Content Management: Maximising the Value of Enterprise and Web Content
Butler Group, November 2009, Pages: 252
Introduction
The problem of managing large volumes of content cannot be addressed by simply throwing technology at it. There are many organisations that have to implement a second Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system because the first implementation failed. One of the main reasons for this is that insufficient planning has gone into the initial implementation, and there has been no clear understanding of the objectives for the implementation.
There are many other reasons for the failure of an implementation, but two of the most avoidable are ensuring that there is end-user buy-in when the content management system is implemented by making sure that users are consulted at all stages of the implementation, and creating policies for the management of every type of content that needs to be retained by the organisation. Failing to win the support of end users for a new application will result in users refusing to adopt the system; failing to manage all types of content will result in users deleting content that should be retained, or in unauthorised users accessing sensitive content.
Business Issues
Many organisations still have the same business issues that they had when they first implemented a content management system. They process large volumes of paper documents, and are still encountering problems managing growing quantities of unstructured content. As most of these organisations have now implemented a content management solution, the only conclusion to draw is that the platform selected is not appropriate for the organisation’s requirements or that it has not been implemented optimally and it has failed to deliver any business benefits. One of the reasons for this is that the implementation will have been rushed to address compliance issues without any consideration of what business benefits the system could provide and which vendor product had the tightest fit to the requirements of the organisation.
Deployed in these circumstances an implementation will always fail to deliver any real benefits. The result of this is that many organisations now have to implement a content management system for the second time. Organisations that are on their second iteration of content management have a choice between continuing with their existing solution by implementing the latest version, or migrating to an alternative system. For those organisations whose first content management implementation has been a failure, the only sensible way to proceed may be to implement a new solution. This will involve re-defining the objectives, consulting with users in order to understand the way in which they work and how processes can be improved to make their jobs easier, and going through the complete procurement process again to find the tightest fit between the requirements of the organisation and the functionality offered by the content management solutions. Only by doing this will the implementation stand any chance of succeeding. Of course there are many other steps that must be performed in order to ensure a successful implementation, but these are three of the most important.
However, many organisations are not in a position to be able to abandon existing content management systems completely and must integrate any new system with the existing products already in place, which results in an added layer of complexity.
A factor that must be taken into account during the implementation stage is how the organisation is to manage high volumes of paper documents. Many organisations are failing to digitise paper documents, which still comprise a high percentage of their content, and are typically stored in an off-site warehouse once they are no longer required on a regular basis. There is no protection for paper documents if a disaster befalls the warehouse. If the documents need to be retained for compliance their early destruction because of a disaster is no defence. Therefore organisations must ensure that their documents are fully protected, and the only way to do this is to digitise them and maintain them in an ECM system where they can be backed up.
An added complication is that much of this paper-based content originates outside of the organisation and it needs to be captured electronically in order for it to be managed and protected adequately. This content is often required as part of a transaction alongside structured or transactional data, which necessitates the bringing together of data and content from multiple sources.
Technology Issues
Commoditisation has taken place in the core components of ECM and there is very little to choose between the vendors in this area. The main areas of differentiation relate to content in transactional processes, content collaboration, the integration of Web content into the management framework, and the protection of sensitive data.
The addition of Business Process Management (BPM) functionality to ECM platforms has resulted in an evolution of the functionality of ECM to provide Transactional Content Management (TCM), which combines ECM and BPM technologies to allow organisations to create content-centric processes that bring together transactional data and content. TCM has become a major focus for many of these vendors, and it has resulted in a re-positioning of their products. However, for this strategy to be fully successful and for the vendors to enable organisations to easily build complex processes, advanced BPM capabilities are required, such as a simulation capability, and analysis tools which not all of the vendors provide. Therefore, care must be taken in the selection of a content management platform if TCM is required. Some vendors also supply pre-built vertical and horizontal solutions for common tasks. If organisations require TCM then they need to ensure that they select a solution from a vendor that has provided processes for their industry if they wish to take advantage of these pre-built processes.
Content collaboration is addressed by collaboration tools, which is another area of differentiation between vendors. Although all platforms will provide some degree of collaboration, the extent of the tools should influence the choice of solution. Collaborative tools vary from having the ability to review documents as part of a simple workflow to providing a full range of tools that include Enterprise 2.0 technologies including blogs, wikis, and forums as well as supporting workspaces to enable project-based work. Organisations must ensure that they determine the level of collaboration required before choosing an ECM platform.
The extent of the Web Content Management (WCM) capabilities in an ECM framework is another factor that may influence a decision on the choice of content management solution. Not all vendors provide WCM, and historically the vendors with the strongest solutions have been those that evolved from a WCM background.
