Tackling Challenges
The goal of implementing ECM varies from one organization to the next, but the ultimate goal is to better serve clients and customers while improving the bottom line.

Lubor Ptacek, VP, product marketing, Open Text Corporation, states that ECM customers fall into three main categories. The first are those with a goal to assume better control over content—driven either by concerns about compliance and governance or the volume of content. The second group consists of those striving for better efficiency. For some, the hope is to heighten productivity on an individual or team level. “We make it easier for individuals to find or reuse content, and ensure the latest version of the content is used,” Ptacek adds. Open Text offers its flagship solution, Open Text ECM, an on-premise suite installation, licensed per seat.

Stacey Zengel, GM, Imaging Solutions, Jack Henry, says, “The primary goal is to eliminate paper and the costs associated with it.” She notes efficiency as a secondary goal. “In the banking and credit union brands, integration into our other products is a key. Plus these institutions are looking to drive a return on investment (ROI) by moving to ECM. They use our product to push capture to the branch, automate workflow, and provide enterprise search within the organizations.” Jack Henry offers its Synergy solution in three brands—banking financial, credit union financial, and generic. The solution is available as an on-site deployment as well as a Software as a Service (SaaS) model—Synergy Express.

“Organizations adopt ECM to address challenges associated with unmanaged information—how to leverage content for competitive advantage and minimize compliance risks,” says Andrea Leggett, senior product marketing manager, Content Management and Archiving Division, EMC Corporation. EMC offers its Documentum ECM Suite 6.5 family of products designed to improve business productivity and agility.

Measurable ROI is top criteria for enterprises shopping for ECM. Customers purchase solutions that improve business processes, meet regulatory requirements, or show a viable hard-dollar ROI. “The days of dazzling clients with features or modules that often end up as shelf-ware are long gone,” states Steve Leichtman, senior VP, Clearview Software. Clearview ECM 5.1 is a solution that includes document imaging, document management (DM), email management, Web content management, business process management (BPM), and reports management (RM) modules. Clearview ECM is available in three editions—Business, Professional, and Ultimate.

Experiencing ECM
ROI and savings vary depending on the scale of the ECM deployment. Leggett offers an example of a global transportation company that experienced ROI from a variety of factors including cost avoidance, increased productivity, and increased customer satisfaction. The company reports that its internal customer satisfaction with IT Services improved by over 20 percent since the initial deployment of Documentum ECM. Further, the initiative replaced a technically obsolete imaging system—avoiding over $500,000 in replacement costs. “It’s estimated that the company’s commitment to an ECM solution already resulted in one million dollars in reduced capital spending. That number is expected to grow as ECM expands across the enterprise,” she adds.

Another benefit of ECM is the resistance it offers to information overload. “According to Basex, a knowledge economy research firm, $650 billion worth of productivity is lost per year as a result of information overload—the barrage of papers, emails, and other forms of content circulated daily,” says John Gonzalez, director, product management and business development, Xerox DocuShare. ECM enables employees to combat the burden by taking paper out of the process. Xerox DocuShare 6.5 is a content management platform that stores more than 50 million documents, performs search queries within seconds, and supports intake of up to one million imaged documents per day.

Part of the battle against information overload is the practice of centralizing access. Jim Thumma, VP, sales and marketing, Optical Image Technology, Inc. (OIT), notes that wherever the information is stored—email, voicemail, through online forms, or held in a line-of-business or legacy system—integrating ECM with existing applications enables the push and pull of data according to pre-established business rules. OIT’s DocFinity is an integrated, Web-based suite of ECM software that manages information throughout the document lifecycle and includes products to capture, index, archive, retrieve, and manage information.

Further benefits of ECM are apparent to the overall organization. “Within a few weeks, most clients can present a business case showing that ECM systems lead to savings in staff positions and wages, or the release of office space previously used for paper records and filing cabinets,” says Metavante’s Danola. Some benefits are harder to quantify. “For example, fast and easy access to critical information may make a sales force more effective at winning bids for new work,” he adds. Metavante’s VisionContent suite of solutions enable companies to capture, store, and distribute documents and images.

