Enterprise Content Management Customers Speak Out

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Summary from Crown Customer Forum: May 2009

Companies today-regardless of the size or industry-face complex, and typically costly content management challenges. From content availability to version control to archiving, content management touches every corner of the organization. Yet simply managing content isn't enough. Companies must look to innovative enterprise content management (ECM) strategies and solutions to streamline processes around managing content and more importantly, to infuse the greatest business value into how they use their enterprise-wide content.

To keep pace with the ongoing and evolving strategies within companies to leverage their content for maximum advantage, ECM tools and technologies must also continue to evolve-and in direct relation to customer needs. So Crown Partners set out to understand more about the content management needs, experiences, and direction of customers. Since founding in 2001, Crown Partners has been serving as a trusted source of services and technology for content-related migrations and upgrades. And Crown's leadership role and ECM solution vision hinges on continued awareness of the changing business needs of our customers. To that end, Crown Partners sponsors a continuing series of  qualitative market research events, called Crown Forums.  Most recently, Crown Partners sponsored the  Crown Customer Forum (Forum) held in May 2009 in conjunction with the EMC World Conference in Orlando, Florida.

The provocative format of the Forum involved seven facilitated, persona-oriented conversations running concurrently, which customers engaged in freely. Conversations veered away from ECM product feature discussions and instead focused on the deeper ECM problems and solutions in important areas including:

• The role of ECM in compliance
• Delivering ECM via a shared services model
• Approaches to ECM solution development
• ECM infrastructure
• Web content management
• Managing email
• ECM system administration

These focused discussions offer rich insight into common ECM problems and business challenges, experiences with available products and technology, and anticipated trends. Thanks to the participation of these valued partners within the Crown community, Crown can better define its vision for the software and professional services that help companies optimize performance of the EMC Documentum, Oracle Hyperion, and Microsoft SharePoint platforms. This article presents key findings from the Forum related to leveraging existing assets, using shared services models, maturing the ECM infrastructure, and more. However, you can download Crown's free Enterprise Content Management Customer Forum Summary Report in its entirety at crownpartners.com.

Leveraging Existing Assets

Where content is concerned, companies are yearning for higher productivity and greater quality. They especially want to improve their marketing content and email management, along with their records management and eDiscovery capabilities. For these and other reasons, the demand for deploying content management solutions is growing. And with strapped budgets and limited resources, organizations are delivering their ECM solutions by leveraging existing software and infrastructure investments, plus improving content-related business processes and workflow and establishing sensible, enforceable policies.

Compliance is an important area where companies see opportunities to both maximize their technology investments while turning to new tools for assistance. Audit and litigation risks continue to rise, and corporate and legal standards are also intensifying. Yet companies are challenged to find a cost-effective approach to litigation and compliance activities around records management and eDiscovery. Nonetheless, the advantages of electronic records management over paper are obvious to companies. "The investment is a small pain now, but once it reaches a critical mass, the company will see the value," says one participant. Participants also agree that records management and audit processes are most effective when addressed via a single repository, even with scale, performance, operational, and other considerations.

Many companies are lacking the intelligent policies needed to support their existing technologies and processes. For example, companies report not having clear policies that identify the content system of record for all content. They say it's also sometimes unclear which system to go to for the most precise and up-to-date content. Even the most sophisticated ECM technology won't get the expected ROI and can even be a litigation liability if it lacks the intelligent policy to drive it. Looking ahead, it appears that businesses will commit funding for policy development, since the technology can only support an organization's commitment to compliance.

For some businesses, EMC workflow is surprisingly difficult and complex. They look forward to product enhancements that will make the solutions easier to deploy and the content easier to manage. This is especially true since companies see workflow and business process management as playing key enabling roles for records management and compliance moving forward.

Companies see their websites as fulfilling a range of purposes, especially sales, building loyalty, and supporting their business communities. They measure the effectiveness of their websites in meeting these and other needs using a range of metrics and analytics as feedback. And to be sure, companies depend on a continuous stream of dynamic web content, establishing a growing need for ECM. According to one Forum participant, "Our CFO has been inundated with requests for web content management solutions." For some, growth is proving painful, however. Some participants report that new versions of websites and new website features are outstripping the capabilities of the infrastructure.

Yet participants also report making efforts to improve what they have, basically employing the "doing more with less" strategy. Some are working to coordinate-and therefore optimize-their web and print marketing investments, such as brochures and newsletters. In some cases they reuse HTML content in print materials, while print content is reused on the website. Some companies are seeing the benefits of standardizing their approaches to component building and prototyping. Others are enhancing their processes around content ownership to avoid costly mistakes, such as inadvertently using restricted images in published materials.

Overall, though, companies report that their current investment in records management, compliance, and web content management is inadequate for today's standards and varying business requirements. These and other areas of content management are calling for technology improvements to ensure smooth daily business operations and ongoing compliance.

Using Shared Services Models

Organizations continue to identify ways to improve their solution-deployment abilities and reduce related costs. Some participants report accomplishing both through shared services models focused on common applications they can use repeatedly across the enterprise. Shared services organizations often support centralized and standards-based information technology strategies. Though companies differ in their direction toward centralization or decentralization, the current trend toward centralization favors and encourages businesses to use the shared services model.

