Establishing an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) environment is more than just installing an ECM software package. It takes a lot of thought, planning and change management to fully succeed. We took a look at what the user community was saying about their efforts and identified some issues related to their projects. We know that there has been a major shift in where information comes from in our businesses. According to IDC, 80% of the information created and maintained within an organization is unstructured while 90% of this is unmanaged.

Controlling this within an ECM environment is a smart way to manage your information but you cannot just go out and purchase the software thinking your problems will all be solved. There are many aspects to implementing an ECM solution and establishing an effective ECM environment. We asked the user community who have installed and established their ECM environments, about the biggest challenges or problems they faced.

Now, beginning at number 5, we take a look at the Top 5 Risks When Implementing ECM.

Risk #5: Underestimating the effort to migrate content

Migration for content from an unmanaged, unstructured environment is not to be taken lightly. Think about this for a moment and just look at the way you currently store information on your PC and shared network drives. You have everything sorted and structured your way but could anyone else easily navigate through it all to find what they need? In fact do others have a filing and taxonomic structure that is identical to yours? Unlikely, which underscores one of the challenges of migration. How do you bring all of that information into an ECM environment under the new classification scheme using common taxonomies?

Putting that aside, what about your email and the growing mass of information that resides within the inbox and other email folders? How do you move that information into the ECM environment and even more challenging yet, how do you get employees to change their way of working with email and embrace the use of the ECM environment for this purpose? You now need a solid change management program and approach to work with them in understanding why it is a good thing and how to effectively use the software tools to accomplish this task with minimal effort.

Let us not forget the non-electronic world of paper based information. Warehouses full of boxes containing huge masses of information that is essential to your business. The question here is one of value v cost and taking an approach to convert this information in order to migrate into the new electronic world. Or do we? It really comes down to a business decision rather than one of technological feasibility.

Risk #4: Uneven use resulting from poor procedures and enforcement.

ECM will change the way we work the question is how well we address this part of the implementation. We must take into consideration that many of our internal processes will change or need to be changed due to the way we will now store, manage and access information.
We must carefully look at the process; identify information flow and what happens to this information along the process. Where does it come from? Who touches it? Why do they touch it? What do they do with it? Where does it go from here? All the while, we know there are also people in this process carrying out specific activities in an effort to support some final goal which could be something like generating an expense check. Identifying process and people, providing training and support are all essential to the successful implementation of an ECM environment.

One way to ensure this success is to also put into place some enforcement mechanisms that address non-adherence to the new policies and procedures.  Removing alternatives is always an option. If your organization plans to minimize paper use, perhaps removing printers or at least access to them would be an effective measure. If you are trying to limit the amount of storage allocated to each employee, you might limit the amount of space available to them at levels where they will have no choice but to utilize the ECM environment for their business materials.

Risk #3: Internal Politics

The political climate of some organizations can at times be difficult to identify, understand and manage. Lack of support from senior management or your peer groups often is the result of unclear linkage to the overall goals of the organization or clarity of the project’s strategic value. Projects are often placed on the backburner in lieu of other projects or lose momentum from lack of exposure or reinforcement of the project’s purpose.

Using a strong business analysis approach to understand the organization’s strategic vision, operational goals and tactical challenges is a vital first step. Once we understand these areas, we can link the benefits of our ECM environment directly into this model, addressing each and every level. An example might be that tactically the ECM environment will address our 24/7 access issues, helping to deliver the operational goal of providing full access anytime, anywhere and meeting our strategic vision of unlimited, global customer support.
Even at this, we still need to constantly communicate our project objectives, status and success.

Risk #2: Lack of training for internal staff

This may seem like a simple thing to address but often times it is one of the items that are thought about in the end and not in the beginning. Many ECM implementations are reactive in nature meaning there is a driving force moving this project to happen now, without delay. Vendors are sought, products are bought and installed and then training begins.

We know training should begin as early as possible regarding policies and procedures to prepare the workplace for the new changes. We also know that many times an application is taught well ahead of the actual rollout causing a lot of angst for the helpdesk and users. Depending upon the scope and complexity of your project, you may want to consider just in time training for the application while policy and procedure can take place in advance.

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