When SharePoint deals with Enterprise Content Management

Expert Opinion

Ziad Wakim, VP Solutions, EVER TEAM

Microsoft SharePoint platform is now positioned as a strategic brick in most enterprises. It is clear that since the launch of the 2007 version, the economic and administrative actors have massively turned towards this solution not just to meet not just their collaborative requirements but also their content management needs.

This trend seems to be accentuating in regards to the release of SharePoint 2010, which greatly strengthen its Enterprise Content Management capabilities. SharePoint 2010 should therefore position itself as true ambassador for the implementation of a content management solution with added value within the enterprise.
By educating businesses on the benefits of content management and providing basic functionalities, SharePoint is therefore positioned as a partner of enterprise content management solution providers. Indeed, they can rely on a robust and scalable platform proposing enterprise content management solutions that cater to the most complex and business oriented enterprise content management projects.

There is no competition but rather a genuine balance and real opportunities for market software editor developments. Content management at increased added value will from now on become the suppliers’ key to provide business oriented answers to their customers.
It is therefore essential to benefit from Microsoft SharePoint’s functional enterprise content management base, valorizing innovative ECM propositions built directly on this platform, bringing true business oriented added value to cover the dematerialization, business files management or even regulatory compliance. It is hence not about limiting the propositions to simple SharePoint connectors, but answering business needs relying on a unique, consolidated repository, and a familiar and rich user experience provided by SharePoint.
In this context, many innovative business oriented solutions can be considered: bring unstructured content closer to business, optimize document oriented processes, and address issues related to compliance through legal archiving.

One of the challenges would be, for example, to access and deposit content directly into the SharePoint repository from the different business applications used on a daily basis, such as custom line of business applications, ERP, CRM, e-mail, desktop…
The projects for dematerialization and business productivity improvement (business files, correspondence management, claims processing ...) can now be directly based on the SharePoint repository, avoiding the risk of creating silos of content and applications.

Finally, in terms of compliance, SharePoint 2010 allows Electronic Archive solutions to be positioned efficiently on top of SharePoint, to meet regulatory and normative constraints. Effectively, many other offers should are also expected to emerge in the coming years.

The SharePoint 2010 platform should thus largely position content management as a must-have for companies. Undoubtedly, we will observe new ECM projects developing or evolving in the short run. Enterprise content management software vendors who will leverage this platform and add to it a business dimension will witness nice days to come.

By Ziad Wakim, VP Solutions, EVER TEAM