Types of Offerings
Although the benefits are standard, there are a variety of options to suit a wide range of needs, such as on-site and SaaS. “These are viable business models depending on requirements including regulatory and security considerations, cash flow, capture, as well as internal IT structure. Ultimately, the model that works for any organization will take into consideration a combination of these,” says Clearview’s Leichtman. He notes that companies with limited cash flow and IT capacity may favor a SaaS model, assuming that regulatory and security issues are met. Organizations that do have the IT capacity, or prefer to customize the solution with internal development resources, are more comfortable with controlling their own security environment and are likely to purchase an on-premise model.

Chris Ryan, VP of marketing, SpringCM says SaaS offers a more favorable cost structure. “SaaS is sold on a subscription basis, not on a license basis, so you don’t put up all the money up front. People often pay for SaaS out of an operational or a departmental budget, not a capital expenditure budget. They are able to pay for the service in real time as they gain the benefits,” he explains. SpringCM offers ECM and workflow solutions in a Web-based environment. The solution has a five-user minimum, and offers a platform for as low as $50 dollars per month/per user.

“The current economic climate has become the perfect storm for ECM as SaaS, because businesses are looking for a technology to improve efficiency quickly and without a big investment,” says A.J. Hyland, president/CEO, Hyland Software. “SaaS is commonplace in both our everyday lives and our businesses, it’s more accepted and in demand,” he adds.

Danola points out that while licensed software solutions require an up-front purchase, they can provide a lower total ownership cost over the product lifetime. “Licensed software solutions can provide a higher level of system integration, higher degree of customization, and increased user control,” he adds.

EMC’s Leggett offers another argument for boxed solutions. “Box software solutions tend to have more robust features and are more scalable and customizable than SaaS solutions, which are typically suited for vanilla-type implementations, but cannot meet unique business requirements. This is why you see smaller organizations implementing SaaS solutions versus larger organizations that have years of custom coding built into their application infrastructure.”

Companies such as Nuxeo offer an ECM software download. Products are available under free, open-source Lesser General Public License (LGPL), in which users can build and run a range of ECM applications. Nuxeo’s business model allows for users to purchase Nuxeo Connect service plans in three different tiers, which feature varying levels of support response time and services, and start at $25,000.

“Out-of-the-box software solutions are advantageous to businesses looking to implement content management solutions, whether the implementation is for a department or across the entire enterprise. In contrast, open source, SaaS, and SharePoint are promising technologies, but each has major gaps,” says Thumma.

Considerations
Enterprise organizations need to form a clear picture of internal objectives prior to an ECM investment. “By clearly defining these objectives and prioritizing the must-have features down to the nice-to-have features, they will quickly understand how each solution may be effective at meeting their needs,” notes Leichtman.

He adds that this is particularly challenging to organizations that want one enterprise solution across many departments with varying requirements. “Organizations may find that ECM solutions have different strengths and score very well in one department, but not well in others,” says Leichtman. “The trend is for multiple applications to exist across an enterprise, but organizations should not try to force users into using applications that do not work for them.” Leichtman recommends a solution that brings together disparate silos of information, applies security, and makes it easy for end users who cross multiple departments to access information.

“The ECM solution must have the capability to integrate with all of your line-of-business applications as well as the Web site and the office environment,” says Danola. In addition, “A high-performance ECM system should simplify users’ processing tasks, be intuitive, and offer point and click functionality,” he says.

Karl Mayrhofer, product marketing owner, Fabasoft Folio, Fabasoft, explains that introducing an ECM solution on an enterprise level is more an organizational challenge than a technical challenge. “The best ECM product will fail if there is no clear vision which objections should be met by introducing an ECM solution,” he warns.

