Effective Management of Enterprise Content
Consolidating and federating multiple content repositories to create a single-view provides fast, easy and secure access to all content stored anywhere and is preferred by most organizations. It gives authorized users a single, consistent interface and delivers content to business critical applications. In selecting a solution, there are several key attributes that maximize value and ensure rapid, cost-effective implementation:
- An open architecture based on standard Web services that ensures interoperability across applications and computing platforms and makes content available to customers, partners and other applications outside the firewall;
- Out-of-the-box connectors to various content management systems and other sources to eliminate the need for custom coding. These connectors understand how repositories are structured and translate the user’s search criteria for each one; and
- A software development kit (SDK) to build new connections to special or custom content sources and repositories for which interfaces are not provided out-of-the-box. An easy-to-use mapping facility resolves indexes and formats across disparate repositories and content sources. This is crucial for normalizing the names of data items.
Other 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 databases, collaboration, search and email archiving applications, as well as popular enterprise resource planning (ERP)/customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Just as critical as the ability to access content is the ability to work with it and check for information accuracy while moving content from one repository to another, archiving new content or updating or adding to its metadata.
Adding Information-based Workflow
Imagine that you have your content management system managing, storing, archiving and retrieving content—controlling the content chaos. You have a total content integration system in place that integrates multiple repositories, provides a single view of your enterprise content, and associates content based on customer ID, part number and other key reference points. The next step is to maximize the value obtained from your content and put it to work for you. Many business applications and content management systems have business workflows. However, most work within the application and do not extend across enterprise systems; they are also designed to support processes that are either largely human-driven or completely automated. To resolve this issue, you should consider an information-based, business process management workflow engine that orchestrates and executes business processes across departments, lines of business and applications—all while addressing both human and system business processes. The workflow engine user interface should be browser-based and not dependent upon a proprietary user interface. It is very common for entire business processes to be accessed and completed through browsers, as they have become the universal interface to information and applications both inside and outside the enterprise.
Workflow technologies integrate, orchestrate and coordinate the people, information and systems required to complete business processes. You can see, at any time, what stage the business process is in; track every action, identify who or which system completed it and when; and determine who or which system is responsible for the next step. Work can be reassigned or re-prioritized dynamically if needed. If activities are defined by role or system availability, the workload can be distributed among multiple employees or systems sharing the same role. The benefits from having an information-based business process management workflow engine enabled via a browser-based UI are far reaching:
- The content associated with operational activities, such as invoices, applications, underwriting or claims processing can be executed with minimal human intervention and fewer errors;
- Internal and external business processes are integrated so a customer-facing Web-based application can trigger an internal workflow and return a response with the correct information and content to the customer in real time; and
- Work tasks and content flow can be triggered manually by user action or automatically as a result of an event such as a purchase order, loan application, litigation hold, regulatory audit or system-generated invoice.
Bringing it all Together
The management of content that is produced by an organization’s employees, business applications, customers and business partners continues to be an enormous challenge. There is not one über-enterprise content management system that can truly do it all. Instead of the one-size-fits-all approach, take a close look at your current (and anticipated!) content management needs and infrastructure. Then, identify and implement mission-specific content management systems and business applications that will meet those needs. Employ a total content integration system to eliminate vertically driven, stove-piped applications and content repositories. And, finally, invest in an information-based, business process management workflow system that integrates, orchestrates and coordinates the people, information and systems required to complete business processes throughout your organization. Content—and its management—is a major challenge for organizations. Accept the challenge, utilize the technology that best fits your requirements and maximize the benefits provided by your content to make your organization the best it can be.
1. Adapted from Toby Bell, Karen M. Shegda, Mark R. Gilbert, Kenneth Chin, “Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management,” Nov. 2010, Gartner.