Blogs

Last week, AIIM hosted a tweet chat, tag #ECMJam, to discuss Content Management. After some discussion, we made the theme of the chat as to whether or not ECM was still relevant. Bryant Duhon wrote a nice little summary of the event, complete with a log. I thought I would share the answers to the questions here, outside of the 140 character limit.

1. Is ECM Still Relevant? I say yes. The term is dated and it should be thought of as more of a strategy and not a solution to be purchased, but the practices and needs around managing content throughout an organization is more important today than it was 10 years ago. Why? Simple, there is more content. The problems haven’t gone away; we just need to focus more on the business problem.
2. Is ECM just for large companies? A big negative to that question. While the volumes are smaller and the technical architecture is less of a concern, the problems are the same. Small companies still have lots of different content to manage. They may actually have more types of content because that big financial system may be a big honkin’ spreadsheet. The problem is that most people associate the principles of ECM with the larger vendors, and their price tags. Software-as-a-Service will bring it to the masses.
3. Does SharePoint's prevalence and "good enough" approach eliminate need for ECM? No it doesn’t. You still have to plan and manage. In fact, it is the lack of leveraging the lessons from Content Management space that have plagued SharePoint installations when they grow out of control. Governance is missing. There are also some technical limitations SharePoint faces when dealing with large volumes, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be part of the solution in those cases. Fun quote: SharePoint is not evil, Microsoft and the people installing it willy-nilly are evil.
4. Is the overall commodization of Content Management making this all a non-issue? No, see answer 1 as to why. Commodization is reducing the cost-point and eliminating the technical hurdles for implementing an effective ECM strategy. It is now cheaper and easy to do this stuff, but you still have to plan and implement governance. What this does do is free us up to focus on the business issues.

There are likely to be some follow-up posts as well. In the meantime, enjoy the summer and don’t forget that the next ECMJam is July 28 at 11am. The topic is social and content management.