An Enterprise Content Management Primer

Information Management Journal, Sep/Oct 2004 by Blair, Barclay T

ECM is increasingly important in helping organizations manage and control content according to their business goals and legal needs

Business has long sought technologies designed to make operations run better, faster, and cheaper. As business has entered the Information Age, these technologies have increasingly focused on better ways to manage information. Nearly 60 years ago, Dr. Vannevar Bush, one of the fathers of modern computing, proposed the "memex" device as a solution to what was then considered the "massive task of making more accessible our bewildering store of knowledge." Today, industry estimates say the volume of business e-mail is growing at a rate of 300 percent each year, and 800 megabytes (MB) of new information is created for every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth. The "massive task" of 1945 has not gotten any easier.

From the largest customer relationship management installation at global corporations with thousands of employees, to the tiny mobile device used by a one-person contractor, proliferating software applications and hardware devices output information that must be managed. New technologies emerge to facilitate managing such output: the e-mail, instant messages, electronic forms, spreadsheets, digital images, compressed log files, and more.

But growing volume is really only a symptom of the core issue. Namely, organizations need to take control of their digital information assets. This need today is driven by two fundamentals. First, organizations need to comply with laws, regulations, and other directives regarding the care and handling of information, particularly in the post-Sarbanes-Oxley world where information mismanagement is under heightened scrutiny from the courts, regulators, customers, and the public at large. second, organizations need to make digital information assets accessible and useable to the business in a way that improves efficiency and contributes strategically. Dozens - if not hundreds -of software and hardware products and services have been developed over the years to assist organizations with the problem of managing the output of dozens - if not hundreds - of systems that create digital content. Until recently, there was no clear way to characterize the diverse products - everything from highoutput scanners to e-mail management systems - as a group of technologies with the same purpose: the enterprise-wide management of information in an efficient, consistent, and compliant manner.

Defining ECM

Enterprise content management (ECM), a term introduced in 2001 by AIIM International, has been widely adopted by vendors, analysts, and end users in the marketplace. ECM is "the technologies, tools, and methods used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content across an enterprise."

Clearly, this is a broad definition that covers a wide range of technology categories such as electronic document management (EDM) and business process management (BPM). Gathering diverse technologies into an all-encompassing term is a necessary part of trying to grasp the complex and fast-changing world of IT, where the demise of one technology invariably spawns a dozen new variants.

ECM is more than simply technology; it is an also an activity that involves people and processes. Organizations cannot simply buy a solution for their ECM problems. Such a solution does not come in a box and is not found in any one piece of technology. Rather, solving the ECM problem requires a concerted investment in risk assessments, policy development, training, change management, and other activities, as well as technology.

ECM activities and technologies generally can be classified according to the major ways in which information systems and users interact with content. Four commonly identified categories include the following:

* Capture: collecting, identifying, and classifying business content into the systems that will house and manage it. Items may be digital such as Web pages, those items that exist in other media and are converted to digital form (scanned paper documents, for example), or other objects managed via an IT system.

* Manage: focuses on handling content with specific goals. Document management goals such as improved customer service and records management goals of compliance with retention requirements are examples.

* Retain and Store: the technologies and techniques that enable the efficient, accurate retention and storage of content in a manner that supports business and legal goals. In some cases, content - particularly business records - may need to be preserved for long periods of time in a trustworthy and accurate manner, in which case organizations must make decisions about the most costeffective and reliable medium and mechanism to use.

* Deliver: providing timely, secure access to business content to the systems and people who need it.

At its core, ECM acknowledges that not all information is created equal. Some of it has business, operational, legal, and/or regulatory value and, as a result, must be identified and treated in a different way. The people, processes, and technology of ECM enable this to happen.