Enterprise Content Management Overview
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) provides a structured approach for the governance of information management toward the goal of improving compliance, information reuse and sharing, and operational performance. ECM incorporates methods, policies, metrics, management practices and software tools to manage the lifecycle of both structured and unstructured content. With Big Data as a pressing issue in today’s corporate world, organizations must improve the level of trust users have in information, ensure consistency of data, and establish safeguards over information. Developing this level of trust requires an information integration and governance platform that supports a Big Data strategy. ECM is a key core component of this information integration and governance platform.
Industry Challenges and Pain Points
Data is gathered from employees (Knowledge Workers) and various sources throughout an organization. There are numerous forms of content that we all take for granted which are filling up our company’s data storage facilities – Electronic Documents, Web Pages, Forms & Templates, Printer Output, File Shares, emails and many more sources. Knowledge Workers collaborate in globally distributed teams. In this kind of environment, they have a strong impact on the amount of unstructured data that resides in an organization. The information a Knowledge Worker possesses is what you use to make business decisions, contains structured data and unstructured content, is involved in processes that make your business operate and should be in accordance with compliance guidelines, specifications, and legislation. This large volume of structured and unstructured data makes it difficult to find files, creates a great deal of duplication, has a high cost and creates a bottleneck in maintaining a productive work environment.
IBM ECM Solution
IBM offers enterprise content management solutions that deliver organizational content which provides rapid business insight driving informed action. These solutions reinforce and build upon existing enterprise content management capabilities to operate and scale flexibly across a diverse range of content environments. These capabilities include industry specific-solutions that capture, activate, share, analyze and govern content throughout its lifecycle. The IBM ECM Platform consolidates several functions into one that create a fully integrated Enterprise solution. There are 3 major function of the platform 1) Content, 2) Process and 3) Compliance. By integrating these 3 components you can maximize the data in your organization, save costs, improve efficiencies and deliver faster data to your employees and customers. The IBM ECM platform is made up of several tools that work together in a cohesive fashion and can also stand alone:
IBM Content Navigator
IBM Case Manager
IBM Content Analytics
IBM FileNet
IBM Content Manager
IBM ECM Solution Features and Benefits
Key Features:
Capture – Automate document imaging. Leverage Integrated, flexible content repositories for content solutions.
Activate – Achieve a 360-degree case view with collaboration, content, process, analytics and business rules.
Socialize – Share, collaborate and manage it all in context, including office documents.
Analyze – Derive new business insight rapidly by accessing, interpreting and analyzing unstructured content.
Key Benefits
Effectively retain and archive information, meet e-discovery obligations and dispose of information to lower cost and risk.
Improve decision-making by finding, assessing and deriving insight from content anywhere it exists.
Operationalize, automate and instrument your defensible disposal program.
Govern and improve information economics.
Reduce run rate storage cost and risk.
Business Case for using IBM’s ECM Platform
In today’s collaborative world of exchanging information between employees, partners and customers….many companies are compiling large amounts of data that are not filed and purged properly. As storage costs are growing and tagging/classification of data is harder to maintain, it is a clear business case for IBM’s ECM Platform. The initial exercise would be to analyze the current state on your ECM policies and identify the gaps. Also taking a survey of your employees would allow you to understand patterns and gather requirements. After info is gathered, you will need executive and line management buy-in and kick off an enterprise wide project which has common goals to benefit the organization. Measuring the cost savings of an ECM platform may be difficult, but you can calculate ROI by the improved efficiencies, reduced storage costs, increased productivity and its direct impact on revenue generation. IBM is a master at managing and storing data and the ECM Platform will benefit any organization!
