What is ECM?

Content at Work

It's not enough to "manage" content. Of course, the ability to access the correct version of a document or record is important, but companies must go further. Content must be managed so that it is used to achieve business goals. Central to this strategy are the tools and technologies of ECM, which manage the complete lifecycle of content, birth to death. To drive understanding of these tools, this poster highlights a typical process for a piece of content as well as four primary areas in which content, and ECM, is fundamental to the success of your company: Compliance, Collaboration, Continuity, and Cost.

While there are ECM technologies, more importantly,
ECM is an ongoing and evolving strategy for maximizing how your content is to be
used. Use the information below as a starting point to review a common content
lifecycle. Map a current process to see where you may find overlap and room for
improvement for the applications and strategies that your business is
developing. The information below only hints at the complexity inherent in any
process that deals with managing an organization's content. As always, you must
match up the technology tools to address YOUR businesses needs. Technology can
enable streamlined management of content, but the underlying strategy must come
first.

Compliance

The key to a
successful compliance strategy is integrating the idea of compliance success
into your business-not viewing compliance as a project that can be completed and
then considered "finished." While painful, complying with regulations should be
viewed as an opportunity to improve common business processes and not just an
ongoing cost to the business. It is no secret that there can be high costs
associated with your compliance initiatives for both technology and employees.
Only securing compliance for one regulation such as Sarbanes-Oxley or HIPAA will
cause your costs to continue to grow as each new regulation is delivered over
the years. To help limit the risk and cost, proactive ECM strategies must be
developed within key areas, such as records management and business process
management. Ensuring that the proper business practices are followed and that
content is properly captured, stored, managed, and disposed of at the
appropriate and legal time in its lifecycle. Developing a compliance initiative
properly will tap many areas of expertise, particularly legal, IT, and records
management; all in support of the overall business objectives of the
organization. Individuals from each of these areas must contribute their
knowledge and perspectives to ensure the benefits of a sound compliance program.
While compliance is not always a technology problem, information technology, and
the massive growth of unstructured content, contributes to corporate exposure.
The tools of ECM, properly used, can help reduce the overall cost of compliance
to the business.

Collaboration

Collaboration is the art of working together. The key to
strong collaboration is utilizing the set of technologies-instant messaging,
whiteboards, online meetings, email, etc.-that allow work to take place wherever
and whenever needed. It's good business; groups can accomplish more than
individuals. Collaboration allows individuals with complementary, or
overlapping, areas of expertise to create better results faster than before.
With today's collaborative tools, business units and teams can work together
anytime-whether in adjoining offices or a world apart. The technology can now
address operational objectives like saving time, streamlining processes, cutting
costs, and improving time to market. With the many different types of
collaborative tools available, companies must be sure they select the correct
tool for their business need. Functionality can be broadly grouped into (1)
communication channel facilitation, which enables short-lived interaction such
as chat, instant messaging, white boarding, etc.; (2) content lifecycle
management, which manages content objects involved in a business process; and
(3) project facilitation, which organizes and simplifies the way that people
work toward a common goal. However, there is a catch with collaboration. When
using collaborative tools, you must be aware of records management, knowledge
capture, and compliance requirements. For some industries, all customer
communications must be kept. And, for a collaborative product design process,
companies must be sure that the results are kept as business records.

Cost

While ECM can be a costly initiative, what are the costs of
not properly managing your content? The cost of not implementing ECM tools is
too often left unmeasured until too late. Things like the cost of long legal
proceedings, the loss of repeat business through the inability to perform simple
customer service interactions, and the cost of typical business process delays
are easy to measure after the fact-lawyers' time, the cost to acquire new
customers, and FTE salaries. Understanding the cost of these potential losses
will allow you to see that ECM investments have valuable benefits that often can
be measured, but not always. The key is to set your key metrics for success up
front and measure your success based on those expectations. Measuring the
revenue based on improved information in the call center can be done as well as
measuring the cost benefits of improvements in process speed for a loan
application, claim process, or FDA drug approval (to name a few). The
improvements will not always show on the final balance sheet but they are out
there. While identifying a direct ROI can be difficult, it is not impossible to
see the impacts of the improved process efficiency on the business. ECM tools
can make your organization more efficient and drive down the cost of doing
business. These technologies provide value to your organization by more
efficiently organizing information for its subsequent retrieval, use, and,
ultimately, disposition. Plus, as these tools are used by more organizations, it
becomes part of how you work. What's the ROI on a telephone? Yet, you wouldn't
think of doing business without one, would you?

Continuity

Keeping a
business going 24x7 is the task of business continuity planning. While often
mentioned with disaster recovery, business continuity planning is the overall
strategy for ensuring that operations continue in the event of any
disruption-natural or man-made. Disaster recovery is more narrowly focused on
getting an organization's IT infrastructure going again, a subset of business
continuity. Because the lifeblood of most businesses today is represented by
electronic documents, ECM has a key role to play in continuity. After all,
without access to the most vital electronic documents, a business is dead in the
water. ECM technologies allow the creation of centralized repositories where all
vital corporate information can reside. The method of storage will vary
depending on how critical the content is to the company-from off-site back up
tapes to redundant, mirrored sites separated by geography and on different power
grids. A strong continuity plan will show you that not all content is critical.
Companies must prioritize their content to determine how quickly content needs
to be back online in the event of a disaster. Business continuity begins with a
sound plan and high-level executive support. Next, mission-critical processes
and the entities on which they are dependent must be determined, followed by a
business impact assessment to determine the impact of a disruption, or losing,
those processes. Defining what a business considers a disaster and explaining
how key processes will be recovered are the next steps in the plan. A crisis
operations center should also be established with procedures for chain of
command and other roles. Finally, don't forget to update and test the plan
annually or as business needs change. Effectively delivering on a continuity
plan will enhance your ability not only to recover during a system failure but
will enable you to better define the priority of your business content and
improve your overall ECM strategy.