However, the situation is not so clear cut now as some vendors have acquired specialist WCM vendors to strengthen their products. Many organisations select a separate WCM solution from a niche vendor, but they need to ensure that it integrates with the ECM platform deployed in order to be able to share and reuse content. In addition, there may also be a requirement to retain Web content as records, so the WCM solution must also integrate with the Records Management capability of the ECM platform. A new feature within WCM, which is gaining traction particularly amongst specialist vendors, is Web analytics. Such is the value of this functionality that Butler Group regards the absence of Web analytics to be a weakness in a WCM product.
In order to differentiate themselves some vendors are moving into other areas which were not previously associated with content management to provide solutions that address very specific requirements. These new areas include input management, which enables the capture of paper, faxes, and data and delivers the information into business systems, databases, and content repositories; output management, which creates, formats, personalises, and distributes content to customers; and Information Rights Management (IRM), which enables organisations to apply security to content.
Although there are specialist vendors that offer all of these types of product, it is advantageous to have them offered by a single vendor for organisations that prefer a one-stop-shop approach. Of these capabilities, IRM is the most significant for content management. Organisations must consider protecting sensitive documents to ensure that unauthorised personnel are unable to either view them or send them out of the organisation.
This will help to prevent data leakage, although organisations must not depend on IRM alone to protect content and prevent data loss.
Market Issues
The Content Management market is continuing to consolidate, with Autonomy’s acquisition of Interwoven and Open Text’s purchase of Vignette being the latest major acquisitions. This leaves Open Text as the only remaining tier one independent pure play ECM vendor. However, we do not expect Open Text to remain an independent pure-play vendor indefinitely, and the company is most likely to be acquired by an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) vendor in the future. The fact that there are so many companies having to implement a second ECM product because the first implementation failed helps to explain why the content management market continues to be extremely lucrative, encouraging vendors not previously associated
with this market to buy into it. The importance of Microsoft in the content management market cannot be understated, despite the company’s content management solution not being one of the market leaders. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) is the entry point to content management for many mid-sized and smaller organisations that find themselves with growing volumes of content that need to be managed. Whilst the requirements of some of these companies will grow to an extent that a more extensive content management platform will be required from one of the larger ECM vendors, MOSS will continue to be adequate to address the needs of other companies. MOSS is also gaining traction at the departmental level of large enterprises, and allowing employees that do not have access to the corporate ECM system ad hoc access to content management.
Such is the importance of Microsoft to this market that all ECM vendors provide integration to SharePoint and the absence of this integration should be regarded as a weakness in any ECM product An important development in the content management market is the growth of open source vendors. Alfresco is the undisputed leader, although Nuxeo also has a strong offering and is building its market share.
Section 1: Management Summary
1.1 Management Summary
Section 2: Introduction and Business Issues
2.1 Report Introduction and Objectives
2.2 Business Drivers for Content Management
2.3 Data Loss and Compliance Issues
Section 3: Components of Content Management
3.1 Architecture
3.2 Document Management and Collaboration
3.3 Records Management
3.4 Digital Asset Management
3.5 Search and Classification
3.6 Archiving
Section 4: Transactional Content Management
4.1 The Evolution of Transactional Content Management
4.2 Establishing the Business Need for TCM
4.3 Business Applications for TCM
Section 5: Deployment Considerations for Web Content Management
5.1 Analytics in Web Content Management
5.2 Web 2.0 Technologies
5.3 Disaster Recovery for Online Content
5.4 Web Content Management as Software-as-a-Service
Section 6: Market Analysis
6.1 Butler Group Enterprise Content Management Features Matrix
6.2 Butler Group Enterprise Content Management Decision Matrix
6.3 Enterprise Content Management Market Analysis
Section 7: Technology Audits
Alfresco – Alfresco 3.1
EMC – EMC Documentum 6.5
Hewlett Packard – HP TRIM
Hyland Software – OnBase Version 8.2
IBM – Agile ECM
Microsoft – Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
Nuxeo – Nuxeo Enterprise Platform – v5.2
Open Text – ECM Suite
Oracle – Oracle ECM Suite
Vignette – Vignette TCM, Vignette WCM
Section 8: Vendor Profiles
Active Navigation
Alterian
Autonomy
CA
Datum
Day Software
EPiServer
FatWire
Jive Software
Plasmon/Alliance Storage Technologies
Sitecore
Squiz
Symantec
VYRE
Section 9: Glossary
- Active Navigation
- Alterian
- Autonomy
- CA
- Datum
- Day Software
- EPiServer
- FatWire
- Jive Software
- Plasmon/Alliance Storage Technologies
- Sitecore
- Squiz
- Symantec
- VYRE
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