Ready. Aiim. Understand.

16 Pages·2009·0.92 MB·English

1
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Ready. Aiim. Understand.
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ECM TODAY
TO SUCCESSFULLY MANAGE YOUR INFORMATION, YOU MUST UNDERSTAND
THAT ECM STRADDLES BOTH TECHNOLOGY AND STRATEGY.
Enterprise content management (ECM) is the strategies, methods, and tools
used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and docu-
ments related to organizational processes. ECM tools and strategies allow
the management of an organization's unstructured information, wherever
that information exists.
ECM technologies, properly implemented, improve access to your content,
enable the reuse of content, and can provide faster time to market.
In short, ECM:
• guarantees business CONTINUITY, 24x7x365
• enables employee, partner, and customer COLLABORATION
• ensures legal and regulatory COMPLIANCE
• reduces COSTS through process streamlining and standardization
Information can be a competitive advantage, but you’ve got to manage it
correctly so that the information is USABLE. Getting a handle on information
and content is a daunting task for even small organizations. However, as the
tools have matured and best practices have been identifi ed, “It’s too hard”
is no longer a good enough “reason” not to get started. So get started.
Turn the page.
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Unifi ed Records Management:
A Necessity for Today’s
Responsible Enterprise
TODAY’S ENTERPRISES FACE an explo- suppliers and partners could be, the facts about a transaction. They are
sion of business critical, unstructured so records must be discoverable a trustworthy and dependable resource
data. It takes the form of emails, instant and carefully managed. for future decisions.
messages, portals, on pieces of paper, Governance is everywhere, and it is 3. Integrity - a record has to be kept as
and electronic documents. All of this clear that the number of compliance regu- a complete set of all documents that
unstructured data requires an enterprise lations will continue to grow. To prove represent the transaction. Retention
content management (ECM) framework, compliance, enterprises must be able to rules must be consistent for all of the
and that framework functions best on produce evidence that they conducted documents that comprise the record, and
a foundation of records management. business according to the rules. Even if the all of the record’s document s must be
Unified records management sets the enterprise does not face industry specifi c maintained until the prescribed destruc-
stage for more efficient management regulations, they need to keep records to tion date of the complete record. Records
to provide greater responsiveness to prove sound governance and to comply can be found and viewed in the context
customers and by enforcing compliance with the Sarbanes Oxley act or Federal of broader business activities.
policy across the enterprise, reducing Rules of Civil Procedure. For these rea- 4. Usability - records can be located,
ediscovery costs and risk. sons, it is critical that businesses manage retrieved, presented, and interpreted
Unstructured business information records according to industry standards over long periods of time. A server-side
needs to be organized as records. A and best practices. rendering engine can facilitate the ren-
record is all of the information managed, Not all of these regulations spell out how dering document into long-term storage
in context, which makes up an event or records must be managed, but all of them formats for ease of visibility while main-
business transaction. This may include expect that they are. When kept, the most taining the original document to ensure
documents, emails, physical objects, straightforward way to manage them is to authenticity.
meeting minutes, websites, intranet sites, follow the standards of ISO 15489. A unified records management
IM conversations, and tasks. Given the system (URM) is critical to enforce
high growth rate of business data and the GUIDANCE FOR RECORDS compliance policy across the enterprise.
fact that a record can be a relatively com- When an enterprise selects a record man- URM lets you manage records gener-
plex collection of documents, there are agement strategy that is built on the rules ated in disparate systems spread across
many problems that can occur if records of ISO 15489, it ensures it can maintain the large geographical areas in a single,
are not carefully managed from the point necessary characteristics of a record. The well structured solution. URM takes the
of creation. These problems include an record, whether it is a folder containing mul- view that records management needs to
inability to fi nd information, unreliable tiple documents that describes a business support the silos of information used in
records, out of control costs, and slow transaction or a single document, retains line-of-business applications by captur-
performance and customer responses. authenticity, reliability, integrity, and usabil- ing the content in a central repository
Additional issues are high ediscovery risk ity should it be needed as evidence. where records are managed: however the
and the associated cost of non-compliance What is ISO 15489, and why is it the information remains fully accessible by
and slow litigation responses. model for compliance best practices? The the silo systems.
ISO 15489 standard prescribes four charac- Without a unifi ed records management
THE NEED FOR GOVERNANCE teristics for a record: strategy, many ediscovery risks increase.
