Moving from why to how: The maturing of ECM users

Enterprise Content Management Association, AIIM, releases results from “State of the ECM Industry” study

According to AIIM President, John Mancini: “This year’s survey reinforces the conclusions of previous AIIM Industry Watch surveys: end-users get it! More than 89 percent of those surveyed believe that the management of documents is ‘important to their organisation’s strategic goals,’ and 70 percent believe that this importance has grown over the past two years.”

The survey also reveals that organisations (especially in litigation-sensitive countries) understand the link between the management of electronic information and their potential vulnerability in litigation. 88 percent of end-users believe that the process by which they manage their electronic information will be important in some future litigation (and 71 percent believe this process will be “extremely” or “quite” important.) Even though end-users understand the importance of managing electronic information, most are not “very confident” in the efforts of their organisation to manage this information. 34 percent have very little confidence in their ability to demonstrate the timeliness, accuracy, and validity of electronic information; they need guidance on how to leverage maturing technical capabilities with enforceable business policies/practices.

Do documents really matter?
Key finding: Over the past five years end-users have moved from a passing and largely tactical interest in the management of documents to considering this a strategic priority.

Why are end-users looking at ECM technologies?
Key finding: In thinking about ECM technologies, improving efficiency and productivity is clearly the top business driver across geographies, roles, and organisational size. Once you move beyond efficiency and productivity, what drives your interest in ECM is largely dependent upon where you are, what you do, and how many employees are in your organisation. This is particular true relative to risk-related reasons for considering ECM technologies (compliance, business continuity).

What obstacles stand in the way of implementing ECM technologies?
Key finding: End-users appear to understand why they should manage their documents more effectively. The missing link in greatly expanding the adoption rate of ECM technologies is assistance in understanding how they should go about doing so.

What projects and applications are under active consideration by end-users?
Key finding: Across geographies, there is a great deal of consistency in the types of projects under consideration by end-users, with the top three being document control, records management/archiving, and email management. There is clearly a greater interest in process automation as organisational experience with ECM increases, particularly among large organisations, reflecting a clear bridge between ECM and BPM technologies.

How much do end-users really understand key ECM standards?
Key finding: Consensus standards development processes (ANSI, ISO) continue to be important to organisations and fairly well-understood, with a significant drop off in understanding for other organisations. XML, .NET and web service based (SOAP) standards are best understood by end-users, pointing to the emerging importance of SOA (service oriented architecture) and interoperability (as reflected in AIIM's iECM project) as a vehicle to unify business processes.

What’s the bottom line in terms of planned spending on these technologies?
Key finding: As reflected in past studies, the market for ECM technologies is dividing into two parts: 1) a set of large organisation customers with a fair degree of document experience, who are focused on leveraging and integrating their existing (and often substantial) ECM investments and are driven by process improvement and/or compliance concerns; and 2) an ever-increasing number of mid-sized customers who are looking for solutions at a significantly lower price tag and have risk management and business continuity concerns that are much more pressing than those at larger organisations.

About the study
Over the course of 2005 and 2006, AIIM surveyed more than 1,200 end-users and potential end-users of content and document management technologies in nine countries –United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Brazil, Canada, Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxemburg.

The surveys were conducted independently, in local language, and by partners via email and at the following major industry events: AIIM ECM Solutions Seminars, AIIM Information Management Expo, AIIM InfoIreland, and DMS (Germany).

The surveys consisted of 10-15 questions. Three quarters of the questions were consistent from survey to survey, allowing us to compare and contrast user concerns and perspectives across North America, Europe, and Australia. 1,217 respondents participated in this year’s survey. Respondents came from a variety of industries, with significant representation from manufacturing (seven percent); banking, finance, and insurance (16 percent); and government, defence, and public services (27 percent).

Variation in this industry representation across the nine countries was insignificant.
Across the entire sampling, there was a good representation of organisations of all sizes. Small organisations (1-99 employees) represented 22 of the overall sample, medium-sized organisations (100-1,000 employees) were 28 percent, and large organisations (more than 1,000 employees) were 50 percent.

Similarly, there was a variety of levels of personal experience with ECM technologies. Those characterising themselves as “looking at my first ECM project, still have a lot to learn” represented 27 percent of the sample; 34 percent were enhancing an initial system; 39 percent characterised themselves as “experienced-looking at a second or subsequent project.”

This is the third year in which AIIM has conducted this survey on buying plans, core business drivers, and implementation challenges. While some of the countries varied from the previous two years, the core demographics (in terms of industry segment, size, and experience) were remarkably similar for all three surveys.

The study was sponsored by: ABBYY, a leading developer of document recognition, data capture, and linguistics technologies; EMC Corporation, the world leader in products, services and solutions for information management and storage; Hyland Software, makers of OnBase a scalable and rapidly deployable ECM software suite; Kodak the world’s foremost imaging innovator; Stellent global provider of content management software solutions; and Xerox Global Services.

About AIIM
AIIM, the ECM Association, is leading the way to the understanding, adoption and use of ECM technologies. These technologies, tools, and methods are used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content across an enterprise in support of business processes. As a non-profit association for more than 60 years, AIIM provides news, information, and resources through its website and ongoing education through programs that include market analysis, industry standards development, elearning courses, publications, local chapters and regional events. Complete information about the association, is available on the web at www.aiim.org.

Find out more at:
www.abbyyusa.com.
www.EMC.com.
www.onbase.com.
www.kodak.com/go/docimaging.
www.stellent.com.
www.xerox.com/globalservices.

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