Successful ECM

Maximise User Acceptance

Perhaps the most critical factor in ECM success is how well a system is embraced by its users. Start by considering the individual user’s goals and needs. Finally, user acceptance will be fastest if users actually recognize the ECM solution as making their personal work life more efficient and streamlined.

 

Meet Diverse Organizational Needs with a Unified Solution

Finding a suitable ECM system may require a lot of consideration, yet ideally once that choice is made that solution will suit an organization’s ECM needs for many years to come. Exercising some foresight as to the long-term goals for the ECM solution is therefore key. With a scalable, unified solution, the organization is free to ease their users into the content management process, for instance by starting with a records management initiative that performs the double duty of immediately ensuring compliance but also getting users accustomed to the system. As users realize the benefit of the records management system, the organization can then proceed to deploy document management or web content management functionality.

 

Implementation Scope

At a macro level, meeting diverse needs means selecting a solution that is highly configurable and a deployment that fits into the organization’s culture. If the organization works most effectively in teams, a departmental or team-based deployment may be an effective starting point, with a larger overall deployment to follow. In this type of culture, the teams will be more likely to embrace an organization-wide rollout if they first witness its success within their department. On the other hand if the organization is centralized and accustomed to systems, an enterprise-wide rollout may be most effective from the start. Choosing a system that is extensible enough to be deployed in either manner will provide the greatest flexibility. Rather than implementing and supporting a multitude of solutions, a unified, extensible system will ultimately mean less of an overall learning curve and again minimal impact on IT.

 

Integration

Another reality of an organization's IT environment is the multitude of applications that are currently in place to support different business processes. An ECM solution that integrates easily with a company’s existing applications using industry standards will ultimately have the best chance of success. This way an organization can continue to reap the benefits of their existing applications that may serve specific functional areas as they deploy an enterprise wide ECM strategy.

 

Minimise the Burden of IT

ECM also presents a great challenge in terms of implementation. By making the responsibility for records management an easy extension of users existing workflow, an effective system will distribute the responsibility for ECM more evenly across the organization instead of burdening IT. As enterprise content management becomes a top priority for CEOs and IT executives alike, Engineering Informatics is smooting the way forward for organisations making an important commitment to ECM solutions.