Enterprise Content Management Component

From MIKE2 Methodology

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) covers the management of unstructured and semi-structured content, such as office documents, images, audio, video and Web sites. Enterprise Content Management solutions are critical for managing an increasingly complex area; taking an Enterprise approach to Content Management aims to:

• Introduce efficiencies in work productivity
• Improve knowledge sharing and teaming
• Reduce unnecessary duplication of information
• Meet new standards for compliance and controls

Managing unstructured data has often been ignored and continues to grow in importance. Unstructured data typically makes up about 80% of the data within an organisation and the volumes of unstructured data in most organisations are growing at over 100% each year.

Contents 1 Document Management 2 Collaboration 3 Digital Asset Management 4 Web Content Management 5 Enterprise Information Portals

Document Management

Document Management is the management, creation and workflow of documents throughout the enterprise. Formalisation of this process (including management of records) has grown in importance over the past few years, particularly with the advent of new compliance standards. A strong capability around the management of documents and records is critical, particularly in relation to corporate contracts, financial statements or legal matters.

3 key aspects of the Document Management process include:

• Document Construction, the definition of content using standard templates, validation mechanisms and forms.

• Records Management, involves the creation and management of specific records (as opposed to documents) in a fashion that provides controls inline with corporate policies and procedures.

• Document Workflow, which allows multiple workers to construct, review, audit, approve and safely archive documents or records

Document Management will often use other aspects of the SAFE conceptual architecture to provide a more complete solution for document presentation and collaboration.

Collaboration

Collaboration is the techniques and technologies that brings together users, enables dynamic content generation and enables a conversational experience through visual communication. Traditional richer features include multiple channels for communications through audio, video and text, complemented by the capability to share applications and access control to systems. Newer features include more sophsiticated means to collaboratively develop content and the development of social networks.

Collaboration functionality may be embedded with a portal or content management system but is defined as an individual component within the SAFE architecture.

Digital Asset Management

Digital Asset Management (DAM) applies to the creation, categorisation and securing multimedia content, such as streaming video, images, and audio files. Digital Asset Management allows for a structured file management approach in a area where there are generally vast amounts of data and search inefficiency can have a significant impact on work performance. Key aspects of vendor Digital Asset Management solutions typically include:

• The capability to handle multiple forms of rich media content
• A single, shared repository to share content assets across the enterprise
• Role-based security related to sharing of content
• Automation and workflow of indexing, searching and archiving processes
• Sophisticated capabilities for handling large data volumes

These capabilities are often tied to the capabilities of a larger ECM suite and may be performed within a separate (but integrated) product.

Web Content Management

Web Content Management (WCM) products are used for designing, developing, managing and publishing web content. There are many products for Web Content Management, ranging from open source and freeware tools to integrated vendor solutions.

Web Content Management is an area that has undergone rapid change since the introduction of web technologies in the mid-90s. The proliferations of technologies in this area has allowed for continuous improvement in terms of capabilities that can be delivered in a relatively short period of time. As web technologies have always had a very standards-based approach, delivery success has tended to be much higher despite the large number of novice users in this area. The SAFE framework has tried to adopt many of these principles at a wider level.

Enterprise Information Portals

Enterprise Information Portals provide an enhanced implementation of the web-based solutions that have historically been referred to as a corporate intranet. Portals facilitate delivery and presentation of content to different channels that has been personalised and unified for different user groups such as internal staff, partners, customers and web users. This enables different users to see content in the way that matters most to them, whilst simplifying the complex integration environment that typically exists in the back-end infrastructure.

Other typical features of Enterprise Information Portals include:

• The appearance of a single presentation environment for all content, with a common look-and-feel
• Single sign on into multiple applications
• Standards based approach to portal integration
• Embedded applications to support collaboration and knowledge sharing

Portals can be used to bring together the presentation of much of the core content of the SAFE architecture.