10 ECM Basics and Gotchas to Avoid

The volume of information we’re processing is unmatched in history: According to anInformationWeek Analytics 2009 State of Storage poll, more than 60% of the 328 business technology professionals surveyed manage more than 1 terabyte of data. A remarkable 20% of respondents manage more than 100 TB. Databases, e-mail and other office documents are the main drivers of data growth. In a recentInformation Week Data Deduplication report, 60% of the 437 respondents said their Tier 1 storage needs are increasing by 11% to 25% annually, with 18% exceeding 25% growth. And that doesn’t include the reams of paper records still being produced.

Too often, we’re still using shared network drives and folder structures to organize information and enable remote access to documents. E-mail-based collaboration systems that create content silos are unfortunately the norm for too many organizations. When employees hold gigabytes of e-mail and electronic documents that are not shared across the organization, problems emerge ranging from lower productivity and organizational inefficiency when duplicating work, to users becoming single points of failure on projects, to embarrassing and potentially expensive security and compliance issues when critical data is lost or misused. At its most extreme, these increased costs and decreased productivity can cripple an organization.

Enterprise content management (ECM) systems have the potential to solve many of these and other problems surrounding the capture, management and delivery of content within organizations. Unfortunately, ECM deployments can be fraught with challenges that can devour a substantial amount of time, money—and IT credibility. It doesn’t have to be this way. This article, which is based on the In-Depth Report entitled “10 Gotchas That Can Derail Your ECM Initiative,” examines the components and benefits of ECM. To learn more about top challenges that grind ECM initiatives to a halt,download the full In-Depth Report from our ECM TechCenter.

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