Shared services offerings include a range of services and solutions, such as regulated systems delivery and operation, general content management solutions, document management hosting services, and a departmental filing cabinet with a configurable EMC Documentum Webtop interface and Documentum TaskSpace interface. These and other shared services solutions make it easier for businesses to improve their ability to respond to litigation holds.

Participants note lacking a mandate to use the shared services offerings. Instead, internal customers have the option of using these shared offerings. For organizations convinced of the value of the shared services model, some apply internal cross charges to shared services to encourage the use of the common applications and discourage one-off customization solutions. Yet tight budgets, inherent limitations, and business concerns around the shared services model can result in less than optimal results or even inhibit companies from taking the shared services plunge. Shared services models sometimes fail due to inability to scale and inability to integrate. Some businesses report concerns about loss of control when they rely upon shared services-including loss of control on service levels, exposure to cost, and licenses. And shared services organizations sometimes lack financial resources in comparison to other organizations.

Still, more and more companies are expected to adopt the shared services model as an important practice. Those already consolidating applications into a service-oriented organizational unit will continue to seek ways to serve more internal customers economically. Importantly, shared services organizations will enable and accelerate the implementation of records management across the enterprise. According to one proponent of shared services, "There is no other strong records management offering in the enterprise and internal customers are coming to us for the records management capabilities we offer. We had not anticipated the importance of records management, but it is turning out to be an advantage for us versus our internal competitors."

Layering Architectures and Organizations

Some participants note a conflict between needing tailored business solutions on the one hand and respecting IT standards on the other. Organizations are learning they can accomplish both through an approach that defines responsibility and allows varying degrees of flexibility at each of several layers in a solution. For existing applications, companies are looking to improve productivity for a better return on those investments. New solutions in particular demand are in the areas of longer-term email storage; business process management; CAD drawings management; contract management; facilities documents management; document scanning; and point solutions for R&D, regulatory submissions, and regulatory affairs.

Organizations will increasingly manage layers of the infrastructure-including servers, storage, and other back-end components-independently. Yet integrating applications is proving to be an important initiative. Based on participant feedback, integration is the most common solution project, especially integration between different content management technologies. In particular, companies are investing in strategies for integrating Documentum and IBM Lotus Notes, Documentum and Microsoft SharePoint, and Documentum and IXOS.

However, companies report experiencing challenges with integration projects. According to one Forum participant, "We are developing a custom integration on our own between different content repositories. The challenges are great and the effort is not living up to expectations." Another reports, "We have a very mature document management environment, but we're not really sure how to put together a strategy to consolidate our systems."

Regardless, integration efforts will continue to expand. Companies are especially focused on integration across a variety of content management technologies. In the next two to three years, organizations will address integration with ERP applications as a strategic initiative. Participants report a need for collaboration solutions for project management, product design, sales account management, and electronic workflow. In addition, collaboration will become increasingly important as businesses adopt social networking software as a part of the business infrastructure.

Maturing the ECM Infrastructure

As companies continue to support the established ECM infrastructure, efforts to "mature" the content management infrastructure are increasing. Participants stress the importance of a content management infrastructure that's standards-based, reliable, and uniform. With an effective, efficient ECM infrastructure in place, participants say that businesses and shared services organizations have compelling budgetary and strategic incentives to leverage the infrastructure.

Planning and operating the ECM infrastructure demands many complex technical, business, and organizational considerations for companies. Managing the ECM infrastructure is particularly difficult when some ECM products aren't always friendly, out-of-the-box solutions, as reported by several participants. Customers note significant risks in managing the infrastructure, including unknown behaviors in the elements of the infrastructure, the interaction among different elements, and not understanding the environment in general. Some companies face additional complexities due to a wide range of hardware configurations across locations and geographies. One participant reports, "Trying to keep all of the moving parts in lockstep is a nightmare." Also, integration of multiple content management technologies, such as Lotus Notes, Documentum, and SharePoint increases the complexity of the infrastructure.

Overall, organizations report compelling reasons to continue developing the ECM infrastructure. For instance, some companies are strengthening their commitment to Documentum as a single standard for trusted content. Others report having EMC Documentum Records Manager and EMC Documentum Retention Policy Services for email on their purchasing list. Participants note that users want to put content into Documentum, not just save it locally. They note that Documentum is a safe place to save email, since it eliminates automatic deletion resulting from compliance with mailbox size restrictions.

However, participants report a clear need to make it easier for users to export email to Documentum. Efficiency is critical to user adoption, according to participants. Companies contend with a large volume of email content, and email management has special requirements relating to response time and throughput. Increasing volume of images will greatly drive up storage requirements as well. On the whole, companies will need to accommodate larger volumes of most types of content through continued enhancements to ECM throughput and performance.

Customer Needs, Crown Requirements

Knowing our customers and their particular business needs is crucial to Crown's continued ability to deliver the solutions, services, and training our customers demand for business agility. Thus, the Crown Customer Forum proved an invaluable tool for understanding more about the greatest ECM challenges our customers are experiencing, what is needed to help solve them, and how they hope to leverage ECM in their organizations in the near and distant future. Crown Partners will continue to engage with our customers for important input, so that the direction of our solution vision remains in step with their vision for success.

Download the Forum Report

• Enterprise Content Management Customer Forum Summary Report

Questions or comments? info@crownpartners.com