Best Practices 101

This column is the fourth in a series focused on best practices for organizations deploying enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. Over the past five years, Doculabs has been benchmarking organizations’ maturity levels for developing, deploying, and supporting ECM applications across the enterprise. The result is a rich set of criteria that we use to evaluate and score the ECM maturity levels of our consulting clients.

Previous columns have taken up the development life cycle, financial aspects of ECM deployments , and ECM functionality. This month we look at the enabling technologies themselves – what tools you are using to deliver ECM capabilities and services and the standards in place, as well as touching upon aspects such as application development approaches, security, performance, and administration.

Once again, we provide Doculabs’ criteria, listing out what we consider to be “worst in class,” “average,” and “best in class” when it comes to evaluating an organization’s enabling technologies for ECM.

How close is your own organization to best in class? Read on and find out.

Architecture and the use of standards:

• In worst-in-class organizations, ECM systems are not required to conform to standards (as few true “standards” are published in reference to ECM).
• Average organizations have only recently considered architectural standards regarding ECM systems, with partial success.
• In best-in-class organizations, architectural standards are published and enforced, and an approved business case is required for any deviation from those standards.

Application development approaches:

• In worst-in-class organizations, a majority of ECM applications are custom-developed, some with significant modification to the supplier’s code. The customizations are poorly documented, leading to painful upgrade paths.
• In average organizations, considerable application development and customization is performed, but the work leverages supplier APIs and integration tools.
• In best-in-class organizations, application development teams attempt to leverage as much as possible of the out-of-the-box functionality provided by suppliers. System updates and release schedules are typically planned 12 to 18 months in advance.

Integration tools:

• In worst-in-class organizations, systems are not integrated, or integration is done on the client front end.
• Average organizations typically do integration on a system-to-system (“point-to-point” basis.
• In organizations that are best-in-class, integration is abstracted via a bus architecture or common integration layer. Security:
• In worst-in-class organizations, security parameters are unique to each application in production.
• The average organization manages security in a common manner across all applications. Parameters are set within the application rather than via common infrastructure.
• In best-in-class organizations, security is abstracted out of the application and is managed via a common infrastructure.

Performance and scalability:

• The document management systems of worst-in-class organizations lack the scalability and redundancy typical of a “hardened” mission-critical or transactional application. In worst-in-class organizations, imaging and ECM demands on infrastructure require unanticipated upgrades to various network or desktop components.
• In average organizations, systems are scaled and “hardened” as the organization’s dependence on ECM increases over time. Average organizations have limited ability to anticipate system growth (e.g. a basic archival systems with 1 million documents that quickly grows to 20 million documents, requiring real-time 24/7 access).
• Best-in-class organizations systems are designed for scale and redundancy from the outset.

Administration:

• In worst-in-class organizations, administration tools are tightly coupled within each application, and no standard tasks have been defined.
• In average organizations, administration tasks are standardized across all ECM applications and performed natively within the ECM tool.
• In best-in-class organizations, administration is abstracted out of the application and is managed via common infrastructure or monitoring tools.

Ask yourself: When it comes to the enabling technologies you use to deliver ECM capabilities and services, where does your own organization stack up?

You can obtain an objective assessment of your own organization across this dimension as well as the other dimensions of ECM best practices. Just sign up to participate in the peer-group maturity assessment program, a partnership between AIIM and Doculabs. You’ll get a benchmark comparison of your organization’s existing ECM deployments, along with recommendations that will help you get closer to best-in-class. For more information on the benchmark program, contact Rick Tucker (312-881-1640).

--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.