Best Practices in ECM: Document Migration

As companies scale and grow through mergers, acquisitions and reorganization, businesses are left with a dizzying array of data sources, including databases, repositories and file servers. One such data source, enterprise content management (ECM) document repositories or archives (also referred to as IDARS or COLD systems) have historically been used to store millions of statements, policies, and other customerfacing documents.

Businesses are forced to embark on ECM document archive migration projects for a variety of business reasons. These include:

• High cost of annual maintenance fees
• Mergers and acquisitions.
• ECM systems vendor consolidation
• Improved information access.
• Regulatory compliance.
• Mainframe "modernization".
• Document Content Enabled Vertical Applications

These pressures have resulted in a desire and need for organizations to migrate critical business documents locked away in legacy or inferior ECM systems into a more contemporary technology such as those from the vendors of leading ECM systems e.g. IBM Content Manager OnDemand, which offer the rich functionality demanded by today's business requirements.