Successful ECM Is Realizing Business Value
Chief information officers are closely evaluating ECM software providers in how easily they integrate and interoperate within their organization’s current software and hardware environment, which is essential if they are to maximize the value of their technology investments.
Dimension 4—ECM governance.
For an organization to properly manage, support, sustain, control and evolve its ECM ecosystem, it requires the establishment of the appropriate governance mechanisms and decision-making structures. More mature organizations establish centers of excellence (COE) to manage best practices and build content management competencies. Roles and responsibilities are established to clearly define performance expectations, ownership and accountabilities while policies, procedures and guidelines provide rules of engagement to support the enforcement of content management practices. Without the establishment of appropriate governance mechanisms within the context of the organization’s content-enabled business processes, an ECM ecosystem will receive ineffective usage and soon wither and die.
Dimension 5—ECM reference architecture.
More mature organizations establish an ECM reference architecture that defines the suite of ECM technology standards to support the content-centric business processes. Enterprise architects dedicated to the ECM reference architecture maintain and enforce these standards so enterprise consistency and agility can be maintained.
ECM Maturity Model
These five dimensions will provide a good starting point with which to evaluate your current level of ECM readiness. An ECM maturity model helps you audit, assess and explain the current state of ECM readiness and then progress to the next level of maturity. Open Text has developed an ECM maturity model to help in your self-assessment; it is a structured framework that helps evaluate key capabilities that your organization needs to consider to overcome the barriers to success.
Measure Your ECM Maturity Online
Open Text offers a quick and easy online maturity model at www.ecm-strategy.com. Use our online tool to measure your current level of ECM maturity and identify capability gaps, and then consider working with Open Text’s content experts to help map your next steps.
Understanding the how to realize value from your ECM ecosystem, where do you go from here? The following are logical next steps:
1. Assess your ECM maturity online.
Visit www.ecm-strategy.com and complete the easy online ECM maturity assessment. This will provide a snapshot of your ECM maturity at the organizational level across a range of different factors and provide an excellent starting point.
2. Work with your ECM vendor to dig deeper.
Open Text’s account management team has access to a range of tools that allow you to expand your analysis down to the departmental and ECM module level. This provides a simple visual framework to identify areas of strength, weakness, and opportunity for ECM strategy development
3. Learn more about ECM maturity.
Consider attending one of Open Text’s ECM Strategy Workshops. This is a four-hour workshop, where a senior manager of the Open Text consulting organization introduces you to all aspects of the ECM market, provides an overview of the business benefits of the different ECM solution areas, and discusses a practical approach to identify your organization’s individual ECM needs. Solution maps from several different industries, practical tips around the specific challenges of an ECM deployment, and lessons learned from more than 4,000 deployments make this workshop a very valuable experience.
Open Text enables you to create value from content in a changing world. With Open Text, your content becomes a source of innovation, efficiency, and profit. We provide industry-leading content management technology to empower people, foster agility, and control the risk and cost of content.
For more information, visit www.opentext.com.