In today’s business environment, every- 1. Authenticity - requires that any altera- When different systems are used for
thing is discoverable. Every record tions to a record are authorized, access is data management, records management,
is potentially critical, and needs to monitored, and users are authenticated. and archiving, issues arise that increase
be authentic and accurate. It is a fact Audit trails recording access are a key ediscovery risk. Authenticity becomes
of today’s world that compliance is a component of this capability. a problem if there is no central security
significant business concern. World- 2. Reliability - records are an accurate system as audit trails are not joined and
wide, there are over 20,000 compliance representation of the transaction that records have different functional access
requirements that businesses may have they describe and can be depended upon controls. Reliability becomes an issue when
to adhere to. Even if a company is not in future transactions. This means that records cannot be captured into a “common
directly affected by a particular compli- it should be compiled by the people event” container, so after the fact assembly
ance or governance regulation, their involved in the business who know all of the event-based record is unreliable.
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information explosion and manage regu-
latory compliance risks and the cost of
Many problems can arise if records are not
ediscovery across the enterprise. The
records management system provides the
carefully managed from the point of creation:
structure necessary to apply context to
business information as it is created and
an inability to fi nd information, unreliable captured, and enforce the compliance
policy. These structures must be rigid
records, out of control costs, slow performance enough to maintain record context over
long periods of time, yet also be able to
and customer responses; not to mention elevated provide enough flexibility and scalability
to manage a large range of business pro-
ediscovery risks and the associated cost of cesses. A unified records management
approach provides the foundation of an
non-compliance and slow litigation responses. enterprise content management system
for better business outcomes.
Without reliability, records management critical records for audit and compliance
integrity becomes a problem as no single requirements.
view of folder records exists, so the record 3. Multiple copies of the same documents
chronology is unclear. Usability is lost if the are stored on shared drives and desk-
application is no longer available to read the tops. With unifi ed records management
document and it can’t be used as evidence. the problem of multiple copies are
Business problems can occur if there avoided, alleviating authenticity prob-
is insuffi cient records management. lems. Only one copy of a document is
Examples of the potential problems include stored. It can be referenced with a link
slow responses to legal or public inquiries, in multiple locations.
HEWLETT-PACKARD
diffi culty routing requirements needed 4.Paper documents cannot be easily
for the Freedom of Information Act and searched and identifi ed. A unifi ed 6600 Rockledge Drive
other compliance regulations, reduced staff records management solution enables Bethesda, MD 20817
productivity due to information access both electronic and physical records to Attn: HP TRIM
ineffi ciencies, and a dearth of collaborative be found with a single search. PH: 877-686-9637
methods used for shared problems. These 5.SharePoint collaboration sites duplicate Contact: [email protected]
business issues are caused by: reference documents on multiple sites www.hp.com/go/imhub
1.No integration for line-of-business and have limited records management
applications. For example, with unifi ed functionality. Once a document has Hewlett-Packard is a technology
records management, invoices from been declared as a record in a URM, it solutions provider. HP informa-
an SAP system can be saved as records is removed from the SharePoint library tion management (IM) solutions
and accessed through a central method, and transferred under the full control can help you make better, faster
such as SharePoint. of the URM repository. A link to a single decisions with improved business
2.Legacy data is not properly rendered authoritative version of the document is insight; meet compliance require-
and stored for long-term archive. With placed in SharePoint so that the content ments; and reduce the cost of
a unifi ed records management system can still be retrieved from the records information management. In 2008,
legacy records are maintained long management repository within the con- HP acquired TOWER Software,
after the functionality of the system text of the SharePoint library. a leading records management
that created them has been retired. This The goal of a unified records software company, to strengthen its
reduces the cost to maintain business- management solution is to control the information management portfolio.
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BY BRYANT DUHON AND JANELLE JULIEN
What Is It?
It’s not enough to
“manage” content.
