The ECM Purchasing Process

In order for an organization to properly implement and utilize a document management and workflow solution, it must first understand the "why" behind the potential purchase. In many cases, an organization will task an employee for identifying and cataloging multiple enterprise content management (ECM) vendors without understanding the overall need or push for this type of solution.

It is imperative that the business answer the following questions before moving forward with the overall selection of vendors:

What has made our organization look at an ECM solution?

• Have there been legal costs associated with lost documents or has it taken significant manpower to find documents for litigation purposes;
• Is the organization looking to improve its disaster recovery procedures based upon research that shows significant financial vulnerability in the event of a disaster;
• Do you have industry or governmental regulations that are required in order to sustain your business within proper compliancy measures; and
• Is your organization looking to create process consistency through defined and automated business rule development?

Is your organization looking to adopt an ECM solution company-wide or is it a single department that is taking on the initiative?

Does your company have an existing ECM solution that is not being utilized or has significant problems?

Is your company looking for a hosted solution (SaaS) or an on-premise solution?

Buying Triggers

Companies must determine why they are moving toward an ECM solution in the first place. Generally, comments like "we have to" lose traction quickly and the research effort simply becomes just that—research only. It is important that companies determine why they are researching these products. What event has occurred that is causing them to look at a solution? Once your company has identified why it needs an ECM solution, it can begin to narrow down its list of vendors very quickly. The common ECM buying triggers are:

Legal/litigation costs that require proof of document validity
When a company faces litigation, there are generally significant internal costs beyond the attorney's hourly rate. The company is faced with presenting documents that are sometimes 20 years old and are no longer onsite.

Disaster recovery
iDatix is located in sunny Florida and therefore we always have to be prepared for the worst when it comes to hurricanes and flooding. All companies face some level of disaster threat and therefore it is necessary to ensure the system that you purchase can be easily backed up and recovered in such an event.

Compliancy/governmental regulations
Most organizations are held to some level of compliancy whether it is through governmental regulations, industry standards or simply competitive measures. The compliancy aspect generally creates the fastest document management customers because organizations can be threatened with severe fines if they do not meet standards in a timely manner.

Automated business rule development/efficiency
In the competitive markets of today's world, it is essential that your organization runs as smoothly as possible. In order to achieve process optimization, it must be properly examined, defined, and managed on an ongoing basis. Workflow components of ECM can provide this functionality and give your organization a leg up on the competition. This buying trigger is becoming more common as organizations are looking to operate more effectively with less resources and costs.

The Decision Factors

Company initiative is important in the identification of needs because it leads to questions about the approach your organization is looking at when rolling out an ECM solution. We have seen organizations develop plans to implement the whole solution enterprisewide in one large project and others that choose to take a departmental approach. Regardless of the direction, there are considerations for both approaches that are very important.

Here are some sample questions that are important to identify as part of your initiative:

Departmental approach
Is this a grassroots effort by the departmental manager to implement an ECM system; and if so

• Has the manager reviewed the hardware infrastructure required for this type of solution with IT?
• Does the budget include potential costs for storage and server hardware?

Has the department manager spoken with other strategic departments to potentially share costs and create better economies of scale through unified processes?

Company-wide approach
Has the company decided to implement all departments concurrently or implement one department at a time?

• Have the departmental managers been consulted in the buying process; and
• Who is the primary stakeholder in this buying process? Who has the ultimate buying powers? Manager or IT?

Both methods have validity, but we generally recommend a departmental approach with the idea that enterprise expansion will follow soon thereafter. This particular approach reduces the company's risks as they are able to see success in one department before moving onto other parts of the organization. We also typically recommend that IT is involved from the conception of this buying process as it is imperative that they have buy-in during implementation. Implementations can come to a halt very quickly if the IT staff does not cooperate with the requests of the implementation engineers.

The final important element of identifying company initiative is to ensure that all major stakeholders are involved in the buying process. When a company-wide initiative is put in place, it is imperative that departmental managers are involved with the selection process so as to ensure adoption as it rolled out. Users who are involved in the purchasing decision are often much more likely to adopt and champion.

Market options
The ECM market has been inundated with a number of new players over the last five years. Many of the providers have very similar solutions that enable basic document capture and storage mechanics. The market has evolved considerably and it is important that an organization consider all vendors that can effectively meet its business needs. Often, due to the sheer amount of options, many organizations end up settling for larger known names as a result of their uncertainty. This however does not guarantee that they are purchasing the best fitting solution nor the best price.

Identify market players
In order to overcome the numerous options in the market, it is best to work backwards through your industry. A great start is to determine who the niche players are in the market because they have experiences with businesses like yours. The evaluation phase should consist of market player identification by niche along with discussions with competitors and other similar businesses. Referencing similar businesses can give you distinct insight into the benefits an ECM solution can bring to your organization.