Change. Whether it is politics, the economy or the Enterprise Content and Records Management (ECRM) market, this is a time where many people are wondering what to do in both the short- and long-term. Organizations and people who refuse to change do so at significant risk to their future.
After several false starts, Microsoft's SharePoint was the big story in 2008 ECRM market. Many organizations moved forward with ambitious implementations. A few realized that unplanned deployments caused as many problems as they solved and began the expensive process of re-architecting implementations already in progress. Part collaboration tool, part portal and a little bit of ECM and RM thrown in, SharePoint has become the most successful product launch in the history of Microsoft.
In the year ahead, look for third parties to develop tools to help better manage SharePoint sites and speed deployment. The mainstream ECRM vendors are also all enhancing or perfecting their integrations so that users in SharePoint can retrieve objects stored in the more robust back-end ECRM solutions.
Industry analyst Tony Byrne of CMS Watch sees 2009 as the "great SharePoint Inhale" as organizations wait for Office 14 and Windows 7. "Enterprises will continue to incrementally invest in their SharePoint implementations, but increasingly around the softer issues of governance, policies and procedures, rather than developmental work on the platform itself, as they wait to see what Redmond changes in the platform and how - and how that impacts sunk costs in third party modules, enhancements and extensions," says Byrne.
Governance, Centers of Excellence, policies, etc. aren't unique to the SharePoint environment. Many departmental ECM systems are being expanded to include records management in full-fledged enterprise implementations of ECRM. Issues like security, taxonomy, reusable modules and system upgrade paths all become more important.
Industry veteran Mike Alsup, senior vice president of Gimmal, an ECM strategy and integration firm, states, "Organizations that fail to employ proven ECRM frameworks are likely to waste money and delay the benefits if they don't get comprehensive ECRM programs in place. The problem of retrofitting thousands of SharePoint sites to fit an enterprise ECRM program's information life cycle requirements makes the conversion of traditional legacy applications look trivial in comparison."
Cost justification will also return in a big way. Compliance applications have driven many implementations for the last few years, but a very tight economy has meant that organizations are looking for programs that not only meet legal and regulatory requirements, but also contribute to the bottom line.
"More and more organizations are realizing that large-scale ECM projects rarely provide the expected ROI. Instead, organizations are focusing energies on specific high-value, high -return areas and attempting to manage content/records within explicit boundaries," observes Ganesh Vednere, ECM Consultant.
Industry consolidation continues among the vendors, but the real question is why ECRM companies will be bought. In the past, many ECRM companies were bought to fill strategic or complimentary product gaps and leverage the installed footprint and sales force of both companies. In many cases, the user base of the installed products required continued maintenance and support and even enhancement in some cases. But some of the recent acquisitions are less strategic and more about hard-nosed economics.
The OpenText purchase of XX, for example, provides the opportunity for economies of scale and the potential to convert the existing installed base. Even in deals with some strategic fit, such as the Autonomy purchase of Interwoven to add WCM capabilities, there are product overlaps from ECRM products that both companies have. Meanwhile, the big players like Google, Microsoft, Oracle and SAP have decided not to make acquisitions and instead rely on their existing products or third party relationships.
Disruptive market forces like Open Source and Software as a Service (SaaS) continue to make market in-roads, but the weak economy represents both risk and opportunity for them. For ECRM SaaS vendors, the weak economy is helpful as their low-cost implementation and outsourced support has given them a significant advantage over their mid-tier traditional rivals. But if the ECRM projects get cancelled entirely, then SaaS vendors may be unable to sustain their growth and attract enough investment dollars to allow them to continue to grow.
According to Vednere, "As the economic cycles change, organizations will increasingly reduce IT spend in procuring or developing large-scale systems. There will be renewed interest, especially amongst larger organizations on leveraging open source ECM as a platform."
Open source for ECRM has been slow to develop, in part because professional services firms have been slow to develop in tandem, but the community of both developers and implementation specialists may increase as unemployed or under-employed IT professionals look to enhance their skills and learn new systems and technologies.
The old adage of "those who forget history are doomed to repeat it" also offers opportunities during these periods. For example, during the last banking crisis, the companies that emerged the strongest were those that aggressively bet on information technology to help reduce future costs and improve service to customers. The same benefits may be possible for those who "double down" on ECRM technology now: This technology is one of the few that actually helps with the trio of regulatory/compliance, cost savings, and improved service to customers.
Regardless of what happens, ECRM will continue to be a compelling priority for commercial and government customers alike.
Dan Elam serves as a managing director at Gimmal Group, where he works with end user organizations to select and implement ECRM technologies. He currently serves as the chairman of AIIM's Emerging Technologies (EmTag) Advisory Group.
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