DOCUMENT Magazine - April 2008 - (Page 13)

spend the majority of their day in email and calendaring systems, like Microsoft Outlook. Questioning Your Content 1 What are the business unit’s primary business objectives? 2 What’s the role’s work style? 3 What type of content is used by the role? 4 What’s the estimated volume of content sent to other employees? 5 How is content approved? 6 Is there a need to localize for language, laws or other location-speciﬁc issues? enterprise. Instead of asking vendors if they support a speciﬁc feature — such as parallel workﬂow support — I&KM pros can ask vendors, “How do you support this role and segment’s business context?” ECM technology is important, but it’s not always the root cause of poor ECM adoption within an enterprise. Avoid frustration and disappointment in your ECM initiatives by putting greater effort into understanding business context. Follow the examples set forth by organizations that are more satisﬁed with their ECM initiatives. >> Build the ECM investment case using IT and risk contexts. The tangible nature of both IT and risk needs from ECM can be used to build a solid business case for investing in ECM. >> Let business context drive your overall ECM strategy. Understanding business context will go a long way toward avoiding large amounts of unused ECM licenses. >> Get to enterprise-wide usage by focusing on one role/project/department at a time. >> Get librarians and records managers involved. These two roles have a good working knowledge of how different roles and business processes within the enterprise manage and use content. >> Make the business case to leaders in operational roles. Leaders in operational roles — such as marketing operations, HR operations, sales operations and others reporting to the COO — often have a good grasp on how better management and usage of content can affect business objectives. Craig Le Clair is a senior analyst at Forrester Research, Inc. He is a leading expert on information management and enterprise content management (ECM). For more info, visit www.forrester.com. ■ Step 7: Develop Investment Plans and Road Maps With a better understanding of business context, ECM teams can now focus on ECM investment strategies and plans. Usually, ECM teams must identify a shortlist of vendors that can meet their needs. With business context as a backdrop, the project team can move beyond feature- and function-based evaluations and look at vendors based on how the vendor’s technology will ﬁt the segmented needs of the www.DOCUMENTmedia.com april.08 document 13 http://www.forrester.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Document Magazine - April 2008

Document Magazine - April 2008 Contents Editor's View The Research Desk The Response Center BPM: Improving the Way You Process Contributing Writers Mapping Out Performance Build the Context Before You Move into the House of ECM Taking On the Big 3 The Human Connection Addressing Your Addresses Don't Call Us, We'll Call You The Mulitplying Image Recognizing Accuracy New Products Calendar Advertisers

Document Magazine - April 2008

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