Operating Without Unified ECM Visibility Is Like Driving Without a Dashboard

Organizations worldwide are grappling with managing an ever-increasing amount of content. This content includes documents and files for multimedia assets, web content, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. In addition, content growth is driven by mergers & acquisitions, legacy business applications, and Digital Transformation (DTX) initiatives. The volume at which this information is growing is staggering.

AIIM Research states, “The average number of content systems within organizations has surged from 3.14 to 4.95 over the past ten years. The most significant growth area has been in organizations with 7-10 systems. In 2013, this category accounted for a mere 3.6% of organizations, but by 2023, it has risen to a notable 14%.”

With keen insights into these content systems and software, organizations can avoid a traffic jam of information or lost documents vital to processes, programs, and profits.

Why Content Management Matters

One of the primary reasons for managing the deluge of information enterprises rely on is to ensure the expediency at which it’s delivered to end users. End users who experience slow retrieval also encounter a decrease in performance from processing payments to reviewing lab reports. Other common content challenges include:

1. Fragmented Data and Workflows – Different ECM platforms often lead to disparate content storage approaches. Document-driven business processes, increased use of RPA bots for ‘glue,’ and varying governance methodologies result in fragmented implementations across systems. These variations hinder seamless collaboration.
2. Lack of Centralized Oversight – A centralized view is needed to ensure efficient monitoring and management, making it challenging to track performance, security, governance, and compliance across separate systems.
3. Operational Inefficiencies – Managing multiple ECMs demands extensive implementation, delivery, and support resources, increasing operational costs and complexities.

Therefore, measuring user activities is essential to pinpoint and address content issues before repositories cease distributing vital information needed to conduct business.

In addition to oversight and inefficiency issues, not paying close attention to documents and how they are managed leads to insider threats. It’s imperative to understand whether documents are being improperly accessed, how users manipulate them, and whether irregular login patterns are occurring for regulated content. Organizations need insights into end-user activities that indicate misuse characteristics of insider threats from inside the firewall and high-volume content movement to endpoint devices.

With so much at stake, gaining visibility into content movement should be a no-brainer. So why do so many organizations seem to overlook this critical process? The answer resides within taming the complex unification process.

Unifying ECM Systems Effectively

Content service systems often operate in silos, leading to fragmented data management, diverse workflows, and challenges in maintaining a cohesive overview of the organization’s document ecosystem. Organizations that use multiple ECM platforms, such as OpenText xECM or Documentum, Hyland OnBase, Tungsten Automation, Microsoft SharePoint, or IBM FileNet, need to have these key features and functionalities to address the challenges highlighted above:

1. Unified Visibility – A single-pane-of-glass view, consolidating information from disparate ECMs into one comprehensive dashboard – is imperative. IT administrators who leverage dashboards gain real-time insights into system performance, user activities, and content access across all ECM platforms. Dashboards must encompass every aspect of each ECM application stack.
2. Enhanced Security and Compliance – Organizations must ensure that monitoring capabilities offer proactive security measures, identify potential threats, and enforce compliance protocols across all ECMs. Compliance and security measures can be uniformly carried out, with each ECM managed in one spot.
3. Improved Operational Efficiency – A centralized management solution will minimize the complexity of administering multiple ECM systems and reduce operational overhead. This efficiency includes how potential ECM issues are discovered, communicated to appropriate personnel, and handled.
4. Actionable Insights, Analytics, and Solutions – Unifying ECM solutions also means providing analytics for actionable insights, facilitating data-driven decision-making, and optimizing ECM performance based on actual usage. These insights include user analytics from ECM platforms; the actual HTTP/HTTPS-based user document management, batch creation, document indexing, and record retrieval experience provided by the content services platform.

Ensuring these elements are included within an ECM unification will unlock operational insights in license management or chargeback for various ECM platforms.

Conclusion

Organizations that utilize multiple ECM platforms will inevitably face access, compliance, and security issues if adequate controls and supervision are not applied. Unifying the activities of numerous platforms into a consolidated dashboard view enables organizations to effectively leverage all content assets through a streamlined process toward operational best practices. This streamlined process also fortifies the ability for end users to access documents promptly – regardless of where the information is located.

It’s a fact: the volume of stored content will not be decreasing, but the need for timely access will continue to increase. If these documents are locked in content silos distributed across multiple locations, end-user frustration will ensue, and productivity will wane. The answer to this digital problem resides within unification and efficient content management vis-a-vis full visibility into the complete flow of information. Without full visibility, organizations travel at breathtaking speeds without insights into their critical information’s operational integrity, stress loads, and security – eventually, there will be an unfortunate wreck.

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