At Cross Roads

As part of ECM Implementation best practices, I have harped enough about phased roll-outs, department wise roll outs on multiple occasions. Its best if you could stick with one implementation and one department to ensure high success rate. Companies generally tend to stick to this direction unless there is a compelling reason not to.

Now I am actually at cross roads !

We are in the middle of discovery sessions for one specific department in a company. Suddenly there is this other department that is now interested to get started on an ECM solution.

The IT project team is all queasy about this whole thing. Whats the best way to go about ? Take baby steps and go one department at a time ?

I decided to look at the pros and cons.

Pro's of partnering:

• The choice of the right product for Enterprise as a whole.
• The "Infrastructure setup" rules and decisions. At the end of the Discovery we will have a fair idea about the over-all Enterprise application architecture.
• Possibly negotiate with vendors for Enterprise licenses rather than per user license (which they generally push for).
• ECM is all about the "E". Its meant to be for the enterprise !

Con's of Partnering:

• Losing sense of direction with too many 'wants' ?
• Departments with varied business processes , do we want to cram it all at once ?
• Varied interest among user communities - can it jeopardize the whole implementation attempt ?

I cant go further. The Pro's seem to win !

However there is this small sense of uneasiness with the negatives. Somebody help me !

Content Generation - Is this sudden ?

Doesnt it feel like there has been a sudden increase in the content generated across companies ? Yeah, I know thats really the obvious given ! Who ever you talk to seem to say they need a system to manage the giga bytes of content that the company is going to generate and it is bound to grow exponentially.

Something to ponder over - what has changed in the last few years that everyone is rushing towards some form of content Management ? I mean companies have been operating in a certain way for years now and their core line of business and process remains the same. So why then is this rush ?

I tried to pull up some reasons and group them under the different branches of ECM.

Document Management: Some real drivers for any document management initiative are to go paperless, regulatory compliance, reduce hard copy storage costs, easy retrievals and look up, version control, reduction in manual labour for maintenance. So all the companies wanting to paperless have this urge to get into electronic form of document management. It involves converting a bulk of documents that exisit as hard copies into electronic forms and move towards digitized solutions in future. So there is the first area that is responsible for generating large scale content!



Web Content Management: The internet these days has become a competitive medium for companies to present their capabilities. In the last few years the concept of portal, personalization, commerce have picked up very well, not to forget the branding ! It important to present the best information on the website and something that is forever fresh. Yes, dynamic content ! So when content generation becomes dynamic the importance of Web content Management becomes self explanatory. Until the early nineties, we still were in the world of html's. Late nineties and 21st centruty saw the birth of jsp's, jhtml's, shtml's etc. There is the second area responsible for generating content !



Records Management: Every industry is governed by some form of Federal regulation. With the growing amount of research papers, IP's, patents, trademarks, Records Management has become the first in line item for all companies. Nobody wants to be caught in a law suit. So the answer lies in efficient management of what the company identifies as "Record". And along with it comes the third area that generates content !


Email Management: Emails are the way of the masses, leave alone companies. An average corporate inbox I feel generates atleast 30 to 40 mails an hour ! Storage and retention of email information is the buzz word in the world of ECM now. The criticality of business information exchanged over emails seems to be increasing its valumes and there by adding to the fourth area responsible for generating content !


Knowledge Management: Information re-use in organizations is the 'in thing' now. Knowledge bases and repositories are nothing but a store house of content of some form. And the growth of this content seems incessent somehow, adding to the areas that generate content!


Imaging: Although indirectly a subset of document management it is worthwhile to mention the various tracks of Imaging like, forms processing, image processing, document scanning, digital asset management, that only add to another area that generates content.

I am sure there is more to it that whats listed above. But to some extent I do know now why there are all the vendors that there are and why ECM is the hottest topic of discussion across.

On a side note, this morning i saw a small note on my AT and T return envelope where the stamp zone read - Pay online at att.com/treelover !! The message was to really go paperless to save trees. That indirectly trigerred my thought process around this Content Generation fact re -finding.

Paperless World !!

ECM Adoption - A No brainer ?

I always wonder - why does one have to build business cases capturing ROI, strategy, benefits etc to sell the concept of ECM in an organization ? If I tell you where my thought comes from then you will know my question is not silly.

I have worked with business communities of companies to chart their business case and the points they place on the table during the initial meetings are like - "No further questions can be asked on reasoning"
Usually the business case is built during the first stage of Discovery. When asked for reasons, one company said it lost most of its critcal legal documents in a flood. When i heard that I was awe struck. I was wondering why we were even spending that hour on capturing ROI, benefits etc. I mean losing critical documents to flood or any other natural calamity - is that not a good reason enough to go paperless and manage information electronically ? What more justification is required for the CFO offices to approve budgets ?

