The evolution of ECM
The evolution of ECM
Some pundits believe Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is just a warmed over version of technology that has been available for years. Here, James Rae argues that ECM is a blend of proven technologies with newer, innovative capabilities that are solving a new range of content-centric and process-centric problems.
ECM is the merging of content, process and connectivity technologies into a single, integrated solution that enables organisations to leverage their business content and automate and optimise the business processes that rely on that content. While content, process and connectivity tools have been in existence for more than 20 years, the recent integration of these technologies can bring significant benefits to users, allowing them to make better decisions faster.
ECM accelerates productivity, reduces costs and cycle times, and improves customer service, collaboration and knowledge exchange by improving daily decision-making. It is this focus on improved decision-making in the business that is generating critical ROI and providing competitive advantage for a broad spectrum of customers, ranging from financial services to telecommunications to government agencies.
ECM-a potted history
The evolution of ECM technology can be traced to document management and workflow, which began to be adopted in the late 80s. These early software systems focused on capturing, archiving and retrieving documents -the nirvana of which was the "paperless office.' ROI was delivered in the form of less paper and storage costs and improved productivity. While serving their purpose, these departmental solutions, did not offer the compelling ROI to make companies view them as strategic investments across the enterprise.
In the 90s, we saw a wave of re-engineering and many organisations responded with a "rip and replace' technology investment strategy, deploying more IT systems and applications to support and manage data. In fact, worldwide information and communication technology spending nearly doubled between 1993 and 2001, reaching $US2.42 trillion.1
The legacy of this growth in technology investment was content spread throughout the enterprise: on websites, document management and line-of-business systems. As a result, supporting even the most basic business processes became a management nightmare. In response, and as the economic environment tightened, organisations focused on the core processes that guide how companies buy, build and deliver those products, and the opportunity at hand to automate, integrate and optimise these processes to wring out costs and inefficiencies. Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and Business Process Management (BPM) technologies evolved to unite disparate applications and processes and connect people more effectively.
Up to this point, the genesis of content management and related technology purchases was tactical, aimed at solving specific business problems-for example, web content management solutions.
Then in 2003, customers began to approach ECM as a strategic investment, with a significant increase in enterprise-wide deployments aimed at improving the decision-making process and, consequently, organisational efficiency, revenues and customer service. Now, with the world economy (and IT spending) starting to grow again, this trend seems to be increasing. Additionally, the need for ECM is being fuelled by a number of key business drivers.
Business drivers for ECM
Currently, there are three main business drivers for ECM. These include the need for:• Continuous process improvement to reduce costs, improve efficiency and quality of service;
• Improved corporate accountability, risk reduction and regulatory compliance through content control and process visibility; and
• Knowledge management and collaboration to support innovation and product development.
Better, faster, cheaper
In every organisation, business processes represent an opportunity for improvement. In today's competitive market, organisations must eliminate all waste that the customer will either not pay for or does not value through continuous process improvement.
When companies automate processes, they reduce the need for human intervention in routine or low-risk decisions. This improves quality and eliminates both the cost and potential for errors associated with human-based workflow, enabling companies to apply expert human resources when and where they add the most value to the decision-making process. What's more, this allows companies to realign their resources to focus on higher revenue-generating activities.
Automating processes also helps reduce cycle time. The faster you can process a business transaction, the more transactions you process. The more transactions you can process, the more business you service, and the more revenue you generate. Faster decision-making not only shortens cycle time, it reduces handling costs and ultimately increases profitability.
No matter how well designed a process may be, there will always be exceptions to the norm. How organisations handle exceptions is a major determinant of the overall quality of service delivered to business partners and customers. By being exceptional at handling exceptions, companies can differentiate themselves from their competition.
But it is process optimisation-which incorporates analysis and simulation-that provides an unprecedented level of operational insight needed to maximise the effectiveness of business processes. While evaluating past performance is valuable, the ability to assess the impact of future events can make the difference between success and failure. Analytics and simulation enable enterprises to test-drive "what-if' constraints and scenarios to determine the best processes to deploy as business conditions change. This allows organisations to keep processes tuned at an optimal level on a continuous basis to stay one step ahead of the competition.
What me, worry about compliance?
Following such debacles as Enron and WorldCom-and locally HIH-there is a heightened need for visibility and accountability at all levels of the organisation, from the "shop floor to the top floor.'
ECM helps deliver operational visibility into how the business is performing. This enables businesses to track, monitor, measure and optimise processes in real time, providing the control, visibility and agility needed to respond to changing regulations and market conditions, and minimise corporate risk exposure.
By linking processes with the creation, management and delivery of content, ECM enables businesses to accelerate information exchange to more quickly respond to business or transaction events. The right information is aggregated and delivered to the right people or systems at the "critical moment' when a decision must be made. This speeds decision making and helps companies manage exposure to risk, first by enabling the right decision, and next by capturing how and why that decision is made.
Companies are looking to ECM in response to a raft of new regulations aimed at compliance. In today's tougher regulatory environment, just one misstep can subject a business to potential shutdowns, non-compliance fines. It can even result in devastating legal action, and can put a company out of business. To this end, ECM has moved to centre stage as enterprises strive for improved accountability and risk reduction. ECM ensures that content is kept for the appropriate amount of time and then destroyed in accordance with corporate policy.
ECM is a critical foundation for records management and compliance initiatives because content must first be properly identified before it can be managed throughout its lifecycle. Additionally, ECM ensures business processes are automated and integrated into the fabric of the organisation to ensure compliance policies and retention schedules are enforced. Without systemic enforcement, your records management program can be severely compromised.
Share and share alike
Industry analyst firm Gartner recently conducted a survey to gauge what technologies companies plan to invest in during 2004 to support collaborative work processes and knowledge management and what they aim to achieve in deploying these technologies. Their findings indicate companies are looking to ECM and related technologies to improve productivity and processes and improve coordination and collaboration among organisational units and partners.
These organisations are deploying collaborative applications that allow geographically dispersed project teams to centralise, organise and store project-specific content, and introduce ad hoc workflow and tasks, involving team members both inside and outside the enterprise with varying levels of interaction.
ECM is uniquely suited for collaboration applications because collaboration entails content, process and connectivity.
ECM in 2004 and beyond
Ultimately talk is cheap, but ROI is everything. It is no fluke that ECM has taken its place as a strategic investment. The reason is simple: ECM enables businesses to leverage their most important assets-content and human resources-while driving out inefficiencies and costs from processes.
Expect to see continued ECM adoption as companies tackle issues of continuous process improvement, compliance and collaboration initiatives, where the common theme is improved decision-making and the goal is continuous business improvement and competitive advantage.
References1. "Background Paper on the World Trade Organisation's Negotiations and Issues Regarding Information and Communications Technology (ICT)", World Information Technology and Services Association (December 2002).
2. IDC, "Documentum Acquires eRoom: Content Management and Collaboration Team Up for Customer Benefit", Mark Levitt, Roberts P. Mahowald, Joshua Duhl, (October 2003).
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