Is Enterprise Content Management Dead?

Death of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) or Birth of Content Services?

This debate has taken the Enterprise Content Management industry by storm and has left technology decision makers in ambiguity. Some say that it is the era of content services and others suggest that ECM would be reborn as Information Management. And, amidst all the chaos, a torrent of information is being generated across social, mobile and cloud technologies, which needs to be managed. It’s time to unravel the mystery and address the elephant in the room.

ECM- The Known and the Hidden

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) platforms have been around for quite some time now. They have enabled businesses across industries to manage content and serve customers better. It evolved from Document Management Systems (DMS), which primarily digitized, stored and managed documents through imaging, storage and document and record management technologies.

With ECM software in place, businesses automated their complete content lifecycle from content generation, storage, archival to its retrieval. To address the needs of the multi-channel digital content, ECM solution further advanced by leveraging cloud, mobility, analytics, and social technologies. By extending business applications on cloud, on-premise or hybrid environments, it has enabled users to easily access information through their mobile devices.

Other than managing content, ECM stands to offer a lot

Secured Information

ECM software allows management and security of various content types, such as documents, forms and electronic files. It facilitates organizations with a centralized repository for archiving data, thereby mitigating the risk of losing information from physical drives. It further encrypts data transfer from capture to archival and offers rights-based access to users, eliminating data leakage.

Better Regulatory Compliance

The system underpins the compliance issue by empowering companies to control and monitor the information through detailed audit logs and reports. It conforms with various regulations and policies concerning long-term archival of information and records.

Improved Customer Service

With access to the right information at the right time, users can drive contextual customer interactions. Leveraging ECM solutions, businesses can manage content across various channels and social media, resulting in enhanced customer experience.

Enhanced Operational Efficiency

Reduce knowledge workers’ time spent on information search and retrieval. With proper indexing via ECM platform, any information is just a click away. Eliminate administrative costs associated with storing and managing documents and physical records.

ECM- Dead or Not?

Analysts predict the future of a technology segment based on following parameters:

Market Definition – how software affects the market amidst new technologies and products

Software Vendors – how vendors are mapped in the market as per their technological and business capabilities

Technology Capabilities – how technology solves evolving customer needs

Based on the above underlying fundamentals, different analyst firms are predicting the future of ECM technology.

In 2016, Gartner redefined the ECM solutions market as Content Services – a strategic concept covering Content Service Applications, Platforms, and Components. However, other analysts suggest that a new term should be proposed, which will encompass both data and content strategy. And, another independent research firm has bifurcated the ECM market into two broad categories.

Different analysts are voicing different opinions. However, there are a few converging points:

Business-centric apps are gaining value vis-a- vis one-size-fits-all software. These apps can be deployed rapidly on modern architectures such as microservices (as against deployed as a monolithic packaged software). This provides flexibility for businesses to price based on the specific use case rather than standard application price points.

Contemporary capabilities are expected to be added by content management technology. A few examples of such capabilities are higher level of process automation (through bots) and contextual content & information (leveraging analytics and machine learning).

ECM is about the “what” and not the “where” of content. It is not about control over a central repository, but about enabling users to access content across distributed repositories in an Employees and stakeholders demand flexibility to collaborate across their business functions.

ECM solution should be extensible enough to be easily and instantly connected and/or embedded within 3rd party apps and tools over multiple devices and communication This should be done over time for organizations to be able to create their ‘business specific content applications’ and solve their real business problems.

Long live the Customer!

It’s clear from the above points of convergence that all analysts, vendors, and content technology strategists acknowledge that ECM technology is on an evolutionary path, driven by fast–changing market and business dynamics. However, the manner in which it evolves (and combines with contemporary technological capabilities of value) would be a function of business needs, which are eventually driven by customers.

Enterprises lay out their content or information strategy based on how they want to connect their processes, systems, people and things. Content Management technology will fit into the broader business technology stack as – Content Services Platform, Content Services Applications, and Content Services Components, along with directly or indirectly associated Applications, Systems and Tools. This, however, will be driven by customer-centric content and information strategy.

Whether ECM is Dead or Not, Long live the Customer!