CONTENT AT WORK. Enterprise CAPTURE
content management (ECM) is the Unstructured content enters an organiza-
technologies, tools, and methods used tion’s IT infrastructure from a variety of
to capture, manage, store, preserve, sources. Regardless of how a piece of content
and deliver information, content, and enters, it has a lifecycle. Electronic unstruc-
documents related to organizational tured data includes email, instant messages,
processes. ECM tools and strategies allow text documents, spreadsheets, etc. Struc-
the management of an organization’s tured data includes both electronic/paper
unstructured information, wherever forms and paper documents. Content can be
that information exists. captured by the following methods: scan-
The ability to access the correct ning, document imaging, forms processing,
version of a document or record is impor- and recognition (OCR, ICR).
tant, but organizations must plan beyond Once content has been captured,
this point. Content must be managed so develop an indexing scheme by creating
that it is used to achieve business goals. metadata from scanned documents
Central to this strategy are the tools and (e.g., customer ID number) so the docu-
1 technologies of ECM, which manage ment can be found. Indexing can be based
the complete lifecycle of content from on keywords or full-text.
creation to disposal. Use the following
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information as a starting point to review MANAGE
a common content lifecycle. Map a cur- Document management technology
rent process to see where you may find helps organizations manage the creation,
overlap and room for improvement for revision, approval, and consumption of
the applications and strategies that your electronic documents. It provides key fea-
business is developing. The following tures such as library services, document
information only touches the surface of profi ling, searching, check-in/check-out,
the complexity in any process that man- version control, revision history, and docu-
ages an organization’s content. You must ment security. Records are content
match the technology tools to address of long-term business value, which can be
your business needs. Technology can managed according to a retention sched-
enable streamlined management of con- ule that determines how long a record is
tent; however, the underlying strategy kept based on either outside regulations
must come first. or internal business practices. As the de
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facto standard for business communica- DELIVER require several areas of expertise (particu-
tion, email must be classifi ed, stored, One of the greatest benefi ts of a strong larly legal, IT, and records management),
and destroyed consistent with business ECM system is search and retrieval. With which all support the overall business
standards—just as any other document strong indexing, taxonomy, and reposi- objectives of the organization. While com-
or record. Web content management tory services, locating information in your pliance is not always a technology problem,
technology addresses the content cre- system should be easy. Content can be information technology and the massive
ation, review, approval, and publishing delivered via several tools such as print, growth of unstructured content contributes
processes of Web-based content. Key email, websites, portals, text messages, to corporate exposure. The tools of ECM,
features include creation and authoring and RSS feeds. This allows for the distri- properly used, can help reduce the overall
tools or integrations, input and presenta- bution of content for reuse and integration cost of compliance to sthe business.
tion template design and management, into other content, which can be recast
content re-use management, and dynamic to fi t the needs and cultural mores of COLLABORATION
publishing capabilities. different global markets. By drawing on Collaboration is the art of working
a taxonomy and based on established together. The key to strong collaboration
STORE user preferences, various types and is utilizing the technologies (instant
Content needs to “live” somewhere. Stor- subjects of content can be delivered via messaging, whiteboards, online meet-
age technology (optical disks, microfi lm, user-defi ned preferences. ings, email, etc.) that allow work to take
repositories, etc.) provide options for ECM is an ongoing and evolving strat- place wherever and whenever needed.
storing content online (rapid access) egy for maximizing how your content Collaboration allows individuals with
or near or off-line for content that isn’t should be used. To drive understanding of complementary or overlapping areas of
needed often. The key is to have informa- these tools, highlighted below are the four expertise to create better results faster
tion that can be found once it is placed key business drivers in which content and than before. With today’s collaborative
in the system. Create a categorization/ ECM is fundamental to the success of your tools, business units and teams can work
taxonomy system to ensure that content organization: compliance, collaboration, together anytime—whether in adjoining
is properly stored. Taxonomy provides a cost, and continuity. offi ces or in different countries. These
formal structure for information based technologies can now address operational
on the individual needs of a business. Cat- COMPLIANCE objectives like saving time, streamlining
egorization tools automate the placement The key to a successful compliance strat- processes, cutting costs, and improving
of content (document images, email, text egy is integrating the idea of compliance time to market. With the many different
documents; i.e., all electronic content) for success into your business—not viewing types of collaborative tools available,
future retrieval based on the taxonomy. compliance as a project that can be com- organizations must be sure that they select
pleted and then considered “fi nished.” the correct tool for their business need.