Business Process Management/Workflow

The tools that move content
throughout an identified business process, such as claims processing. BPM
solutions are frameworks that can be used to develop, deploy, monitor, and
optimize multiple types of process automation applications-including processes
that involve both systems and people. Consider which processes are candidates
for automation, and whether they require some degree of ad hoc processing or
manual intervention. Workflow is now commonly associated with the manual
processes of managing documents. Workflow handles approvals and prioritizes the
order documents are presented. In the case of exceptions, workflow also
escalates decisions to the next person in the hierarchy. These decisions are
based on pre-defined rules developed by system owners.

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Content and Documents

Unstructured content enters an organization's IT infrastructure from a variety of sources. Regardless of how a piece of content enters, it has a lifecycle. Follow a document through its lifecycle as viewed through the use of ECM technology.

1. Electronic Unstructured Data: email, instant message, text document, spreadsheet, etc.

2. Electronic Forms

3. Paper Documents/Forms

Scanning

Paper generally enters the organization through a scanner,
or sometimes, a multifunction device. In centralized scan operations, large
volumes of paper are put into the system by dedicated workers. In distributed
operations, smaller volumes of documents are captured with lower volume scanners
or multifunction devices closer to their point of creation.

Document Imaging

Software captures the image of the
paper document. Increasingly, electronic document images have the same legal
status as a paper document.

Forms Processing

Business forms are ingested into the system.
Most forms today are "structured"-the location of the form elements are known.
The ability to process unstructured forms, those without a pre-defined form
template, is improving.

Recognition

Technologies
that allow paper information to be translated to electronic data without manual
data input. Recognition technologies have progressive capabilities from optical
character recognition (OCR) to intelligent character recognitions (ICR) and are
important for converting large amounts of forms or unstructured data to usable
information in a content management system.

Categorization/Taxonomy

A
taxonomy provides a formal structure for information, based on the individual
needs of a business. Categorization tools automate the placement of content
(document images, email, text documents, i.e., all electronic content) for
future retrieval based on the taxonomy. Users can also manually categorize
documents. Critical step to ensure that content is properly stored.

Indexing

An essential part of the capture process, creates metadata
from scanned documents (customer ID number, for example) so the document can be
found. Indexing can be based on keywords or full-text.

Document Management

Document management technology helps
organizations better manage the creation, revision, approval, and consumption of
electronic documents. It provides key features such as library services,
document profiling, searching, check-in, check-out, version control, revision
history, and document security.

Records Management

Content of long-term business value
are deemed records and managed according to a retention schedule that determines
how long a record is kept based on either outside regulations or internal
business practices. Any piece of content can be designated a record.

Email Management

As the de facto standard for
business communication, removing emails from the server and saving them to a
repository isn't enough. Email must be classified, stored, and destroyed
consistent with business standards-just as any other document or record.

Web Content Management

Web content management technology
addresses the content creation, review, approval, and publishing processes of
Web-based content. Key features include creation and authoring tools or
integrations, input and presentation template design and management, content
re-use management, and dynamic publishing capabilities.

Digital Asset Management

Similar in functionality to document
management, DAM is focused on the storage, tracking, and use of rich media
documents (video, logos, photographs, etc.). Roots of the technology are in the
media and entertainment industry, currently experiencing growth, especially in
marketing departments. Digital assets typically have high intellectual property
value.

Repositories

Structured
and unstructured-the core of many ECM systems. This is where the data resides
and where much of a company's investment in ECM resides. A repository can be a
sophisticated system that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, or as simple
as a file folder system in a smaller company. The key is to have information
that can be found once it is placed in the system.

Storage

Content needs to "live" somewhere. Storage technology
(optical disks, magnetic, tape, microfilm, RAID, paper) provide options for
storing content online for rapid access or near- or off-line for content that
isn't needed often.

Content Integration

Enables disparate content sources
to look and act as a single repository.

Migration

As storage media ages, content must be moved to new media
for continued accessibility.

Backup/Recovery

Backing up
content in various formats and/or locations helps to ensure business viability
in the face of a disaster.

Search/Retrieval

One of
the greatest benefits of a strong ECM system is the ability to get out what you
put in. By having strong indexing, taxonomy, and repository services, locating
the information in your system should be a snap.

Syndication

Distribution
of content for reuse and integration into other content.

Localization

Recasting
content based on the needs and cultural mores of different global markets.

Personalization

Drawing on
a taxonomy and based on established user preferences, various types and subjects
of content can be delivered via user-defined preferences.

Publish

Content gets where and to whom it needs to go through a
number of tools. Content can be delivered via print, email, websites, portals,
text messages, RSS feeds.

Paper Electronic

Portal, Intranet, Extranet, Email,
Fax

Security

Restricts access to content, both during its creation and management as well as when delivered.

1. Digital Rights Management - prevents the illegal distribution of rights-managed content by restricting access to content down to the sentence level as well as granting/restricting permissions for forwarding and accessing content.

2. Digital Signatures - ensures the identity of a document sender, and the authenticity of the message.

3. PKI - uses a public and private key pair held by a
trusted third party to transact business over the public Internet.

Collaboration

Collaboration technologies enable individual users, such as
employees or business partners to easily create and maintain project teams,
regardless of geographic location. These technologies facilitate collaborative,
team-based content creation and decision-making.

Long-Term Archival

Content that must be preserved over
decades must be saved to media, such as paper and film-based imaging, with
longevity to match.

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