There was this other time when one company lost millions of dollars because when there was an audit conducted by a regulatory body, the users spent weeks looking for the relevant documentation which they never found. They knew it existed but their search , storage and taxonomy were unyielding. They definitely needed some good content management there. And there I was working with them strategising their business case ! Definitely felt it was a waste of time.

The above two cases and more have often made me question this process for Business case building. If the reason is as compelling as above why should time be sepnt on brain storming, review , presentation and approval. This cycle definitely will run into months. It would be wiser to divert that time into getting the system built. May be its to comply with company policies and process, in which case just have one sheet that lists the problem faced and the loss. Well, thats seldom the case. We do end up building a 20 page presentation on benefits, advantages and so on. Beats me !

Apache Jackrabbit

Apache Jackrabbit is an open source content repository for Java. It is fully compliant to JSR 170 specification,

I am an ardent fan of this utility.

If you are really looking at a small scale implementation of a Document/content Management system like say something to cater to specific regulatory compliances etc , then Jackrabbit is for you.

Jackrabbit can be used for the back-end document management system. The Jackrabbit Library services should be utilized for rendering the DM services. It does provide search and retrieval, version control and email services to name a few. Anything that is not available could be built as a simple webservice. The UI needs can be customised with any home grown system. The good part is it can well be integrated with search engines like Lucene, another Open source option.

Talk about open source exploitation !

Vendor Land is a Wonderland !

I was at the AIIM conference in Boston last month. The Expo hall there was Amazing, what with the number of ECM vendors out there ! They were players of all sizes and each of them tried to sound more competitive in what they offer to the other. If you are new to this ocean called ECM you are bound to get lost there. At some point I wondered if number of products in the market would surpass the Content Management demand.
Honestly it looks like there are tonnes of them out there.

Vendor evaluation like i mentioned in my previous blog entry is a Science by itself. It is very important to have the right choice of product.

Often I have seen companies choose ECM vendors without performing the 'Fitness test'. The choice is mostly driven by the product shop the company already is. For eg, if the company's ERP is on Oracle apps, Database is Oracle, the obvious choice they go for ECM is suites from Oracle too. While Oracle may be offering the best of breed product in ECM, without the product evaluation based on their specific requirements the choice may really not be right.

The key to ECM success is having the right tool in place. Evaluate properly and be right the first time !

Health (Check) is Wealth !

Many a times in Portals and CM implementations I have realised, the first step in the Road Map really should be a good Health Check or stock taking of the existing home grown systems across enterprise if any. The reason I say Health Check is because performance issues of existing systems for the most part form the basis of the Technology shift that the customer is looking at. For example if the enterprise has its CM system implemented on Technology X and the system starts acting up, the immediate reaction to it is to blame the Technology and indulge in frantic decision making around tool shift, architecture shift etc. An RCA at the end might actually reveal that what was needed was a tweak around the current Design and efficient capacity planning, not really heavy investments in new tools.

Now, when I say Health Check it could also mean a good due diligence of all thats available currently. Some stock taking that could be done before plunging into mega implementations include:

Analysis of the problem or the business case: It is important to analyse the exact trigger that initiated the need for a new system. If the problem lies with Design of an already existing system then some patch work around components might be the solution. If the problem is around infrastructure then some re-estimation around server capacities could potentially solve the problem. At the end of the exercise the need for the new system becomes convincing. You do not have to go through the hassle of migrating to a new technology if it is not necessary. I mean, given what it involves - tool evaluation, Implementation, User adoption and training.

Inventory of Re-usable components : Another advantage of doing this sort of a due diligence prior to the kick start of a mega program is the exposure to reusable resources available within the enterprise . This could be within one department or spread across multiple ones. Having seen implementations of big systems I can't talk enough of the benefits of re-usable components and tools. Why start from scratch when something is readily available to be re-used or customised ?

View road maps of multiple departments : Often I have seen that various departments within a very large enterprise operate independent of each other especially when it comes to IT initiatives. Its surprising, but true.
Its very critical to view the IT road maps of various lines of business within an enterprise. This could well become a good ground for partnering of programs that might run into Millions of Dollars.

Define the Program Vision : The word 'Vision' may sound rhetorical in a context like the current one. There was once when I worked with this company that was looking for a Records Management Solution. Careful analysis revealed this was a short-term approach. What the vision actually was to have a full fledged document management system and records management would be plugged in as one of the modules. Good that the Vision was chartered at the right moment, avoiding dual investments, redundancy and a lot of rework.

