Galaxy Consulting
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Our Process
    • Meet Us at Industry Events
  • Services
    • Business Analysis and Usability
    • Content and Knowledge Management
    • Records Management
    • Information Architecture
    • Enterprise Search
    • Taxonomy and Metadata Development and Management
    • Document Control
    • Information Governance
  • Solutions
    • Information Overload
    • Compliance
    • E-Discovery
    • Internal and External Websites
    • Enterprise Search
    • Collaboration and New Employees’ Onboarding
    • Customer Service
    • Manual Processes
    • Vulnerability of Sensitive Information
  • Portfolio
    • Our Brochure
    • Our Clients
    • Case Studies
    • Presentations
    • Press Releases >
      • Galaxy Consulting Receives 2016 Best of Redwood City Award
      • Galaxy Consulting Receives 2015 Best of Redwood City Award
    • Videos
  • Testimonials
  • Blog
  • Free Consultation
  • Contact Us
  • Terms of Use/Privacy Policy

Success in Enterprise Content Management Implementations

10/31/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
A successful enterprise content management (ECM) implementation requires an ongoing partnership between IT, compliance, and business managers.

Strict top-down initiatives that leave little for users' requirements consideration result in ECM systems that users don’t want to use.

Similarly, an ad hoc, overly decentralized approach leads to inconsistent policies and procedures, which in turn leads to disorganized, not governed, not foundable content. In both extremes, the ECM initiative ends with a failure. 

Whether your organization uses an agile, waterfall or mixed approach to ECM deployment, ECM leaders must think about program initiation, planning, deployment, and ongoing improvement as a process and not as isolated events. Team composition will change over time of ECM project planning and roll-out, as different skill sets are needed.

For example, a business analyst is a key member of the team early in the project when developing a business case and projecting total cost of the project, while legal department will need to get involved when documenting e-discovery requirements.

But, there is often no clear location in the org chart for fundamental content management responsibilities, and that can contribute to weakened strategy, governance and return on investment (ROI).

Approaches to ECM

Successful ECM initiatives balance corporate governance needs with the desire of business units to be efficient and competitive, and to meet cost and revenue targets. 

Organizations should determine the balance of centralized versus decentralized decision making authority by the level of industry regulation, jurisdiction, corporate culture and autonomy of business units or field offices.

A central ECM project team of content management, business process, and technology experts should define strategy and objectives and align with the technology vision. Local subject matter experts in business units or regional offices can then be responsible for the execution and translation of essential requirements into localized policies and procedures, along with the business unit’s content management goals.

Business managers can help to measure current state of productivity, set goals for improvement, contribute to a business case or forecast total cost of a CMS ownership over a number of years. A trainer will be needed during pilot and roll-out to help with change management and system orientation. Legal department should approve updates to retention schedule and disposition policies as practices shift away from classification schemes designed for paper to more automated, metadata-driven approach.

Project roles

The following roles are essential for an ECM project:
  • Steering committee is responsible for project accountability and vision. Their role is to define an overall vision for an ECM project and outline processes and procedures to ensure integrity of information.
  • Project manager is responsible for the ECM project management during CMS deployment. The project manager's role is to create project plans and timetables, identify risks and dependencies, liaise with business units, executive sponsors, IT, and other teams.
  • Business analyst is responsible for outlining the desired state of CMS implementation and success metrics. This role is to gather business and technical requirements by engaging with business, technical, and legal/compliance stakeholders. They need to identify the current state of operations and outline the desired future state by adopting a CMS system.
  • Information architect's role is to define and communicate the standards to support the infrastructure, configuration, and development of ECM application.System administrators - their role is to define and implement an approach to on-premises, cloud, or hybrid infrastructure to support a CMS.
  • CMS administrator is responsible for the operation of the CMS. This role is to define and implement processes and procedures to maintain the operation of the CMS.
  • User experience specialist's role is to define standards for usability and consistency across devices and applications, and create reusable design and templates to drive users' adoption.
  • Records and information managers' role is to define and deploy taxonomies, identify metadata requirements, and to develop retention, disposition, and preservation schedules.
Core competencies will be supplemented by developers, trainers, quality assurance, documentation, and other specialists at various phases of the ECM deployment project. It is important to provide leadership during the deployment of a CMS. The team should bring technical knowledge about repositories, standards and service-oriented architectures, combined with business process acumen and awareness of corporate compliance obligations.

