (workflows, configuration idiosyncrasies, etc). There is still a long way to go to reduce user reliance on networks, email .pst files, and other alternative technologies.”

Aecom
Up to 5000 Australian staff at engineering and design giant AECOM use SharePoint for project collaboration.

The Australian arm of the global multinational is using multiple instances of SharePoint for a range of different collaborative applications.

SharePoint is also being deployed as a repository behind the global Vignette Web content management system used by more than 45000 AECOM staff worldwide.

However Business Systems Manager Mike Harris does not see SharePoint becoming a single repository for all document types and email across the organisation.

Depending on the project, AECOM uses a range of content management platforms for managing delivery of projects. These can include the externally hosted Aconex product or an internal solution developed with Proliance project lifecycle software from Meridian.

AECOM is also deploying SharePoint to provide a collaborative space for other teams or business units inside the organisation that are not involved in a specific client project.

Built on SharePoint 2007,  the project collaboration tool in AECOM Australia New Zealand, known internally as the Virtual Project Office, will be reviewed as it makes the migration to SharePoint 2010.

“The VPO has a lot of customised code behind it, and features custom developed dashboards that take in data from other systems such as our Oracle financials. Some of the features of 2010 may mean the code is redundant so we will take the opportunity to review the code.”

“Wherever possible we will use an automated workflow.”

CAD drawings and other specific content that originates in the many and varied creative applications used across the company continue to live inside these applications.

“Aconex and SharePoint aren’t good for large CAD drawing files. The CAD tools have all the layering and referencing built in, once you take the drawings from their native package those references become broken.”

Finalised drawings are exported as PDF and uploaded to SharePoint.

“If staff have to go to a few places to get files, that’s not a huge risk as long as we have processes in place to ensure they are getting the right file. CAD programs have good document control features that are probably better than if they are migrated to live in SharePoint,” said Harris. 

The VPO then becomes a portal for the project storing documents used or developed by the project team and links to external tools.

“The VPO was really built for holding word processing documents, not massive CAD files.”

Managing email is another challenge that Harris is looking to address once the migration to SharePoint 2010 is completed. At present all email lives in Outlook folders.

Colonial First State Global Asset Management 
Roger Jin is ECM specialist at Colonial First State Global Asset Management (CFSGM), a subsidiary of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. It has $A160 billion of funds under management, including many large shopping centres, and like its parent company is an EMC Documentum user underway with an implementation of SharePoint.

More than 700 staff at CFSGM have been using Documentum for the past 6-7 years as a document repository. In recent times it has moved to add business process automation and collaboration capabilities.

“For the past few years have been building a number of business critical processes on top of Documentum,” said Jin. “We are now integrating Documentum and SharePoint to provide a full ECM solution.”

CFSGM is also using SharePoint for its intranet and Web content management.

“Both platforms have their strengths. Documentum is a still a better business process solution and is stronger in records management but SharePoint’s tight integration with Microsoft Office makes it more readily adopted for project collaboration”.

Jin works as part of the Knowledge Systems team at CFGSAM that is working to implement SharePoint 2010 as a friendly face to users and ensure information lives where it should.

“We have a big job to define the information management structure, so they can know the right category to place a document into.”

The Knowledge Systems team works with individual business units to define the rules for classification of information, so that staff can place information within the correct category in Documentum, whether it is email, word, pdf or images.

However any system based on individual judgement leaves open the potential for error and once documents are placed where they shouldn’t, they be can be difficult to find.
“As automated processes are developed based on a certain document, it must be placed in the right category or the process is broken.”

CFSGAM is currently migrating from SharePoint 2007 to 2010 which will add the potential to use features such as MySites and enable the platform’ enterprise social media capabilities.

The widespread attractiveness and adoption of SharePoint for collaboration comes with some challenges, according to Dave Martin, director, Microsoft Solutions Group at OpenText.

“Organisations are beginning to realise that the very same reasons they like SharePoint — easy and self-serve site creation, straightforward content creation, improved collaborative work processes, productivity gains and the like — can also contribute to the challenge of sound information governance, storage growth, management and cost, and encumbered site deployment and provisioning.

“Information governance, the unification of multiple disciplines such as records management, archiving, and ediscovery, as well as the policies, procedures, processes and controls for managing the lifecycle of business information, is a growing challenge for organisations and a consideration for many when deploying Microsoft SharePoint.

“The ability to ensure that Microsoft SharePoint falls within the organisation’s information governance strategy is rapidly becoming a key driver of successful deployments.
“Many organisations have already invested heavily in Enterprise Content Management (ECM) infrastructure and are actively seeking ways to include Microsoft SharePoint within a holistic ECM strategy.

“Additionally, they are exploring solutions to execute a comprehensive information governance strategy for Microsoft SharePoint that enables them to balance the familiarity, intuitiveness, and “speed-to-collaboration” aspects of SharePoint with those of ensuring consistent corporate policies are observed.

“Operational costs, database growth, and storage matters aside, the unfettered propagation of SharePoint sites and content presents significant challenges for legal departments, CIOs, and IT professionals charged with delivering on sound information governance strategies and organisational compliance programs.

“With mounting litigation across virtually every industry, an ever-changing regulatory landscape, and increased demands on IT resources and budgets, allowing SharePoint site growth to go unchecked is no longer a sustainable strategy,”  said Martin.