In addition, Industry consolidation leads to unorganized and confusing vendor solutions warns Hyland. “This is an industry that witnessed serious consolidation. Big takeovers and buyouts are commonplace, which can lead to mashed up technologies and functionality. In the process, interfaces are confusing and constantly changing and security and administration modules are cut and pasted, ultimately compromising usability,” he says.

Hyland suggests that shoppers look at the stability and strength of the ECM vendor. “Take a look at their makeup, profitability, and place in the market. How many customers do they have? Do customers stick around and keep up with maintenance, or do they drop off soon after buying? How stable is cash flow? Are people being laid off? How about its management team? These are all valid questions that should be asked when looking for an ECM solution and provider,” he says.

Weighing the Investment
Financial investments vary depending on the type and size of a solution. EMC’s Leggett advises customers to approach ECM starting with the biggest pain point so ROI is more immediate.

Ward Wright, managing partner, WAVE Corporation, agrees that the amount of time and money saved varies from organizations. “However, as a general estimate, a business could expect a 30 to 50 percent savings in print production efforts and a ten to 20 percent savings in Web publishing processes.” WAVE develops software solutions such its B.Media ECM application for effectively publishing content across multiple channels including Web, print, and email by connecting product and creative teams.

There are also benefits to hiring outside guidance. i-Squared is a Pittsburgh, PA-based consulting firm specializing in ECM. The firm claims to help organizations build and implement ECM strategies with no allegiance to any particular vendor. “We help companies get the right information to the right people in the right place—and most importantly—in the right way,” says Joyce Query, CEO, i-Squared Inc. Customers will come to i-Squared for help when, “They have something like a portal sprawl, meaning that they deployed the technology and didn’t have the right governance around it,” says Query. “They can’t find information. They know they need to move into ECM, but they don’t know where to begin.”

Changes in ECM
“Perhaps the greatest difference between ECM today and ten years ago is the fact that working electronically is now the norm. Unlike ten years ago, we don’t have to convince anyone that implementing ECM makes sense. Even though there are still a lot of companies that operate primarily in a paper-based world, business owners have no doubt that digital processing is the way nearly all business will be done in the future,” says Thumma.

In addition, the acceptance and wide spread use of Web 2.0 and social networking are important to ECM.

“Consumers are starting to leverage the Internet in a new way with social networking. We understand these tools can be powerful for productivity enhancements. For most organizations, there is a big concern about compliance, intellectual property protection, and security,” says Ptacek.

Rick Hutton, VP operations and sales, Refresh Software, Inc., explains that the early days of content management focused on managing, creating, and updating Web site pages. “Today, organizations need to utilize the same content assets in a much broader variety of channels. Whether for public Internet sites, email marketing and communications campaigns, mobile-Web initiatives, intranets, extranets, and a seemingly endless array of browser-accessible applications that utilize content, effective content management now demands a component-level approach.” Refresh offers its SR2 Component content management system as a licensed software package that enables non-technical people to manage content for Web sites and other browser-accessible applications.

Web-based solutions offer on-the-go access to ECM systems. One example of this remote freedom is MS Technology’s eViewer, a scalable Java and AJAX-based image viewer that allows document access from any Web browser or mobile device. “Users view annotate, and save back to the company’s repository from anywhere with the safety and security as if you were working within your company’s network,” says Mahendra Lamba, president, MS Technology Inc.

Microsoft SharePoint is also changing the ECM landscape. “Microsoft brings its marketing muscle to this field in a manner never previously accomplished, showing organizations why ECM should be on every desktop,” says Leichtman.

However, users should still incorporate strategy before implementing SharePoint as part of an ECM strategy. “It’s an affordable solution, so organizations deploy it without any governance, strategies, or a plan,” says Query. “This leads to duplicate entries, lost files, and other problems. We’re often brought in to help fix the mess,” she adds.

ECM at Work
“ECM systems continue to evolve and help organizations reduce costs and improve efficiency and quality of service,” says Metavante’s Danola. “ECM also improves corporate accountability, risk reduction, and regulatory compliance through content control and process visibility.”