PRESERVE Complying with regulations provides an
As storage media ages, migrate content opportunity to improve common business Functionality can be divided
to new media for continued accessibil- processes. You can limit the risk and cost by into three groups:
ity. Develop a backup/recovery plan that developing proactive ECM strategies within 1. Communication channel facilitation:
outlines how content will be backed up in key areas, such as records management enables short-lived interaction such
various formats and/or locations to ensure and business process management. Follow as chat, instant messaging, white
business viability in the face of a disaster. through on proper business practices by boarding, etc.;
The archival of content must be saved to ensuring that content is properly captured,
media such as paper and fi lm-based imag- stored, managed, and disposed of at the 2. Content lifecycle management:
ing for long-term preservation. appropriate and legal time in its lifecycle. manages content objects involved in
Developing a compliance initiative will a business process;
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3. Project facilitation: organizes and CONTINUITY
simplifi es the way that people work Business continuity planning allows a
toward a common goal. business to operate around the clock. More
than a disaster recovery plan, business
When using collaborative tools, continuity is the overall strategy for ensuring
you must be aware of records man- that operations continue in the event of any
agement, knowledge capture, and disruption—whether through cause of nature
compliance requirements. For some or human error. As a subset of business
industries, all customer communications continuity, disaster recovery mainly focuses
must be kept. During a collaborative on getting an organization’s IT infra-
product design process, organizations structure going again. Today, electronic
must be sure that the results are kept documents are the lifeblood of most busi-
as business records. nesses, and ECM plays a signifi cant role
in business continuity. ECM technologies
COST provide centralized repositories where vital
While an ECM investment can be costly, corporate information can reside. The
consider the costs of poor content manage- method of storage will vary depending on the
ment. The cost of not implementing ECM importance of the content. A strong continu-
tools is usually left unmeasured until too ity plan will demonstrate that not all content
late. Factors such as the cost of long legal is critical. These are steps to keep in mind:
proceedings, the loss of repeat business
through the inability to perform customer 1. Prioritize content to determine how
service interactions, and the cost of typical quickly content needs to be back online.
business process delays are easy to mea- 2. Determine mission-critical processes
sure in hindsight. While the cost of these and the entities on which they are
potential losses may justify investment dependent.
1 in ECM technologies, the ROI of ECM is 3. Perform a business impact assessment
often diffi cult to measure. Set your key to determine the impact of a disruption
metrics for success up front and measure or loss of those processes.
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your success based on those expectations. 4. Defi ne what a business considers a
For example, measuring the revenue disaster and explain how key processes
based on improved information in the call will be recovered.
center can be done as well as measuring the 5. Establish a crisis operations center with
cost benefi ts of improvements in process procedures for chain of command and
speed for a loan application. The ROI of other roles.
ECM tools could result in improved busi- 6. Update and test the plan annually or as
ness processes, whereby making your business needs change.
organization more effi cient while lowering
the cost of doing business. These technolo- A sound continuity plan will enhance
gies provide value to your organization by an organization’s ability to recover during
more effi ciently organizing information a system failure andbetter defi ne the prior-
for its subsequent retrieval, use, and, ity of the business content while improving
ultimately, disposition. the overall ECM strategy.
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BY CARL FRAPPAOLO AND DAN KELDSEN
Business Process
Management (BPM)
Leveraging Competencies
and Streamlining
Processes to Achieve
Operational Excellence
THE FOLLOWING IS excerpted from not, respondents said their companies did
AIIM’s Market IQ on BPM from Q3 not have a specifi c group in charge of BPM
2008. The complete report is available projects. Even with a proper team and strat-
at www.aiim.org/marketiq. egy in place, BPM presents challenges—it is,
after all, about changing the way an organi-
EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW zation works, albeit it for the better.
In developing this Market IQ, AIIM Belated pitfalls include derailment
found that sophisticated users grasp by internal political squabbles and scope
how enterprise application integration creep. The latter factor’s severity can be
(EAI), workflow, and other components tied to its success: As stakeholders see
have merged to form BPM, a practice the positive impact of changes, they want
that seeks to model, modularize, more. It is crucial that organizations
service-enable, monitor, and, ultimately, undergoing a BPM project effectively
1 optimize business processes. manage end-user expectations.
But a mere 25 percent of the survey Such factors are likely why 62 percent
takers said BPM was well-understood of respondents said business got disrupted
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and addressed overall within their orga- while new processes were deployed.
nization. Respondents identified this In addition to these more intangible
lack of knowledge as the number-one factors, BPM implementation staff will
hurdle to BPM adoption. need skills in process reengineering and
In addition, nearly half (45 percent) a range of BPM tools.
said there was little to no BPM strategy Yet despite these challenges, the
in place at their company. Only about data collected suggests that BPM makes
one quarter (23 percent) indicated a substantial and speedy impact on a
having mostly or exclusively strategic company’s bottom line: More than half
BPM deployments. of respondents who conducted a return
Since BPM cuts across technological and on investment (ROI) study achieved a
intra-organizational boundaries, it is crucial positive ROI in three years or less, and
that companies identify a clear leader to 70 percent of those same individuals
head a BPM strategy. Yet more often than cited direct cost savings as a benefi t.
