User insights on ECM selection and implementation

As an industry association, the Enterprise Content Management Association (AIIM) is unusual in representing both suppliers and end users of enterprise content management (ECM) products and services. We have over 100 supplier members, including the biggest names in IT, alongside consultants, outsourcers and specialist software developers. We also have nearly 70,000 professional members and associates worldwide across a whole spectrum of commercial and public sector companies.
Last month we took an active part in the Documation UK event at Olympia, where over 1,500 delegates attended the exhibition and conference. AIIM is a partner on the event which is organised by Reed Exhibitions. On the following day, we organised one of our regular Trade Member meetings which included a question and answer session between suppliers and a panel of end users. Both of these events provided an excellent opportunity to observe how IT users interact with suppliers and how daunting the task of selecting a supplier and pursuing an implementation project can be.
At the Documation event, I was struck by the difficulty users face of obtaining a good fit between your organisation and that of the supplier when selecting any enterprise software system. At the AIIM stand we were frequently asked, “Who should I be talking to?” Discerning from 50 plus ECM exhibitors what size of customer and project a supplier is comfortable with is more difficult than it sounds. Salesmen will always pick their biggest customer to talk about, and existing client lists always highlight the biggest household names as they are the most easily recognised. An honest statement of a focus on small and medium enterprises, if that is where a supplier has achieved most success, will frequently save much time in evasive discussions about user numbers and prices, and will almost certainly result in a better fit of customer size to supplier size.
Similarly, establishing expertise in your particular vertical market sector or departmental process can be difficult. ECM could be considered a horizontal infrastructure application, but there is no doubt that previous experience in legal, engineering or local government may be re-assuring for you. Exhibitors at a trade show cannot be expected to bring along their experts from all sectors, but some evidence of being able to ‘talk-the-talk’ of your application area is going to be useful to establish a rapport.
The final dimension of the matrix arises in any product area that has achieved an enterprise level of functionality. Whilst most of the leading ECM product sets will these days have modules to cover document management, email management, capture, records management, collaboration, knowledge search, web content, etc., they are likely to have all started off in one or other of those areas, and grown into the other areas either by acquisition or organic development. The result may well be distinct disconnects in functionality or usability. Post-acquisition integrations frequently take a number of versions before they become truly seamless compared to continuous developments, although they are likely in themselves to offer a best-of-bree d function set. If your application has a particular bias towards collaboration or records management, then a product lineage which started in that area may prove to be a better fit to your requirements specification, and provide better assistance during implementation.
Paying a consultant for initial advice may pay dividends, even for a small company, but further begs the question of how to choose a consultant.
Moving on from the show to the user panel at our Trade Members meeting, we had senior IT professionals from retail banking, manufacturing and government. Each panellist was very articulate and well-seasoned, and gave us insights into how ECM projects might succeed or fail:

It is critical that ECM projects involve the business/user community early on and throughout the project’s life cycle. Business users need to be educated on the what and why proposition of ECM, or else they will resist any adoption. It is often helpful to start with a simple, targeted deployment and use it as part of the learning experience, enabling more wide-scale deployments later in the project;
The introduction of the CIO (Chief Information Officer) is considered a best practice. The chief or manager of IT services may still exist, but reports to the CIO. The most important difference is the focus of the CIO on enterprise information as an asset, not as technology per se;
It is wise to have a CRO (Chief Risk Officer) sign off on all ECM projects. Typically, ECM implementations will make concessions on functionality for a variety of reasons, ranging from lack of budget to a need for infrastructure investment. These concessions need to be documented and understood and appreciated by the CRO, i.e., what have we accomplished and are we still vulnerable in any manner?
It is wise for the solution providers (i.e., vendors) to sell their wares to the CIO, and not to the end users of the solution. Education and ‘internal selling’ are seen as a role of corporate personnel, not the solution provider. Software purchases need to be coordinated across multiple priorities and platform issues, and should not be addressed as piecemeal buys between a vendor and a user department;
Collaboration is a very real issue within the organisation. Various levels throughout the enterprise are seeking ways to collaborate. Enterprise 2.0, however, is not a word that is used much, if at all. It is seen as something off in the distance, whereas records management, web content management, document management and e-mail management are very real. However, if Enterprise 2.0 is positioned as a new approach to collaboration, you are likely to get some attention, because again, collaboration is on the minds of many;
The key business driver behind any ECM purchase is an alignment and support of a bigger business strategy. You need to take a good look into what are the business drivers of the organisation, and then determine (and educate the business) on how specific technologies can help achieve those goals. Do not discuss the technology or tactical deployments, but the realisation of a business objective. If this is accomplished, the issue of cost savings and ROI becomes a ‘nice to have’ component of the justification, not mandatory — unless you are a government entity in which case cost and ROI will likely be the most compelling driver behind any ECM investment.

All in all, very sound advice for anyone setting out on an ECM project. You can learn more about selecting and implementing ECM, ERM (Electronic Records Management) and BPM (Business Process Management) from the AIIM Certificate training programmes. These widely recognised professional qualifications cover Practitioner, Specialist and Master levels and are available as online modules, in-house courses, or public classes. See www.aiim.org.uk/training.

Doug Miles is the UK Managing Director of AIIM Europe. AIIM is the Enterprise Content Management Association, and offers a range of education, training and marketing resources to ECM users and suppliers. For more information, see www.aiim.org.uk.