There’s some groundwork that needs to be laid before your enterprise jumps headfirst into implementing a content management system.
Prioritizing Pre-ECM Implementation Tasks
Priority #1: Examine the current state of the organization by asking the following questions: Are processes documented in detail? Is documentation current and do they meet the objectives of the enterprise? With the added advantages behind a content management system, do opportunities exist to streamline these processes?
Priority #2: Consider the regulatory and compliance requirements of the processes mentioned above, and ensure the ECM system is built around these controls first. Processes should be compliance-ready; avoid trying to retrofit compliance requirements on top of existing processes.
Priority #3: Formulate an implementation plan to maximize success. Focus on matching enterprise needs to software deliverables, and ensure user adoption is a main focus of the plan.
8 Tips To Ready Your Organization’s Processes For Change
Below are the steps outlined in Kotter International’s “Model Of Effective Change” to help ease the impact of organizational change:
- Increase Urgency: Examine your market and competitive realities to identify current crises, potential crises and major opportunities.
- Build Guiding Teams: Assemble a group with enough enterprise power to lead the software implementation.
- Get The Vision Right: Create a vision to direct the overall transition, and develop strategies to achieve that vision.
- Communicate For Buy-In: Use every communication channel possible to discuss the new vision and strategies. Demonstrate new behaviors and processes by example.
- Enable Action: Eliminate obstacles to change, and alter systems or structures that seriously undermine the vision. Encourage risk taking and nontraditional ideas, activities and actions that support the end goal.
- Create Short-Term Wins: Plan for visible performance improvements, create those improvements, and reward employees who lead and are involved in the improvements.
- Don’t Let Up: Use this increased credibility to change systems, structures and policies that align with the new vision. Hire, promote and develop the employees who are inspired by and want to implement the vision.
- Make It Stick: Articulate and emphasize the connections between the new behaviors and enterprise success, and create the means to ensure leadership development and succession.
An ECM Post-Implementation Content Lifecycle Example
In today’s enterprise organizations, delivering information to customers through content is increasingly important. While speed to publication is critical for these enterprises, getting the message right is equally important. Yet these two priorities are often in conflict.
For example, marketing, sales, and research and development departments may work together on a press release for an upcoming product lunch. Through an ECM system, these departments collaborate: R&D notes that a technical detail needs updating, while sales modifies pricing based on a strategic pricing meeting, and marketing alters the product description to fit the changing competitive landscape. Instead of waiting for each department to add its input, each department can alter the document alongside other edits without stepping on toes.
An ECM system supports parallel workflows to allow multiple parties to work together simultaneously and ensure publishing standards and checks-approvals processes are maintained. Content generation that formerly took weeks is trimmed to a day-and-a-half.
Prioritizing Pre-Implementation Technology Considerations
- Define Metadata: The metadata associated with each document helps improve document searchability in the content management system.
Metadata should serve at least one of three functions:
1.) It’s a useful way to locate the document at a later date
2.) It helps define security restrictions
3.) It’s used to define the decision stage in a workflow
- Lock Down Document Data Location: Where and how are you currently storing document data? Is this information on the document itself or is the data located in another application that might be integrated into the ECM system?
- Perfect Workflows: Understand how documents travel through the intended system and what workflows these documents are part of. What workflows might be put in place to automate these business processes? How do you currently deal with exceptions to the process?
The 3 Parts Of Effective Enterprise Content Management
The success of any enterprise content management initiative depends on the people, processes and technology.
Focus on removing obstacles and giving your people what they need to work more efficiently — more access to data and the right tools to make the right decisions.
In terms of process, focus on streamlining, ensuring standardization and compliances while eliminating variability and inefficiencies.
The technology, the content management system itself, should possess the right security with the right features and the kind of interface that increases usability.
Take the next step and learn the factors necessary for success with enterprise content management.
