In our consulting practice, as we see our clients prioritizing their efforts in content and collaboration solutions and practices, we’re seeing a number of deployment trends that we expect to continue well into 2011. They include:
- ESI triage
- Enterprise search
- Consolidation to SharePoint plus “Big ECM”
- Consolidation to SharePoint alone
- Embedded ECM (i.e. as an underlying service to ERP or LOB applications)
This post discusses each of these trends, along with some of the issues associated with each.
Deployment Trend #1: ESI Triage
Many organizations, concerned about their information management as it applies to discovery of electronically stored information (ESI), are now doing some form of assessment and prioritization of their ESI. A best practice we recommend is to separate ESI into three groups:
- The low-value/low-risk information
- The moderate-value/moderate-risk information
- High-value/high-risk information
It’s “triage” because it helps an organization assign priority across the repositories where its ESI is stored. An understanding of the relative value and risk of ESI is necessary for any effective SharePoint, ECM, records management, discovery, or search initiative.
Deployment Trend #2: Enterprise Search
The demand for enterprise search – i.e. quick delivery of all and only the relevant information requested – seems to be reaching critical mass, as we see more organizations prioritizing search initiatives.
To date, most enterprise search initiatives have fallen short of expectations. We find there are two reasons for this: 1) failure to meet the rigorous requirements for “enterprise, corporate” search (as opposed to consumer search), and 2) failure in the primary task of quickly delivering all and only the relevant information requested. The technology has evolved significantly over the past few years, and a wealth of new capabilities are now offered in enterprise search technologies. But whatever challenges an organization may have had with search, it’s becoming more apparent that it’s not necessarily just a technology problem. There’s a growing understanding that organizations need to prioritize elements such as information organization and user experience if they are going to realize the value of their enterprise search technology investments. (See previous blog post, Looking to Provide Enterprise Search? Some Best Practices.)
The next three deployment trends involve three various platform approaches we see our clients pursuing to provide content management services. With the emergence of SharePoint and evolving ECM needs, organizations are changing the way they think about and use their “big ECM” platforms Deployment options we see our clients pursuing include:
Deployment Trend #3: Consolidation to SharePoint Plus “Big ECM”
Some organizations already had existing deployments of “big ECM” before SharePoint entered their environments. We see these organizations seeking to effect a “coexistence” of both SharePoint and their “big ECM” suites, using each for different purposes – e.g. for “rigorous” records management and process worker ECM, while supplementing it with SharePoint for low- and moderate-value/risk ESI (the distinction raised above, in Trend #1,“ESI Triage”). A problem with this approach, however, is that integrations between SharePoint and other ECM platforms are proving to be more trouble than expected.
Deployment Trend #4: Consolidation to SharePoint Alone
Other organizations, looking to fulfill their ECM needs, are taking the approach of consolidating all ECM on SharePoint and moving away from “big ECM”. We see an increasing number of knowledge worker organizations trying to just use SharePoint for all of their content management needs, including the management of high-value/high-risk ESI. The idea is vendor consolidation: one vendor (Microsoft) to provide all of the organization’s ECM services.
Unfortunately, there are problems with this approach, too: Many organizations are learning that SharePoint has gaps in critical functionality they require (e.g. records management, workflow, etc.), making it necessary to supplement SharePoint by adding a number of add-ons – which weakens their strategy for vendor/product consolidation.
The upside is that many vertical ISV vendors have been developing solutions on SharePoint for vertical markets and specialized processes (e.g. in pharmaceutical, financial, manufacturing). We’re starting to see clients with successful deployments of these solutions.
Deployment Trend #5: Embedded ECM
The third ECM platform approach is to embed ECM as an underlying service to ERP or line-of-business applications – and standardize on those ECM platforms that provide the tightest integration with those applications. This makes a lot of sense for organizations that have a clear need for business applications (whether ERP or LOB), and are seeking to embed ECM capabilities by deploying the “big ECM” products that have the best integrations to those applications. This approach often results in incumbent systems being replaced by a new ECM “standard” that offers tight integrations to the ERP or LOB systems of choice.
So there you have it. Chances are your own organization is itself subject to at least one of these trends: struggling with ESI, or with enterprise search, or with the best way to provide ECM, given the available tools and your own organization’s requirements (and existing technology portfolio). And we all know it can help to get an independent perspective on the best way to resolve these questions.