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How many Vendors provide true ECM solutions?
September 2007 by By Trevor Cole, Business Development Director, Datum International Ltd
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) has finally maturated and become an essential tool for business today which in turn has attracted many IT suppliers to promote themselves as ECM Vendors. Trevor Cole, Business Development Director of Datum International, asks whether so-called ECM vendors are just slick marketers or whether they can actually deliver a complete solution that organisations really need.
For much of the IT industry, ECM has become the new gold rush. At the top end of the market there has been a lot of consolidation with IBM acquiring FileNet, Hummingbird acquiring Red Dot and then being pursued themselves by OpenText.
Spurred on by analysts’ predictions of huge growth in the ECM market over the next three years, suppliers with any component of ECM such as Work Flow, Document Management, Publishing, Web Content and Intranets are now promoting themselves as ECM vendors to revitalise sales of their legacy systems.
The problem for potential customers is how many of these ECM vendors can truly claim to meet all of the requirements and not just satisfy one specific element, or service the ECM model by bolting together a range of different solutions.
Many of the current crop of mid market ECM solutions are falling way short of the mark and are failing to deliver the functionality and integration that is required to improve business content management and company administration. Microsoft have themselves recently thrown their hat into the ring as an ECM player with a combination of modules, using MS SharePoint as the foundation; disguised as a cheap option this solution could end up costing much more than anticipated with the potential amount of specialist consultancy required. Microsoft’s marketing muscle however will educate the market and open opportunities for other ECM vendors.
When properly implemented to fit in with your company’s business needs and processes, an ECM system should enable you to effectively manage and address every aspect of content/document management; storing, indexing, classifying and cataloguing information from all sources including electronic documents, scanned documents, web forms, email and back office business applications. ECM should include workflow effectively integrating information content with business processes.
With the vast increase in the generation of email traffic, documentation, electronic content and the continued introduction of new regulations a fully integrated ECM solution has become an invaluable tool for every organisation to orderly maintain and access information. The range of solutions has now made this technology available and affordable to companies of all sizes.
The best advice is to ignore the label on the product and the new ECM acronym and talk to a supplier that will listen to your individual business needs. Look beyond the marketing hype and find a solution that works for you today by addressing individual core business issues, and allow you to roll out the solution to each area of your business.
