Services >

Your Enterprise Content Managment (ECM) Solution

By now, the notion of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is hardly a new concept for most organizations. As the digital age has facilitated communications, it has brought with it a greater wealth of “content” than ever, in a multitude of formats such as images, text documents, Web pages, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, drawings, e-mail, video, and multimedia. This explosion of structured and unstructured content can be complex and difficult to manage, and the problem is growing rapidly. Recent studies, by industry experts, indicate that more content will be created in the next two years than in the entire previous history of humankind, and over 93 percent of it will be in electronic form. Moreover, these electronic documents must be integrated with an already complex assortment of paper-based information. The overwhelming need to organize this information digitally, in a protected, yet accessible, format, is pushing ECM solution designs in new directions.

Several major drivers are influencing platform development. At the forefront are pieces of legislation like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which has moved ECM from being a nice-to-have system to being a must-have system. Enforceable document retention policies, systems for managing unstructured information, and consistent records management are all key requirements from a legislative standpoint, but several other factors are also influential.

First, there is the obvious need to exert control over an abundant volume of records and documents, with the resulting benefit of reducing task duplication and minimizing time spent wasted looking for old documents (or worse, re-creating documents from scratch). There is also the need to automate business processes in order to facilitate content handling and replace existing manual paper processing, which ultimately results in streamlining workloads and creating greater throughput. Finally, organizations are looking to ECM solutions to help with the process of authoring and publishing this information to the intranet, extranet, and Internet without burdening their IT department.

Explicit requirements within each of the major categories of document management, spreadsheet management, records management, Web content management, and forms management need to be addressed in the context of an overall ECM strategy. For instance, in dealing with document management, some of the particular requirements include establishing standardized content types, version control, workflow process, and collaboration; with spreadsheet management, one must have the ability to preserve the integrity of the data, ensuring a “single version of the truth” while at the same time protecting confidential information with comprehensive security controls. In records management, the requirements include establishing retention and expiration policies, and minimizing outdated information within the organization. In terms of Web content management, the requirements include finding a way for non-technical personnel to take control of Web sites within their departments. These specific requirements, and more, should all be addressed by an overall ECM solution.

Back to Top

Another challenge that an organization needs to overcome is integrating the various components of ECM. Typically, an organization starts with a need for one or more ECM components to meet a particular business need, but once these components have been deployed, the requirements grow to include other components as well. So how does an organization gradually build up its ECM strategy by deploying these components in a way that does not present an architectural and deployment challenge?

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 toward having a company-wide ECM strategy, it becomes important for any new solution to be able to interoperate with existing solutions using industry standards.

An ECM solution that is scalable, easy-to-use, integrated, and interoperable with other applications ultimately has the best chance of being successful.

The Microsoft ECM offering provides organizations with an integrated solution for managing the entire life cycle of different types of content, including documents, forms, images, e-mail messages, instant messages, and more. User acceptance and uptake will be high, thanks to an intuitive interface that integrates with common Microsoft applications such as Microsoft Office Word 2007, Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007, and many types of Web browsers. This integration with familiar tools allows users to make ECM an extension of their normal workload without having to change the way they work.

The key components of an ECM solution, such as Web content management, records management, document management/collaboration, search, and workflow, are provided on a unified platform based on the widely adopted Microsoft SharePoint® Products and Technologies foundation. IT maintenance time is reduced by the fact that the solution can be deployed and managed using common tools and services, and end users can take a more active role in activities like authoring/publishing Web content and declaring business documents as records. Support for industry standards such as Web services and Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) allow the Microsoft ECM offering to coexist in a heterogeneous environment, and various extensibility mechanisms allow organizations to customize the solution for their vertical or compliance needs.

- Microsoft Corporation – July 2006
“ECM – Breaking the Barriers to Broad User Adoption”

Back to Top