Business and IT hand-shake : Though listed last I feel this is a very critical exercise. The key stake holders of any IT initiative comprise of the business community and the IT team. The buy-in from both parties is very important for the success of any program. I have seen cases where priority mismatches between the two have had catastrophic effects, with the business community having less faith in the IT team.

A prudent exercise like the one mentioned above ascertains that the cause for a new implementation and the dollar value associated with it is justifiable.

The Genesis of ECM in an Enterprise

What is the trigger for the birth of ECM in any enterprise ?

In my experience working as a Consultant in the ECM space I have seen similar trends when it comes to the trigger for ECM initiatives across enterprises.

During the bake off sessions with the User community some of the common statements (not an exhaustive list though) that I have heard come out are:

"I send a hard copy file of my employee claims for approval and I lose track of it."
Read as - "I need an automated workflow."
"I try to access our shared Drive for a document and my system hangs. "
Read as - "I need an efficient Storage".
"I try to upload a document on to our Network Drive and it takes forever."
Read as - "I need a robust central repository. "
"There are loads of documents in the hard copy storage and what I have now is a very trivial Network based File Management system."
Read as - "I need a scalable repository."
"I don’t know what lies in the File system that exists."
Read as - " I need a well defined hierarchical folder structure to be able to locate files easily."
"Data look up is a nightmare especially when there are sudden audits. "
Read as - "I need a robust search engine with well defined meta data."
"Can we ever think of becoming paper-less"
Read as - "I need a digitization solution."
"I have no clue how many versions of any content exists."
Read as - "I need version control. "
"I think we are very happy with the homegrown system that tracks all the files but it would be good if we can build some intelligence around it."
Read as – "I need to evaluate tools in the market."
"I need an option to provide access to external parties."
Read as – "I need a portal. "
"Do you think we could make do by expanding our storage and bandwidth capacity? "
Read as – "I need to understand the significance of having a CM system in place."
"Compliance to federal regulations is the highest priority in our organization today"
Read as - "I need Records Management."

Any of the above traits signal a need for a Content Management System. Invariably the discovery sessions end up being discussions around the above concerns and more.
But then this is just the beginning. The period of gestation is generally longer in the ECM cycle. From the time the problem crops up until the time the system rolls out can run into years in some cases. Generally the ECM system is observed to be adopted in a phased manner.

The Idea Phase
The idea evolves in a specific department in an organization. This idea transforms into a Requirement Specifications for that Department.

The Vendor evaluation Phase
The choice of the right vendor to meet the ECM requirements of a specific organization is a Science by itself. But generally this phase contributes to the gestation period as the whole process in finding the right fit goes through multiple discussion sessions, matrices and reviews.

The Prototype Phase
The ECM embryo then grows into the next phase which is when a department /geography level prototype is rolled out. The success of the Prototype forms the basis for a strong business case.

The Partnering Phase
This is one of the most crucial phases in an ECM roll out program. An enterprise content management system works best when all stake holders of the system use it effectively and support it whole heartedly. The Partnering phase involves selling the concept of the ECM system in the organization and getting different departments and individuals see the utility of such a system. It is important to get the potential business users online and for them to buy into the idea and be willing to support the project through financial sponsorship.Frankly, the word "ENTERPRISE" on business case presentations tends to scare people and give a false sense of grandeur and complexity. The general reaction has been "Talk about Departmental Content Management and not Enterprise Content Management. Talk about local and departmental Taxonomy not Global Taxonomy." As all great journeys have small beginnings it is always advisable to start local and grow global. ECM sometimes is viewed as a woolly mammoth sitting in the middle of an Enterprise architecture. In order to avoid this scenario it is advisable to kick start the ECM roll out with small and achievable goals and to demonstrate the usefulness of the system as a whole to the actual users. Once the end user discovers that she gets some benefits out of the system, user adoption becomes easier and the system grows via the network effect and word of mouth. This is by far the best way to encourage the usage of the system than other centrally mandated diktats.

The Enterprise Roll Out Phase
This phase is pretty much the end of the wait. The prototype is scaled up to meet the requirements of various geographies, functional areas, departments in the organization and the ECM system is rolled out to the whole enterprise.

The Maintenance Phase

This is really when the ECM has evolved and is maturing slowly. The stakeholders start to contribute to the CM system and the latter undergoes a good metamorphosis to emerge as a full grown robust system.

This typically is the evolution pattern observed during a CMS Implementation. Frankly, the whole journey I have found is very challenging and after a while you begin to start expecting things to happen. The beauty is by that time you do have a well defined set of Best practices and Risk & Mitigation plan captured !