It Don’t Come Easy
Why ECM is Harder Than It Looks

“One thing we don’t try to do is think in terms of a ‘suite’ or ‘platform’ or comprehensive solution,” he says. “Granted, ultimately it’s the goal of any provider to sell more and more of their stuff. But what I’m seeing among vendors in general is getting away from the ‘big-bang approach’ of trying to do too much, too soon when the customer isn’t ready for it. For a brand new customer, I always highly recommend an incremental approach. Otherwise, the customer will just look at you like a deer in the headlights.

“A lot of customers just don’t know where to start. They are so overwhelmed by managing the proliferation of content. It’s important to have someone at a high level—progressive CIOs, hyper-aware executive level—who can understand that there’s both a horizontal need to manage the massive amount of content, as well as vertical needs by department. That can overcome the ‘what’s in it for me?’ issue. I’m starting to see a lot more interest in solving the ‘horizontal’ problem, though, from the executive level... AND the legal departments, by the way,” he adds.

Creating a synergy among organizational entities has been the Holy Grail for content management just about forever. And Randy is well aware of the challenges. “Centers of excellence is a great concept,” he says, and he believes in them. He’s referring to a committee, basically, made up of stakeholders from various departmental disciplines who come together to guide an organization’s overall strategy. And while he (and I) believes in them... they’re a little bit like the Easter Bunny. “Companies are not putting enough of a governance structure in place to manage the decision-making necessary for a horizontal approach to ECM. Even developing steering committees to create polices for decision making is extremely immature. It’s rare to find an organization that’s been proactive enough to really manage it over the long term; it requires a very robust governance model. And this is one of the struggles that most organizations have... even the best-managed ones,” Randy says.

What’s wrong with mandating a process or an application, and simply making it mandatory? I ask. “It’s no longer possible for the director of IT to just roll out an application. If it doesn’t find traction and adoption among users, it won’t deliver on the value promise. It still happens, but that mindset is slowly vanishing,” believes Randy.

There’s that word again...value. I ask whether there are any reliable methods to measure ECM’s value proposition. “We have a concept called ‘key value indicators,’” he says. “When it comes to content management in general, there’s been a lack of understanding of how to measure whether it’s successful or not. There’s a lot of confusion, and organizations don’t have the processes in place to monitor and measure. They don’t think it’s important; they get the project in place, and move on. That’s not unique to content management, by the way; that’s fairly typical behavior,” he adds quickly.

“Value indicators are high level. You need to convince Mr. CIO or Mr. Executive from the beginning: ”How are you going to measure success?” And there are quantifiable measurements, and qualifiable measurements. We try to convince them, up front, that you need to build in measurement metrics. If you DON’T do that, the solutions will wither and die. But we’re aware that there are things that are more easily measured than others. For example, measuring the integration of invoices with an ERP system... managing the efficiency and cost of all those invoices can be quantified. Transactional processes are easily quantifiable. But you’d be surprised at the number of organizations—even though it’s easy—that don’t measure it! We simply go back to the customer after a while, and ask: ‘Based on this use case, how are you achieving results?’ ‘Did you achieve what you expected from this initiative?’ Now I can tell you: this is fairly new, for us and the customers! But I’m proud that we’ve matured to this point. It’s nothing new; it’s very typical value engineering methodology, but you’d be surprised how few people do it,” says Randy.

Going for Gold
I’m always interested in how business units get their pet projects—such as an ECM deployment—funded, especially in uncertain economic times. And when it comes to ECM, as we’ve stated above, there are all sorts of hurdles to leap: the wispy nature of the value proposition; the difficulty in crossing organizational borders without a common language; the costs involved, and on and on.

“It’s typical for quantifiable metrics to be applied to transactional systems, such as ERP, invoicing, workflows, etc.,” says Randy. “Do you know why?” “Yeah,” says I: “Because it’s easier!” It’s like the old joke about the man on a street corner looking for his keys. His friend walks by and asks “Where did you lose them?” Guy says, “About a block down that way.” “Then why are you looking here?” the friends asks. “Because the light’s better here,” he answers.

“True, transactional systems sort of run themselves. Once you put a process in place, you really DON’T have to monitor them that much. But metrics surrounding content management are horrifying for organizations,” he says. “But we’re learning. We’re learning how to think in terms of: How hard is it to find a piece of unstructured information? And how efficiently can you find it? It’s hard to find a metric to monitor that... but we’re getting there.”

Randy also took a moment out of our time to express another “value” measurement that is often overlooked. “There’s been a history of rolling out applications, and then just assuming that they’re great. But there’s little attention paid to the lessons learned, and perhaps, more importantly, the hidden value...the unexpected value. That, I have found, is an unexplored area. Yes, you have certain defined benefits, but there’s a serendipity value that comes with these solutions, too. And unless you assess and really think about things in retrospect, you’ll never really appreciate that.”

I don’t think there’s any reader of this article who doesn’t believe there is great value to be found in an organization’s content stores. Nor do I think there’s anyone who wouldn’t agree that it’s extremely difficult to benefit from them. The following articles take up that challenge of educating, clarifying and—maybe—solving the puzzle many of you are faced with every day. Take a few minutes to absorb the thinking represented here. It may be the most valuable minutes you’ll spend for a long time.