Content Integration: Simplifying Your Environment
In a recent survey, Forrester Research found that 43% of the firms surveyed claim to store content in more than five repositories company-wide—and 25% are contending with more than 15 repositories.
The challenge is compounded by the variety of documents and formats now used in day-to-day business operations. These include bills, statements, check images, report output, scanned forms, e-mail, transactions, policies, correspondence, Web elements, audio, video and more. When an employee needs all the information about a transaction, or when a customer wants access to all the information about his or her account, this complex infrastructure makes information retrieval difficult and time consuming.
The proliferation of content repositories is a result of mergers and acquisitions, departmental solutions and home-grown applications. But however they got where they are, companies now realize that they must manage content as a strategic asset and develop an integrated content infrastructure that consolidates content repositories. By doing so, they will reduce IT and business unit costs, improve customer service and accelerate decision making, time to market and revenue generation.
Content Integration Models
There are two fundamental ways of integrating content. The first approach utilizes a single, integrated content repository. The second provides a consolidated view of content in multiple, disparate repositories. The best method for a given enterprise depends on the number of repositories currently in use, the willingness to undertake conversions and the importance of speed in effecting a solution.
The Integrated Repository.
An integrated repository must be scalable, secure, searchable and, most important, it must handle an abundant variety of content types from application output and desktop-generated documents to rich media and Web elements. A robust content repository also provides multi-key, multi-level indexing to facilitate search and retrieval and is built on a distributed architecture, enabling multi-platform implementation.
Integrating all content in a single system will significantly reduce IT infrastructure costs by consolidating servers and eliminating software that the enterprise licenses and maintains. It will also simplify the environment for users who now need to learn and log on to only one system to retrieve the content they need. But vendor choices will be limited, as most content management vendors do not offer a single, integrated repository for all content types. And converting content from legacy content management systems may be time consuming and/or impractical, putting the ultimate objective of consolidated content either beyond reach or well off in the future.
An Integrated View of Multiple Repositories.
The alternative is a solution that provides a consolidated view of content in multiple, disparate repositories. This approach provides flexibility in selecting—or retaining—different vendors for different applications, leverages existing investments and speeds implementation. In selecting a solution, there are several key attributes that will maximize value and ensure rapid, cost-effective implementation:
An open architecture based on standard Web services to ensure interoperability across applications and computing platforms and to make content available to customers, partners and other applications outside the firewall;
Out-of-the-box adapters to your various content management systems will eliminate the need for custom coding. These adapters understand how the various content repositories are structured and translate the user’s search criteria for each source. A robust solution will have adapters to major databases and popular search engines as well; and
An easy-to-use “intelligent dictionary” that maps fields across disparate repositories and content sources. This is crucial to normalize the names of data items (e.g., “policy-num” vs. “pol_no”) and formats (e.g., “10/12/03” vs. “10-12-2003”).
Additional important features include automatic transformation of content to browser-friendly formats; multiple presentment options; flexible security options with single sign-on capabilities; and interfaces into the major databases, search engines and e-mail applications, as well as popular ERP/CRM systems.
Mobius’s ViewDirect Total Content Integrator takes this approach, providing integrated access to multiple repositories and creating an environment in which the user does not have to know where or how content is stored. This type of solution will reduce your total cost of ownership and simplify your IT environment.
Mobius is the leading provider of integrated solutions for total content management, offering the ViewDirect TCM integrated content repository as well as ViewDirect Total Content Integrator, a facility for accessing content across multiple, disparate repositories. Content integration is the foundation for ViewDirect TCM, a complete suite of solutions that address all enterprise content requirements. For more information, visit: www.mobius.com