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Alan Pelz-Sharpe

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The E in ECM revisited

21-Apr-2008

Tags: Document Management (ECM), Industry Standards

I have used a slide called "The E in ECM" in various PowerPoint incarnations for years. Today I read a great blog entry by Philip Howard, who adds another interesting perspective to this. The E in ECM stands of course for Enterprise, but what does the word "Enterprise" actually mean? Well strictly speaking an Enterprise is any firm with more than 10,000 employees (definitions vary of course), and tends to consist of many divisions, departments, and locations.

So an ECM system then is a Content Management System that can be deployed across an Enterprise, or then again, maybe it is not.

Vendors take particular liberty with the term Enterprise. In fact of the 32 vendors we cover in the ECM Suites Report, less than a handful can make a serious claim to be true enterprise-wide options. Most have been built for departmental use, and that is also how they are sold -- albeit that the buying department may comprise a small part of a larger "Enterprise." Most ECM systems have not been architected to scale to 10,000-plus users, they have not been designed to operate in a truly complex and heterogeneous infrastructure, nor have they been priced and licensed to make sense in such wide deployments. In short for most vendors the E simply makes a product sound important, nothing more.

Philip makes the interesting point that ECM is also about enterprise-wide strategies and implications, not just technology. That is, the wrong local decision can have negative impacts on the enterprise as a whole, just as the wrong technology selection can (and often is) a failure at the buying point, but with repercussions that can resonate throughout the enterprise.

ECM is expensive both in terms of resources as well as software. Getting it right though can bring huge benefits. The onus then is unfortunately is on you, the buyer, to see through the mislabeling of products, and to "think globally and to act locally" A technology vendor cannot normally help you with that process, but good advice from independent consultants, advisers, user groups, and forums (and of course CMS Watch reports!) can make a difference.