Business continuity is one of the areas in which we see many enterprise content management (ECM) deployments fall short. It’s an area that got a lot of attention after the events of 9/11, when we saw many organizations revisit their disaster recovery and business continuity plans for line-of-business (LOB) systems.

But ECM deployments don’t seem to get the same attention. Many of them may be “point” solutions, as opposed to enterprise deployments. Or there may be limited understanding of how integral ECM is to the LOB systems. Or there’s simply a lack of funding to put in place the same level of testing and system redundancy for ECM that’s provided for the LOB systems.

So this month we look at ECM from the standpoint of business continuity: the regular planning, evaluation, and testing of the ECM implementations’ availability, backup, and recovery. What are best practices for business continuity, based on Doculabs’ 5 years of benchmarking our consulting clients?

Read on to find out our criteria for ECM business continuity and disaster recovery, along with what we consider “worst-in-class,” “average,” and “best-in-class.”

Documented strategy, policies, and backup plan:

• At worst-in-class organizations, business continuity plans and policies for ECM vary from system to system, depending upon the level of funding.
• Average organizations tend to have defined business continuity plans and policies for their ECM systems, but they are lower priority than plans for LOB systems and may not be kept up-to-date.
• Organizations that are best-in-class have a documented strategy, policies, and backup plan for their ECM systems.

System redundancy:

• Worst-in-class organizations don’t address the redundancy of ECM systems in their business continuity plans and policies designations.
• In average organizations, redundant sites are available to support business continuity.
• Best-in-class organizations have a fully redundant “hot” environment in place to roll over work in the event of failure.

System availability:

• Worst-in-class organizations don’t include ECM applications in their corporate availability standards designations, or the standards vary form system to system, depending on the availability of funding.
• In average organizations, ECM applications are typically given low availability designations, even though they may be integral to LOB applications that have higher availability requirements.
• Organizations that are best-in-class assign the same level availability designation to ECM applications as they do to their LOB applications.

Dedicated backup locations/service providers:

• Worst-in-class organizations have no disaster recovery testing or “capacity” contracts with third-party suppliers.
• The average organization has a back-up site available as part of a shared resource that might be used for a variety of systems, but not specifically dedicated to ECM, nor is testing rigorously performed.
• Along with a fully redundant “hot” environment, best-in-class organizations have dedicated backup locations/service providers ready in the event of failure.

Testing plan and frequency:

• Worst-in-class organizations perform only partial testing of their ECM systems’ disaster recovery procedures.
• In average organizations, disaster recovery procedures are tested every few years.
• At best-in-class organizations, disaster recovery procedures are tested annually and business continuity tests are conducted twice a year.

Measurement, review, and evaluation process:

• Worst-in-class organizations have business continuity processes in place, but these processes are rarely tested. ECM application SLAs, if they exist, are not effectively monitored.
• In average organizations, business continuity processes are tested annually.
• The business continuity plans at best-in-class organizations include well-defined processes for measuring, reviewing, and evaluating the effectiveness of business continuity plans.

So how do your own ECM applications stack up – particularly in comparison to how your competitors approach business continuity and disaster recovery? If you’d like to find out, we invite you to sign up for an objective assessment of your own organization across this and other dimensions of ECM best practices.

The Peer-Group Maturity Assessment Program, a partnership between AIIM and Doculabs, offers participants a benchmark comparison of their organization’s existing ECM deployments, along with recommendations to help them get closer to best-in-class. To learn more about the AIIM-Doculabs peer-group maturity benchmark program, contact benchmarking@aiim.org.

The author is CEO and founder of Doculabs, an independent consulting firm that specializes in helping organizations with their ECM technology strategies. 312-433-7793, www.doculabs.com, info@doculabs.com.