Enterprise Content Management has become a critical strategic business process, due in part to increasingly stringent legislation and aggressive litigation. To meet this challenge, some organizations take a do-it-yourself approach, letting their in-house IT department build an ECM system from scratch or using ostensibly cheap tools. Inevitably, this only complicates matters and leads to greater expense with an inordinate amount of time spent on research and development, testing and debugging, and on-going support. When ECM is viewed as a technology system and managed as an IT project rather than as a management-led information governance initiative, the resulting implementation may lack the necessary security features and functionality to ensure regulatory compliance and discovery protection.
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8 Things to Consider Before Developing an In-House ECM Solution
1 -- Beyond IT.
ECM implementations are often mistakenly viewed as simply Information Technology projects that will have little impact on the business until the finished application is installed and ready for use. Of course, IT does have a major role to play in any ECM deployment. Typical tasks include configuring application and database servers, setting up backup and recovery devices and schedules, integrating the application with user account services, installing client software on user’s workstations, training end users and administrators, and so forth.
This will inevitably consume a significant portion of the IT department’s time and may, for even limited deployments, require the sole focus of one or more IT team members for the duration of the project.
A successful ECM implementation satisfies the needs not just of Information Technology but of the business as a whole. To do this, it must include the active participation of other departments within the organization to address issues of planning, research, and business process analysis and alignment.
2 -- Research & Planning.
Before turning on a server or writing even a single line of code, a successful ECM development effort requires substantial and time-consuming research into applicable legal requirements, business processes, and technologies. Yet, some organizations focus only on the last—and least important—element, technology. This occurs when ECM is viewed and implemented as an IT project, rather than as a business strategy.
3 -- Time & Resources.
An informal survey of IT employees revealed that few if any were able to devote quality time to researching new technologies within the scope of their day-to-day activities of administering and maintaining existing systems or training and supporting users. For most, time for research and education had to be stolen from other activities in one or two minute increments, or conducted after hours on their own time. It is thus not surprising that many in-house ECM projects suffer from delays, scope creep, cost overruns, or even abandonment and complete failure.
A successful project must bring together multiple departments within the company, even those which may not yet be putting the ECM system into use. Including other departments in the planning and definition phase, including those not targeted for the initial rollout, makes it easier to extend the system to those departments later without additional development and customization.
4 -- Open Source vs. Commercial Applications.
Determining an organization’s license requirements for commercial applications, analyzing license options and negotiating volume purchases can be a complex and time-consuming task, such that larger corporations may employ full-time Contract Managers to navigate these agreements.
Some organizations attempt to side-step this process using free and open-source alternatives. While such options exist, for everything from the database and application server to the IDE used to write and debug code, this course is not without cost. Such a solution invariably takes longer to implement—and therefore costs more in the long run—than an off-the-shelf pre-developed and tested system.
5 -- Application & Database Licenses.
Some document management systems are designed to give users direct access to the underlying database used to store document metadata and therefore require a database access license for each user.
For example, an installation of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) requires a license for each SharePoint server, as well as client access licenses (CALs) for each device or user connected to the servers. Additionally, an equal number of server and user CALs must be purchased to allow those users to access the requisite Microsoft SQL Server. It should be noted that these MS SQL Server licenses and CALs cost almost as much as the MOSS licenses, immediately doubling the apparent license cost of a SharePoint system.
6 -- Testing & Debugging.
ECM systems created in-house tend to be in a constant state of flux, undergoing continual cycles of development and customization. The resulting testing and debugging may take as long as the development itself.
7 -- Training.
User acceptance is crucial to a successful ECM implementation. If users are not comfortable with the interface or don’t understand how to carry out their jobs, they will invariably find ways to circumvent the system or return to their old ways of working. To this end, sufficient training—for system administrators and for end users—is essential.
Unfortunately, ECM systems developed in-house tend to be works-in-progress, with long cycles of development, testing, and debugging. This means that end user training must likewise be ongoing, leading to reduced efficiency and increased frustration.
8 -- Ongoing Support.
It’s almost inevitable that an individual crucial to an in-house ECM development will eventually move on, either to another position in the same company, or to an outside firm. JDA Professional Services, an IT staffing agency, comments that “78 percent of all IT workers will leave their company before their fifth anniversary. IT workers with eight to ten years experience—the category of employee that previously was most likely to stay with a company through retirement—are now changing jobs more frequently than ever.”
When this happens, an organization may be left without adequate support for an application developed in-house. While knowledge transfer programs and succession planning can mitigate the risk, ongoing support for custom applications is an issue that should be considered before an in-house development project is allowed to grow into a mission-critical application like ECM.
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Kevin D’Arcy is the Vice-President of Sales and Marketing for Hybrid Document Systems Inc. He frequently works with organizations to consult and recommend on document management initiatives across Canada. He is active in many industry groups, most notably AIIM and IIMDA, for whom he currently holds a position on the executive board. Kevin differentiates himself on developing unique solutions to document management challenges.
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