ECM: Understanding ECM, What It Can Do For You, And Justifying The Cost

Enterprise content management (ECM) has been among the fastest growing sectors in technology for more than five years. The drivers continue to be on the rise in this compliance and regulatory environment, and return on investment (ROI) can easily be demonstrated. Why then is it still so difficult to gain buyin and board approvals for ECM initiatives? According to the AIIM ECM Industry Watch in 2007, 29% of respondents indicated justifying the investment and gaining board approval was the biggest challenge; 28% said planning/managing the implementation and change management were the biggest challenge. Let's explore why that is and the best way to address these issues.

To have an effective discussion on enterprise content management (ECM) we must first ensure we have a common understanding of the term. ECM is an ambiguous term to say the least, and depending on one's perspective, they may define it differently. Below are four definitions.

1. AIIM International, an international organization specializing in ECM (www.aiim.org), defines ECM as "technologies used to create, capture, deliver, customize, and manage content across the enterprise in support of business processes."
2. Doculabs defines ECM as "a category that combines the capabilities of enterprise document management systems and content management systems, with the ability to manage the full lifecycle across a growing array of content types."
3. Michael Rudy from Stellent, now acquired by Oracle, approaches it this way. "WCM (web content management) at its extreme is focused on building Web sites and DM (document management) at its extremes is focused on highly specialized documents off in the corner somewhere…ECM is focused on all that content that is in the enterprise and out with partners somewhere."
4. Meta Group defines ECM as "technology that provides a means to create/capture, manage/secure, store/retain/destroy, publish/distribute, search, personalize and present/view/print any digital content."