Take advantage of embedded BPM tools to enable knowledge transfer and information use. Your Challenge ECM platforms enable many aspects of an information governance program by ensuring related pieces of content can be found even when created and stored by different departments or over long periods of time. Most organizations struggle to create and maintain the appropriate taxonomy and metadata to fully enable an ECM system. The new generation of tools can automate many aspects through full text search and automated generation of document tags. SharePoint has the highest adoption rate of any product in this landscape. Our Advice Critical Insight Look past high adoption and evaluate all of the products before settling for SharePoint. There are many products at the same or lower price point that have better features. Focus on your primary use case and ensure that the RFP and demo reflect the key scenarios that you are looking to enable. Usability of the system for end users and IT is the key to success with ECM products. Impact and Result Understand what products are available to support your content management for knowledge workers. Evaluate the vendors based on the features that matter to your organization. Determine which products are most appropriate for your particular use case and scenario.

1. The CMKW market is moving away from a generalist technology to a vertical, solutions-based market. ECM vendors are building vertical solutions to
enable customers; check the solutions available as part of your vendor review.
Timeline Information:
How did we get here?
Economic and technological upheaval reduced many enterprise’s appetite for monolithic systems.
At the same time, knowledge workers demanded document access from anywhere, including their own mobile devices.
CMKW addresses a subset of ECM technology: document management, collaboration, information organization, information governance, and – to a
limited degree – workflow.
The single largest force for change has been the widespread adoption of SharePoint. This has forced other vendors to acknowledge the need to provide
simple integration.
Understand where we are now:
Cloud created content is still an issue:
The ability to control content stored in the cloud is still difficult. Vendors have either partnered with cloud vendors or have built their own clouds to
deal with the problem.
Re-convergence of process and knowledge:
Many CMKW vendors are bulking up their process offerings to compete across these two content types. Most vendors lack the strong workflow
required to adequately support robust process management.
Compliance versus productivity is becoming a use choice:
BYOD is bringing additional content stores and creation applications to the enterprise. Vendors are discriminating their offering based on system of
engagement for productivity versus system of record for compliance.
Know where we are going:
The 3 Cs: cloud, consumerization, and communication will continue to shape ECM technology.
This will continue to blur the lines between the sub-ECM markets of document management and collaboration.
Mobile technology, particularly tablets, as well as social functionality continue to be development priorities for all of the ECM vendors.
These trends are forcing enterprises to adopt a multi-tier content management strategy: mission critical ECM for process workers and a separate
solution for knowledge workers.
Many organizations view this type of ECM platform as a necessary home for high risk collaboration. Look for this to expand as the messaging
capabilities of these platforms mature.
As discussed in Info-Tech’s Reintroduce the Information Lifecycle to the Content Management Strategy Blueprint, most organization’s content is
exploding like a firework.