Successful ECM Implementations

Expert Opinion

A well selected ECM solution and the preparation of the best qualified resources will not guarantee the success of the ECM implementation, as it is estimated that up to one-third of all ECM projects fail. It’s just when organizations think that everything is in place that several pitfalls await down the implementation road. 

Being so focused on the implementation details, project owners and implementers tend to forget about the most important aspect of the project: end user adoption. Being a well established technology, ECM vendors and customers are so experienced  in what they do, that they tend to overlook the fact that automating business tasks will have a negative effect on business people who are accustomed to doing things in a certain way. Despite hard work, issues regarding change seem to crop up while trying to best plan for things up front. A good change management strategy is vital for a successful adaptation. In addition to the above, properly understanding end-user requirements, is another challenge. Failure to interpret these will result in a poor definition in the taxonomy structure and associated content attributes, thus obtaining a more efficient content discovery and delivery remains a promise.

On the other hand,in light of the rapidly changing landscape of IT in social computing, information governance, and cloud-based computing models, organizations need a well-defined comprehensive strategy and long term vision of their information management and ECM projects, to be able to determine whether their efforts will be a success or a failure. Time and budget constraints also play an important role in ECM project failures; because companies across a multitude of highly regulated and complex industries hardly ever recognize the similarity of their operations to those of their peers. Implementers tend to overdevelop and over customize their implementations. This will result in long, arduous, risky and expensive roll outs with even more expensive upgrade cycles in addition to unmet timelines and deadlines. Organizations willing to take on larger ECM implementations with inadequate funding or human resources rather than starting with a small project and doing it correctly also tend to fail in their ECM projects due to overlapping and unmonitored budgets.

EVER TEAM’s 20 years of expertise in the ECM Universe and its long, successful track record in client deployments provides organizations with best practices that, when turned into procedures and applied on their ECM initiatives, ensures a successful implementation.

Three aspects are covered in this document:

• End Users Focus: End user adoption is the key to a successful ECM implementation. IT Leaders and planners have to start looking closer at the cultural impact associated with this implementation. Enforcing radically different processes and promoting the usage of applications to which they are unfamiliar, will only lead to encounter roadblocks during the rollout. Usability and user experience are important criteria in the selection of the appropriate ECM solution. The more it provides a familiar user interface that does not impose a lot of changes and reduces the burden of end user training, the better it will be accepted. By adopting a strategy that places the ECM implementation in a business context where it is possible to clearly evaluate benefits, end users will feel empowered and organizations will be more likely to achieve the returns on investment expected.
• Change Management: Failure to anticipate change management leads to the failure of the ECM project. It is important that organizations plan how they will deal with changes brought about by an ECM initiative and accurately prepare their staff to those changes. Part of an effective change management strategy, organizations must involve users at the very beginning - planning stage of the project. A good communication plan that incorporates different mediums addressing all their fears, sharing goals, and highlighting how this transition will significantly improve the work environment, will help solidify staff commitment to the project. Regular and planned meetings with the respective stakeholders, discussions and whiteboard sessions, practice communities and hands-on… are all measures to be incorporated in a successful change management strategy.
• Information Governance: Information governance, also referred to by Gartner(2010) as “Content Valuation tools”, is the way an organization manages and controls its information content. Because content needs to be clean, classified, correct and credible, organizations must establish good content governance and extend its best practices across the enterprise. Information needs to be disposed of in a sensible way to reduce the cost and burden of managing it when it doesn’t have value anymore. Deciding what information should be kept and what should be disposed of is another complex process. Managing risks, complying with regulations, controlling email, reducing the cost and pain of discovery (e-discovery)… are all reasons why a successful ECM initiative relies greatly on embracing a successful content governance strategy. Organizations must put in place a set of formal and documented policies, procedures and rules that control how their enterprise content will be managed potentially across its entire lifecycle, from their creation to the ultimate destruction, before they start focusing on the implementation of their ECM project to ensure success.

Other factors are also identified but not addressed in this document such as picking the right tools, focusing on less customization, conducting proof of concepts and implementing pilot projects, establishing an ECM competency center, formulating the right business case and choosing justifiable business scenarios with measurable and immediate benefits...

[1]: Gartner, Predicts 2010: Content Management Evolves and Devolves 

By Ziad WAKIM, VP Solutions, EVER TEAM