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Enterprise content management
 It
is critical for companies organise their content in a manner that makes it easier
for employees to create, access and store information. Deepak Shikarpur
explains content flow in the enterprise and the urgent need for organisations
to structure their content
Enterprises that fail to unlock the value of their content
assets, from documents to Web pages to digital assets, are losing billions of
dollars in lost opportunity.
— Alan Pelz-Sharpe, VP Research & Consulting
North America, Ovum,
Content is the backbone of all businesses, whether
in the form of product specifications, legal documents, purchase orders or manufacturing
procedures. The volume of content that companies create is staggering. Analysts
estimate that the volume of content each company will manage will continue to
grow at the rate of 200 percent per year.
What is content?
Content is in essence, any type or ‘unit’
of information. It can be text, images, graphics, video, sound, documents, etc.
Content may be more than just a piece of paper or simple file or, any data type
conveying information most effectively to the reader (text, graphics, video,
audio) or an executable program. In short:
Content = Unstructured + Structured data
Need to manage content in an enterprise
It is estimated that 85 percent of the data generated
by an organisation is unstructured. It is the problem of managing unstructured
data that has led business enterprises to look towards effective tools for content
management.
What is enterprise content management?
- Enterprise content management is the technologies,
tools and methods used to capture, manage, store, preserve and deliver content
across an enterprise.
- Capture–Data capture, imaging, scanning and
hybrid systems, colour scanning, forms processing, handwriting recognition,
ICR/OCR/voice recognition.
- Manage–Business process management and outsourcing,
workflow, portals, search engines, XML, content categorisation and classification.
- Store–Email security and archiving, data warehousing,
storage systems (SAN, WORM, RAID, MO, DVD, CD-RoM), compression.
- Preserve–Records management and archiving,
film-based imaging, digital preservation, disaster recovery and planning.
- Deliver–Digital printing and publishing, print
systems and utilities, encryption, authenticity, digital signatures, electronic
bill presentment, wireless/WAP /Bluetooth.
ECM enables organisations to effectively manage content
across the enterprise. Content management focuses largely on Web content management
while its forerunner, document management, was the first large-scale attempt
to automate the handling of unstructured information. ECM is the combination
of the two.
The core of any effective business or enterprise application
is the strategic management of content. Handled strategically, content can bind
together the customer-facing layer of a process (customer relationship management,
e-commerce, etc.) with the back-office (ERP, legacy databases, order processing,
etc.) fulfilment layer into an effective application
To sum up, whatever industry you are in and whatever
type of work you do; you are likely to have more content than you know what
to do with. All of that information is useless without proper management. ECM
is the key to making all of your content throughout your organisation useful
to you.
Need for enterprise content management
While enterprise content management is a serious issue
for most enterprises—large or small, private or public, around the world—it
is a pressing concern for data-intensive industries such as financial, education,
healthcare, telecom, retail, manufacturing and entertainment as well as certain
government and military agencies.
The initial challenges organisations faced in managing
content were based solely around managing hard documents. Then came the Internet,
driving the digital economy and changing the way we do business. Today, organisations
are faced with managing large numbers of documents through millions of pieces
of graphics and text for Web pages.
Organisations look to emerging technologies to ensure
up to date and accurate information gets to the right people at the right time.
Analysts estimate that the volume of content each company
will manage will continue to grow at the rate of 200 percent per year.
The content silo trap
There are multiple content creators (departments /
sections / branches) that create numerous information products (product specifications,
brochures, reference documents) for multiple channel delivery (paper, Web) for
multiple content users (customers, suppliers, partners, employees)
Too often content is created by authors working in
isolation. Walls are erected among content areas. With the result that content
is created and recreated and recreated. This leads to:
- Lack of standardisation and consistency.
- Higher cost of content creation, management, and
delivery.
- Poor communication.
- Lack of sharing.
Content management - in a state of crisis
Unprecedented volumes and varieties of enterprise data
are driving up demand and raising the stakes. As a result, despite the astounding
increases in information processing speed since the advent of ‘the information
age’, a typical office worker still spends up to 40 percent of his or her
time looking for information—the same as in 1940.
In order to remain competitive, organisations must
have fast and far-reaching access to content and the ability to deliver it immediately
to users. Enterprise content management is intended to support the entire business
information supply chain by providing the right information to the right person
at the right time.
Deepak Shikarpur is executive director of the Computer
Society of India. Contact him at deepakshikarpur@yahoo.com
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