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The results of the First German Enterprise Content Management Study
The biggest study about the handling and management of increasing information content in companies reveals the following: The time for integration has come. The integration of formerly separated IT systems for the administration of content such as web content management, document management, collaborative systems, etc. significantly increases the value of available information and decreases costs for its development and maintenance. In order to achieve this integration, a goal-oriented re-organisation of work flows for the creation and utilization of knowledge-relevant content is to be executed. After succeeding in this challenge, the right systems need to be integrated in the proper manner.
Enterprise Content Management is already an important part of IT budgets today. Medium-sized and large German companies have allocated on average 12% of their IT budgets for ECM in the past three years. This equals a market potential of € 20 billion p.a. In nearly all industries, the budget shares attributed to ECM will increase in the coming three years. Especially projects focusing on document management and workflow management are planned. Web content management systems still play an important role as the interface for the end-users. Companies are aware of the strategic challenge of Enterprise Content Management. More than 80% of the interviewed managers regard ECM as equally important as ERP. Already more than 31% of the firms have an ECM strategy at their disposal, and additional 48% currently develop such a strategy or plan on doing it within the next 12 months. Hence at the end of 2005, more than 80% of the companies will have their own ECM strategy. Therefore, the sensibility about the topic ECM will intensify in the near future.
Most employees deal much more with unstructured content (e-mail, Office documents, HTML pages, etc.) than with structured ones as provided by ERP or CRM systems. The most important tools for the work of employees are collaboration, document management and web content management systems. In the past, IT decision makers have mainly invested in content management and archive systems. The needs for technical support are not equal across different departments in a company. IT management has realized this and has invested accordingly: Within the information-intensive services such as marketing, communications, HR and informatics, especially web content management systems are deployed. On the other hand, the areas which are closer to ERP such as operations, sourcing and finance are centred around archive systems. R&D departments are heavily dependent on cooperation, and thus collaboration systems dominate in this segment. While satisfaction about the current utilization of archive, imaging and scanning systems is fairly high, the fields of document and workflow management are still in need for improvement. In fact employees lose much time - on average 1.35 hours per day - due to sub optimal support of the management of content. It was found out that especially employees of companies in the professional corporate services and pharmaceutical & chemical industries spend above average time for the management of enterprise content. The sourcing and communication departments mark the end of the continuum being most heavily deprived of their time. ECM allows for a more productive use of working hours: The potential for productivity improvements derived from optimal Enterprise Content Management is at € 6’737 per employee and per year. Thus, a company with 100 employees may enjoy benefits of € 0.7 million p.a., while in Germany in total between € 160 and € 254 billion could be saved annually.
IT and business managers agree on the usefulness of ECM, however they have a different focus. IT managers consider quality of content, adherence to corporate identity/design (CI / CD) guidelines, and the improvement of compliance issues most important. Business managers reason their ECM investments with time and cost savings with regard to the information overflow, quality improvement and risk minimization. Further they see a positive impact of ECM on motivation of staff, the availability of current documents and the innovation potential of the company.
The determination of an optimal degree of integration of various core systems plays a vital role. The technical integration will increase significantly within the next three years. Whereas today around 20% of the companies have fully integrated systems, this share will reach 33% in the near future. Also the degree of organizational integration will proliferate, i.e. a consolidation of the utilized systems will occur across departmental boundaries. A clear need for integration is also with the evaluation of software products and service firms. Two thirds of the interviewed managers prefer integrated software and service suppliers with an integrated service portfolio.
Finally, ECM must not only be regarded as a technological challenge. Instead ECM should be viewed as a tool with high potential for differentiation in an increasingly knowledge-driven economy. Consequently it entails an important strategic implication which must be addressed. Additionally, each ECM strategy must be guided by organisational and procedural actions which aim to a adequate user-behaviour with ECM systems. In the end, it is exactly this behaviour which offers the biggest potential for ECM.
You can order your copy of the study here. 08/2004, Redaktion
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