Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Gartner’s 2012 ECM Magic Quadrant: Quick Analysis

Gartner has recently released much expected ECM Magic Quadrant for 2012. There are quite a few interesting facts to note. In my earlier post Gartner Magic Quadrant for ECM 2012: What to expect? just before the Gartner release, I had predicted IBM to be on the top of chart in terms of ability to execute and Gartner proved me right. But I was wrong in predicting the visionary position for Microsoft, which went to IBM followed by Oracle. Gartner gave credit to IBM's overall business alignment with its ECM offerings, wherein Oracle gained the position due to its acquisitions, mainly FatWire and the ability to better align its acquisitions with overall business strategy.

There is disappointment though for Microsoft and EMC fans in ECM Magic Quadrant 2012
despite EMC IIG CMO Mr. Jeetu Patel making dedicated efforts to improve analysts ratings. Microsoft's SharePoint story seems to be losing steam.

Monday, October 22, 2012

8 Steps guide to make your ECM project a success

As per Gartner Research Vice President Tony Bell  "more than 50 percent of large Enterprise Content Management (ECM) projects fail if less than six months are spent on vendor choice and planning." (source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10357858-16.html).

So if more than half of the ECM projects fail, its a big reason to worry for those who are planning to acquire an ECM system by spending few hundred thousands dollars. ECM projects usually get initiated with great enthusiasm to save on costs and increase user productivity by the way of reducing paper usage and creating a digital repository of all contents for easier sharing amongst users. The adventure often ends-up with frustration of having a non-usable system which now stores everything but is tool slow and too complex for daily usage. Increased complexity and decreased performance of accessing contents compare to shared drives results in everyday escalations by end-users and business managers giving nightmares to IT managers.
So what should the CIO or IT Manager do right to avoid such a fiasco?I have summarized my experience below in 8 bullet points which can help you increase your chances of success.

1. Assess your business needs: It's important to know what does the business needs? ECM is a vast subject from capture to store/manage to process till archive and disposition and every piece of information which gets generated during the course of business activities comes within the scope of ECM. Starting from writing an email to your customer or vendor to receiving a fax till signing a contract or agreement.