Information architects will be important participants during both the planning and deployment phases of the project. Communication and process expertise are essential for ongoing success. IT, information architect, and information managers should learn the vocabulary, pain points, and needs of business units, and help translate users' requirements to technical solutions so that the deployed CMS could help to improve current processes.

Compliance subject matter experts should communicate the implications and rationale of any change in process or obligations to users responsible for creating or capturing content.

Project plans, budgets and timetables should include time for coaching, communication, and both formal and informal training. Even simple file sharing technology will require some investment in training and orientation when processes or policies are changed.

Strategic asset

ECM is a long-term investment, not a one-time technology installation project. Enterprises can often realize short-term ROI by automating manual processes or high-risk noncompliance issues, but the real payoff comes when an enterprise treats content as a strategic asset.

A strong ECM project team demonstrates leadership, communication skills and openness to iteration, setting the foundation for long-term value from the deployment efforts.

For example, a company aligned its deployment and continuous improvement work by adopting more agile approaches to project delivery, as well as a willingness to adopt business metrics (faster time to market for new products), instead of technology management metrics (number of documents created per week). That change allowed the company to better serve its document sharing and collaboration needs of sales teams in the field.

The project team must engage directly with the user community to create systems that make work processes better. It is a good idea to include hands-on participation and validation with a pilot group.

Recommended practices

Follow best practices from completed ECM projects. Review processes, applications, forms, and capture screens to identify areas of friction when people capture or share content. User experience professionals have design and testing experience, and they need to be included in the ECM deployment team.

User participation is valuable throughout the ECM deployment project. Direct input on process bottlenecks, tool usability and real-world challenges helps prioritize requirements, select technologies and create meaningful training materials.

Senior managers who participate on a steering committee, or are stakeholders in an information governance strategy, should allow their teams to allocate adequate time for participation. That might mean attending focus groups, holding interviews, attending demos and training, or experimenting with new tools.

Be proactive

A sustainable and successful ECM initiative will be responsive to the changing behavior of customers, partners and prospects, changing needs of users, and corporate and business unit objectives. Stay current with ECM and industry trends. ECM project team members should keep one eye on the future and be open to learning about industry best practices.

Businesses will continue to adopt mobile, cloud and social technologies for customer and employees communication. Anticipate new forms of digital content and incorporate them into the ECM program strategy proactively, not reactively.

Proactively push vendors for commitments and road maps to accommodate those emerging needs. Stay alert to emerging new vendors or alternative approaches if the needs of business stakeholders are shifting faster than current ECM technology. Aim for breadth as well as depth of knowledge, and encourage team members to explore adjacent areas to ECM to acquire related knowledge and think more holistically.

0 Comments

    Archives

    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    January 2022
    July 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    July 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    October 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    September 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011

    Categories

    All
    Alfresco
    Arena
    Automatic Classification
    Autonomy
    Big Data
    Business Analysis
    Case Studies
    Change Control
    Change Management
    Cloud Content Management
    Cloud Ecm
    Cloud Enterprise Content Management
    Cms
    Collaboration
    Compliance
    Concept Searching
    Confluence
    Content Analysis
    Content Localization
    Content Management
    Content Management Systems
    Content Strategy
    Controlled Vocabulary
    Coveo
    Crisis Management
    Dams
    Data Integrity
    Data Security
    Digital Asset Management
    Digital Asset Management System
    Digital Transformation
    Dita
    Document Control
    Document Control Systems
    Documents Management
    Documentum
    Drupal
    Dublin Core Metadata
    Ecm
    E Discovery
    Engineering Change Process
    Enterprise Content Management
    Enterprise Search
    ERoom
    E-Signature
    Exalead
    Fatwire
    Gamification
    Gmp
    Gxp
    Hadoop
    Information Architecture
    Information Governance
    Information Overload
    Information Technology
    Iso 9001
    IT Systems Validation
    Joomla
    Knowledge Management
    Knowledge Management Applications
    Metadata
    Mobile Devices
    Naming Conventions
    Ontology
    Open Source Cms
    Open Text
    Oracle
    OWL
    Personalization
    RDF
    Records Management
    Risk
    Search Applications
    Self Service
    SEO
    Sharepoint
    Social Media
    Structured Content
    Taxonomy
    Teamsite
    Thesaurus
    Tridion
    Twiki
    Unified Data
    Usability
    User Adoption
    User Centered Design
    Vasont
    Vivisimo
    Web Site Content
    Web Site Design
    Wiki

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.