1. Practical IT Research that Drives Measurable Results
Vendor Landscape Plus: Enterprise Content Management Suite
ECM: A vendor marketing concept, not an IT strategy.

2. Introduction
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is an important but potentially costly
technology. Each vendor presents a different set of strengths and weaknesses.
Ultimately, ECM success is about fit with the vendors.
Use this research to identify appropriate ECM vendors for your enterprise. It will help
you create a shortlist of vendors and introduce you to how these vendors present their
strengths and strategies. Our goal is prepare you for the first four meetings with any
particular ECM suite vendor.
This research is designed for
 ECM project leaders and team
members.
 Executives and line-of-
business managers tasked with
selecting an ECM solution.
This research will
 Introduce the core components of
an ECM strategy.
 Identify how well different
vendors address those
components.
 Introduce vendor positioning,
strengths, and weaknesses.

3. Understand: What is
ECM and why is it
important?
Strategize: Focus on
the key issues that
drive ECM selection
projects.
Compare: Explore
the strengths and
weaknesses of
different offerings.
1
2
3
Executive SummaryExecutive Summary
• ECM is a popular technology. Interest is being
driven by an exploding volume of information and
an increasingly complicated compliance and
litigation environment.
• ECM initiatives are driven by three crucial
considerations:
o Compliance and litigation concerns.
o IT efficiency.
o Business efficiency for both process and
knowledge workers.
• ECM products differ by their ability to address
these considerations. Only ECM Suites cover them
all.
• Vendor fit is important. But it’s crucial to not
over-buy.

4. Compare:
Explore the
strengths and
weaknesses of
different
offerings.
Strategize:
Focus on the
key issues that
drive ECM
selection.
Understand:
What is ECM
and why is it
important?
1 2 3
Understand: What is ECM and why is it important?Understand: What is ECM and why is it important?
• ECM is the strategy and tools to manage information within the
organization across its entire lifecycle.
• ECM includes records management, document management, Web
content management, and a variety of ancillary technologies.
• The low hanging fruit for ECM includes solutions that improve IT's
ability to deliver business functions, collaboration, and business
throughput.

5. The Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) provides the following definition:
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the strategies, methods, and tools used to capture,
manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes.
ECM tools and strategies allow the management of an organization's unstructured information,
wherever that information exists.
ECM is the strategies & tools to manage content

6. ECM strategy is implemented with a variety of technologies
The core of ECM is a pyramid of three
technologies: records management,
document management, and Web
content management.
ECM bleeds into a fringe of
related ancillary technologies
like archiving and
collaboration.
Dedicated ECM suites include
both the core and fringe
technologies.

7. ECM projects are driven by many factors but a focus on IT efficiencies &
niche technologies like collaboration, business process integration, and
search provide the best complexity tradeoffs
The whole point of implementing
ECM is collaboration.
- Infrastructure Manager,
Marketing Firm
“
For litigation, there has to be a process in place of going through things, organizing
them, and making sure all of the right stuff is there. This is important, but not the key
driver for our project.
- Infrastructure Manager, Marketing Firm
“
”
Low hanging fruit
Poor risk/reward
Complexity

8. ECM costs vary drastically
Consider: A power generation and distribution company wanted to deploy an ECM solution to
manage internal documents for 150 users. The team originally considered extending their existing
SharePoint deployment. Their requirements were not, however, met by SharePoint given their
needs for compliance-driven records management and their need to maintain engineering
drawings. RFPs revealed a wide range in estimated costs.
Consider: A power generation and distribution company wanted to deploy an ECM solution to
manage internal documents for 150 users. The team originally considered extending their existing
SharePoint deployment. Their requirements were not, however, met by SharePoint given their
needs for compliance-driven records management and their need to maintain engineering
drawings. RFPs revealed a wide range in estimated costs.
Option 1:
Existing technology
(SharePoint Services)
Concerns:
SharePoint Services was
inexpensive. It could
meet rudimentary
business efficiency
needs for knowledge
workers but was wholly
inappropriate for both
compliance
considerations and the
needs of knowledge
workers.
$6,000
$0 licensing
Consulting 30% of total
Option 2:
Existing technology
(SharePoint Server)
Concerns:
SharePoint Server was
more appropriate for
the project. The
project team still had
concerns about its
appropriateness for
records and for
engineering drawings.
Option 3:
RFP from leading ECM
vendors
Concerns:
The RFP responses
varied widely in their
quality and approach.
The team was
impressed, however,
with the solutions built
specifically for their
needs and their
industry. This domain
experience was
important for final
selection.
$105,000
$40,000 licensing
Consulting 50% of total
$250,000 to
$1-million
Requirements are crucial. Poorly scoped projects create widely variable RFPs that are
very difficult to evaluate.
Info-Tech Insight:

9. The first two months of an ECM project are about building the business
plan, assessing organizational readiness, and estimating project costs
Establish the
business need
Build the
project team
Assess
organizational
readiness
Determine
approximate cost
Develop the
Business plan
The first step in an
ECM project is
identifying the need.
There must be some
trigger for the process
typically related to
litigation/compliance,
IT efficiencies, or
business efficiencies.
Deliverable:
A statement of
direction.
It should include the
executive sponsor for
the team and have
representation from
the business units that
will be affected by the
project. Legal counsel
is a crucial part of
teams involving
compliance/litigation.
The project team will
have an important role
in both scoping the
project and ultimately
in product selection.
Deliverable:
A team list.
Solutions may involve
a great deal of
technical and process
complexity.
Enterprises must
ensure that they either
have the appropriate
resources in place or
are willing to acquire
or build those
resources.
Deliverable:
Appropriateness
assessment.
If the preliminary
requirements can be
met by a set of
products but those
products are
excessively expensive,
then the enterprise
must reconsider either
requirements or
approach. This cost
can be difficult to
quantify due to
extreme range in
quoted costs.
Deliverable:
A rough-cut cost
estimate that meets
senior management
expectations.
An important part of
the project is to
prepare a business
plan that explores the
potential benefits of a
particular solution and
how they will affect
different parts of the
organization. It should
explore market
dynamics and include
both an opportunity
assessment and
recommendations.
Deliverable:
Completed business
plan.
:: Month 1 :::: Month 1 :: :: Month 2 :::: Month 2 ::

10. Compare:
Explore the
strengths and
weaknesses of
different
offerings.
Strategize:
Focus on the
key issues that
drive ECM
selection.
Understand:
What is ECM
and why is it
important?
1 2 3
Strategize: Focus on the key issues that drive ECM selection.Strategize: Focus on the key issues that drive ECM selection.
• ECM initiatives are driven by three crucial considerations:
o Compliance and litigation concerns
o IT efficiency
o Business efficiency for process and knowledge workers
• ECM products differ by their ability to address these considerations.
Only ECM Suites cover them all.
• It’s important to create an Enterprise ECM Profile that matches
internal requirements with vendor deliverables.

11. The ECM business case depends on three interlocking factors:
compliance/litigation, IT efficiency, and business efficiency
Dedicated ECM suites include
the core and fringe
technologies.
Internal efficiencies encourage
IT departments to support
ECM. But the real benefits for
ECM lie within the business.
Compliance and litigation get
the attention of senior
management and other key
stakeholders.

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