Enterprise Content Management: What You Need to Know

Citation

McLeod, J. (2005), "Enterprise Content Management: What You Need to Know", Records Management Journal, Vol. 15 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/rmj.2005.28115bae.001

Enterprise Content Management: What You Need to Know

Enterprise Content Management: What You Need to Know

Tom JenkinsOpen Text Corporation2005306 pp.ISBN 0 9730662 5 3$29.00Keywords Content management, Competitive advantageReview DOI 10.1108/09565690510614265

In the foreword to his book Tom Jenkins, Chief Executive Officer of Open Text Corporation, almost evangelises about enterprise content management saying it “represents a critical new stage in the advance of the Information Age” and “describes both a philosophical approach to and the underlying technologies used to help businesses transform their content into competitive advantage”. In the 300+ pages that follow he tries to tell business executives what they need to know about enterprise content management (ECM), how it can help them achieve compliance and transform their organisations by improving productivity and fostering innovation and growth. And he does so in an interesting way that enables to reader to dip in and out of the book, jump backwards and forwards and still make sense of the message.

Divided into fours parts, the first part tackles the business case. It is worth reading the first two chapters in sequence if only to get a handle on the meaning of ECM. A confusing concept, described differently in every article I have read on the topic, I was searching for the elusive clear definition that made sense to me. I was offered “a technology that provides a means to create, store, manage, secure, distribute and publish any digital content for enterprise use” which reminded me of document management and groupware. The list of ECM applications, including accounts payable administration, new product development and records management, confused rather than clarified. But the explanation that ECM is an amalgamation of different technologies concerned either with collaboration or with content, which are then linked by processes, did start to make sense – even if it did remind me of knowledge management. The final piece in the jigsaw is the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) that links the various corporate applications to the multifarious content repositories. But if this sounds too complex then the “double bubble motif” that is used throughout the book highlights the essence of ECM which is the combination of collaboration and content through process.

Parts 2 and 3 of the book comprise a series of chapters devoted to a particular content or collaboration technology. Included in the list are: document management, searching and retrieval, web content management, portals, rich media and digital asset management and email. For each the author provides a brief history of the technology’s development and its characteristics together which short, real-life case studies of its application. These “user stories”, over 50 in total, are extremely useful in helping to understand how the technologies are being used by a range of public and private sector organisations.

The three chapters in the final part of the book explore how these content and collaboration technologies can be brought together using business process management (BPM); how ECM can be implemented at the enterprise level using organisations such as Siemens, Motorola and the European Investment Bank as examples; and, finally, how increased legislation, security, higher bandwidth, online mobility and the online marketplace will affect ECM in the future.

This book is full of valuable information, statistics and insights into how organisations are using the technologies of ECM to improve the way they do business and change what they do. Accessing all of this content is made easy by helpful cross references at the end of each chapter to other relevant chapters, by the index, bibliography and glossary together with the layout and attractive presentation including the many illustrations and screen shots of real applications. While the user case study bibliography mostly points to Open Text’s web site the author, to his credit, does not push his company and its products throughout the book.

Described on the cover as a “must-read” for executives this book will have a much wider appeal for many reasons. I have already used it with students and will need to keep a close eye on the whereabouts of my copy!

Julie McLeodNorthumbria University, UK