Business Challenges and Drivers
Several major business drivers influence ECM platform development. Enforceable document retention policies, systems for managing unstructured information, and consistent records management are all key requirements from a legislative standpoint.

Finally, organizations are looking to ECM solutions to help with the process of authoring and publishing this information, internally and externally, without burdening the IT department. Even if users are on board with implementing an ECM solution in principle; they will not embrace a system unless it integrates nicely with their current work style. Explicit requirements within each of the major categories of document management, records management, web content management and forms management need to be addressed in the context of an overall ECM strategy.

In records management; the requirements include establishing retention and expiration policies; and minimizing outdated information within the organization. An organization usually has one or more ECM solutions already in place that have been deployed in a particular department to address very specific needs. As the organization moves towards having a companywide ECM strategy, it becomes important for any new solution to be able to interoperate with existing solutions using industry standards.

Since user adoption is key to the system's success, ensuring that users recognize ECM's usefulness in streamlining their own workloads is key.