* Why you should look at ECM systems
Editor’s note: While Mike enjoys some time off, his colleague Andi Mann fills in.
I was recently talking to a diverse group of users – including IT and non-IT staff, from large enterprises as diverse as defense, government, logistics, healthcare, retail, telco, finance, and manufacturing – about enterprise content management. As a former ECM Product Manager, I figured we solved that problem years ago, right? Wrong.
Can you guess what the most popular content management system was among these large and supposedly sophisticated enterprises? The “P: Drive” (or F: drive, or S: Drive, or … you get the picture). Yes, network storage was the single most popular way among these companies (some with hundreds of thousands of employees) to store, retain, back up, and share corporate documents (assuming they ever made if off the C: drive, that is). Some of them have processes in place such as detailed naming conventions, directory structures, access rules, versioning procedures, etc. However, most of them have no standards or processes whatsoever. They talked about how hard it was to find anything, how content “disappeared,” and about how they had no effective control. Content was randomly updated, overwritten, and deleted, with no controls or audit trails. Many people found this so frustrating, that they actually printed all their electronic content (ironically, including scanned documents), and filed it in their office.
There were a few organizations with ECM and EDM systems in place. A couple used Microsoft SharePoint (which is more collaboration than ECM/EDM, but a decent start); one was happy with an in-house system based around IBM Lotus Notes. Moving up the scale into actual content management systems, one organization used Vignette IDM, and another used EMC/Documentum.
Other content, however, was similarly scattered – even in the organizations that had ECM systems in place. Several organizations stored CRM data in basic tools like Act!, Lotus Notes, or in any number of spreadsheets. E-mail, of course, was stored mainly in the server inbox, or at best in a personal folder (or equivalent) – most likely located on the P: drive. An engineering company stored all their product design images, drawings, and CAD files in a specialized product lifecycle management system, but their other data was largely unfiled.
When the discussion turned to risk and compliance, the room just about went dead. No solutions, no answers. “Our storage team back up our data – I think they use something from Tivoli,” was about as close to a records management strategy as they knew. None of them knew how to get their data back from these backup systems. Not surprisingly, there was no knowledge of Information Lifecycle Management (ILM). Disturbingly, they were talking about medical records, government procurement contracts, financial records, GIS plots, and other critical data, possibly lost forever in a sea of network storage.
So if your users, or your boss, ask why you need new disks or a new SAN; or why you should look at ECM systems; or what good is ILM – you might want to show them this article. Maybe you could save a copy on your P: drive.
(Later this year I will be publishing a research report on ECM, and would love to hear about your experiences of ECM – or the lack of it – in your enterprise. Please feel free to e-mail me.
