Enterprise Management Associates, Jan 2007, Pages: 64
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is a rapidly evolving field that enables a business to create, acquire, store, index, deliver, and delete this wide variety of content. It is a critical part of IT, providing the ability for business to access structured information, meet legal and compliance requirements, and serve customers. This study provides some of the most extensive research to date, based on customer surveys and interviews, covering content use patterns, business drivers, expectations, preferred vendors, distribution requirements, and more.
This research report provides a definition of content and ECM; outlines the traditional taxonomy for different types of enterprise content; examines the current state of ECM, including business drivers, outcomes, usage patterns, purchasing intentions, and more; investigates penetration and impact of a number of new online content technologies; and profiles many significant ECM vendors and products.
EMA defines content as a combination of data, form, and context. Traditional content includes documents, Web pages, images, forms, video, etc. Many new online content technologies are also emerging, such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds, etc. Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is a broad collection of disciplines that enables a business to create, acquire, store, index, deliver, and delete this wide variety of content.
This EMA research report outlines a traditional content taxonomy, examines the current state of ECM, investigates the impact of new online content technologies, provides market insight, recommends actions for enterprises and vendors, and profiles many significant ECM vendors and products.
Key findings from this in-depth quantitative and qualitative research into ECM include:
- Many organizations have little or no content management discipline. 82% of enterprises use network file servers as their primary content repository; 60% use e-mail folders; 14% have no formal content repository at all.
- Enterprises with ECM solutions are very happy with their effectiveness and cost-benefit - over 80% rate their ECM solution as being effective with at worst a neutral cost-benefit. Satisfaction varies by vendor, but the most satisfied enterprises have deployed two or more complementary solutions.
- Enterprises are implementing ECM primarily to improve access to information, collaboration, and productivity. By contrast, cost reduction and regulatory compliance rate last and second-last respectively as expected outcomes from ECM deployments
- Businesses rate documents as their most important content type. E-mails are ranked second - higher than spreadsheets, Web pages, or application reports
- E-mail is by far the most used content delivery mechanism, ranked most important by almost 90% of enterprises, beating both Web pages (66%) and hardcopy delivery (50%).
- Online content technologies are used exclusively or often by 41% of respondents, but the same content is managed on average by less than 10%. Use of these technologies is set to grow by up to 20% annually. Already, more enterprises deliver content via instant message (25%) than via fax (16%).
- The ECM market is continuing to grow strongly. One third of respondents plan to deploy new projects in the next 12 months. Of these, a quarter will spend up to $100,000, and over a third will spend over $200,000.
Key Recommendations include:
- Enterprises must establish a minimum standard for content management to enable improved productivity, business efficiency, and legal compliance. File servers and e-mail folders are not good enough, and impose significant legal and monetary risks.
- A holistic approach to content management utilizing specific interoperable technologies is likely to yield the best results. Enterprises should focus on specific usage and outcomes in order to manage content according to its business value, while building toward a broad strategic goal for ECM.
- Enterprises should implement ECM with realistic and defined objectives and expectations related to efficiency and productivity, rather than merely cost reduction or compliance.
- Enterprises need to at very least manage, or even better formally adopt, emerging online content technologies. Properly managed, these technologies provide significant business advantages. Without formal management, they will be adopted anyway, but they will impose significant costs and risks.
