Doculabs

 
In a previous post (“What We Ask You when We Ask You about ECM”), I offered the eleven kinds of questions we typically ask when we’re conducting interviews in ECM strategy engagements. But what we ask and what we’re thinking are two different things.

During the interviews, we’re trying to determine a number of things — including the familiar business, functional, technical, and resource requirements for ECM. But often the worst way to get information about those requirements is to ask about them directly – at least without first asking them the more general questions outlined in “What We Ask You…” and then possibly following up with a few relevant questions about current or desired functionality.

So when we’re clarifying an organization’s functional requirements (the ECM capabilities they need), It is usually more productive to ask the kinds of questions outlined in “What We Ask You…” as a way of determining each business unit’s functional requirements, rather than asking specific functional questions directly (except as follow-up or when it’s clear that the specific functional questions are appropriate for the respondents – e.g. when you’re talking to the ECM Program Team).

Below are five categories of questions (a total of 27 questions) that I find are most relevant to defining the ECM functional requirements for the departments in most organizations. But as I’ve probably said too many times already: In most cases, the questions below are NOT the ones to ask your end users. You’ll get the best answers to these questions by first asking the questions in “What We Ask You”.

General DM and Repository Capabilities

1. What kind of general repository management and library services do they need, such as check-in/check-out, document security, etc.?
2. What kind of version control – e.g. support for both major and minor versions?
3. Do they need both manual and automatic document import into the repository?
4. Do they need both manual and automatic indexing (classification, tagging) capabilities?
5. Do they need renditioning to different formats? Different languages?
6. What kind of organization/navigation (foldering) capabilities do they need?
7. Do they need document linking capabilities (static, dynamic, and/or other)?
8. Do they need support for offline and remote workers?
9. Do they need granular document security (e.g. including even annotations)?

Document Capture and Imaging Capabilities

1. What kind of general approach to capture do they need? E.g. should it use only inherent capabilities of the capture system (or ECM system), or should it also include integration with third-party specialized capture products?
2. Do they need support for multi-functional devices (MFDs) and distributed capture?
3. Do they need support for multichannel ingestion, including fax server integration, Lotus Notes email integration, and file import?
4. Do they need support for advanced production imaging capabilities, including high-volume capture, IDR, OCR/ICR, and capture workflow?

Search Capabilities

1. Do they need all “standard” document search capabilities for document search (e.g. nesting combinations of Boolean terms and parameters, wildcard/proximity, stemming/literal, Unicode, etc.)?
2. Do they need full-text and keyword search for all relevant content?
3. Do they need search across multiple repositories, servers, databases (within the same solution)?
4. Do they need federated search across third-party repositories, including commercial products, inhouse developed (Outlook or Lotus) email systems, SharePoint, shared drives, and hard drives?

Workflow Capabilities

1. Do they need document-centric, “author-review-approve” workflow?
2. Do they need team collaboration workflow (beyond document approval workflow)? What kind of collaboration capabilities do they need (e.g. project management, threaded discussions)?
3. What kind of workflow development tools and processes do they need? Do they need to enable non-IT business users to define, modify, and maintain processes? Do they need a graphical designer, library of starter objects and templates, and a test environment?

Records Management Capabilities

1. Do they need both manual and automatic records declaration and classification?
2. What kind of records management (RM) repository approaches and capabilities do they need (internal RM repository, ECM repository, external integrated repositories)?
3. Do they need physical RM capabilities?
4. Do they think they need email archiving and management capabilities for email?
5. What kind of record retention plan development and management capabilities do they need? (I.e. do they have RM requirements that entail certain capabilities associated with the retention plan? E.g. a business unit might have renditions/versions of a record in multiple languages, each with different regulatory requirements – thus entailing additional complexity in the retention plan and therefore the software that manages it.)
6. What kind of retention and disposition do they need?
7. Do they need integration with hierarchical storage management (HSM) and content addressable storage (CAS) systems to provide granular, ensured retention, disposition, holds, and releases?

Just so we’re clear: The best way to identify the ECM functionality your users need is to ask them the more general questions I listed for you in my previous post (“What We Ask You…”).Then, based on their answers, ask yourself the 27 questions above to determine the specific functionality each user group will need.