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SECTION 1: DEFINING BUSINESS and service orientation, process monitor-
PROCESS MANAGEMENT ing, and process optimization. It is based
The automation and real-time monitoring on principles and methodologies such as
of business processes are not new concepts process-centricity, process excellence, core
to the AIIM community or the business competencies, and strategic approaches to
community at large. Circa 1993, workfl ow outsourcing and modularization, including
became an integral part of the enterprise software as a service (SaaS) and service-
content management (ECM) solution oriented architecture (SOA).
set and lexicon. BPM’s combined, greater capability is the
The importance of these capabilities was focus of this Market IQ. The report’s defi ni-
best demonstrated by the formation of the tion and positioning of BPM is not based
Workfl ow Management Coalition in that simply on the opinions of AIIM’s thought
year. But while workfl ow provides an easier leadership, but is reinforced and validated
way to connect people, tasks, and content, by the survey audience, which defi ned BPM
it still requires laborious and extensive neither as the re-branding of workfl ow (only
programming work to connect applications. 2 percent of those surveyed defi ned BPM
BPM is a business management practice
that encompasses process automation,
process modeling and simulation, process
modularization and service orientation,
process monitoring, and process optimization.
Furthermore, workfl ow solutions can suffer in this manner), nor the re-branding of EAI
from incomplete or fragmented toolsets. (only 1 percent of those surveyed defi ned
While workfl ow delivers process automa- BPM in this way).
tion, it can lack related functionality, such The great majority of those surveyed,
as integrated process modeling. 67 percent, identifi ed these strategic and
In a complementary fashion, EAI comprehensive definitions: “Methods,
promised to simplify the integration of policies, metrics, management practices
multiple standalone yet related processes. and software tools to manage and
But EAI offered little means to route work continuously optimize an organization’s
among and between people, monitor per- activities and processes” (50 percent)
sonal work queues, or support interactive and “A management practice that
people-based tasks and decisions. provides for governance of a business
BPM is a convergence of workfl ow and process environment toward the goal
EAI. However, BPM is more than just the of improving agility and operational
automation of processes and simplifi cation performance” (17 percent).
of application integration. BPM is a business But while our survey respondents
management practice that encompasses had a broad, comprehensive understand-
process automation, process modeling ing of BPM, the majority of them were
and simulation, process modularization AIIM members and/or subscribers to the
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Figure 1. Which of the Following Is Closest to Your Definition of BPM?
50% Methods, policies, metrics, management
practices and software tools to manage
and continuously optimize an organiza-
tion’s activities and processes
20% A systematic approach to improving an
organization’s business processes
17% A management practice that provides
for governance of a business’ process
environment toward the goal of improving
agility and operational performance
5% Software for building integrated
process-based applications
2% Just a buzzword
2% Re-branding of Workflow
1% Re-branding of Enterprise Application
Integration
3% D on’t Know
Figure 2. How Well is BPM Understood in Your Organization?
25% Well Understood and Addressed
34% Vaguely Familiar
14% N ot Sure How This is Different from
Workflow
26% N o Clear Understanding
1
website Transformation + Innovation, Some 40 percent felt their organization
a consulting, education, and advisory has no clear understanding of BPM, or
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fi rm that guides business strategy and could not see how it differed from work-
transformation through the optimization fl ow. The remaining 34 percent felt their
of technology, knowledge management, organization was only vaguely familiar
and process redesign. Survey respondents with BPM. Indeed, survey respondents
can therefore be characterized as having pointed to “lack of understanding” as
greater than average knowledge of BPM the number one biggest obstacle to BPM
than the average business person. in their organization.
We point this out because AIIM
members’ degree of understanding and CARL FRAPPAOLO and Dan Keldsen are co-founders
appreciation for BPM is not shared across and principals of Information Architected, Inc. (www.
the enterprises where they work. informationarchitected.com), a consultancy focused on
Only 25 percent of the survey respon- the intelligent use of content, knowledge, and processes
dents felt that BPM was well understood to drive innovation and thrive in a digital world. At the time
and addressed within their organization. of writing, they were with the Market IQ division of AIIM.
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