Has been a major part of corporate technology architecture for over a decade. Traditionally, it’s been a set of processes, strategies, and tools that allow an enterprise to capture, manage, store, and preserve content throughout the organization. But enterprise needs, and Electronic Content Management solutions, have changed radically. In today’s world, information sharing and collaboration with colleagues, customers, suppliers, and other trading partners is essential part of business.
To meet the demands of global enterprises with far-flung, digital workforces, ECM has morphed into —but what does this mean?The answer begins by recognizing that the concept behind ECM software is a very good one. The content created within an organization is its most valuable asset and needs to be managed throughout its lifecycle so it can be effectively accessed and used. The best ECM tools were developed with this in mind. Success, however, isn’t always about what you do, but how you do it.
The traditional approach to ECM necessitated organizations making large investments in enterprise-wide content platforms that were often unwieldy and complex. In many cases, that resulted in slow adoption by end-users and sophisticated features that were under-used.New generations of digital-native knowledge workers want to be able to access and use content when and where it’s appropriate to their task. They want content in a format that’s easy to work with and available immediately within their application of choice.
Content needs to be the fuel that drives business process, not just a corporate asset to be controlled and protected. Content services provide a new approach to Enterprise Content Management where ECM functionality is extended into the lead applications—in the form of micro-services—that people use every day, while a Content Service Platform sits in the background to ensure the same level of control, security, and compliance that has long been a hallmark of ECM solutions.To understand why this dual approach to content services is necessary, it’s useful to look back at the development of ECM. A brief history of ECMGrowing out of the Document Management systems of the 1990s, Electronic Content Management was designed to bring an enterprise layer to the automation of core back-end, document-focused processes.
It endeavored to create a repository—a single source of truth—where content could be stored, managed, searched, and retrieved. It provided new levels of information control and governance that hadn’t been possible previously. These ECM solutions were incredibly powerful in document and records management.
As more and more content—in both structured and unstructured formats—was created, the best ECM software ensured it was all searchable and accessible for users, auditors, and compliance.So why, with so many important business functions, have many ECM implementations remained under-utilized? There are a number of reasons for this, but the main one is that the focus of ECM solutions was originally on the technology rather than the business process and the people using it.
Organizations were more interested in getting control of their content than what their people were doing with it.This led to systems that were excellent at capturing, storing, and managing content but could be difficult to use and labor-intensive for the end-user—often asking them to change their work processes to accommodate the ECM system. The result was that users often resisted the move to ECM and continued to work as they had before. They persisted in saving their content to hard drives and file shares, only passing content to the ECM software when their task was completed. The ECM system became primarily a system of record—great for control and governance of official business records—while isolated silos of information spread throughout the organization as people created new content in the different systems they preferred to use.It became clear that ECM software forced the user to come to the content and, to be effective, ECM needed to bring the content to them. Why ECM has changed?Digital transformation has become a key strategy for every organization; the ability to make the most of the data and information they control is a cornerstone to success. In the context of ECM solutions, this means moving the focus from managing content to using content to support process productivity—through the effective capture, delivery, and integration of content—and personal productivity—with simple, intuitive tools for information access and sharing.
In this scenario, the information control and governance features of ECM move to the background, underpinning how content is delivered and presented within the lead applications.Modern business is no longer an internal exercise. Jennifer dark mental. It involves increasing integration, collaboration, and connections with customers, suppliers, and other trading partners. This means that all organizations must be able to deal with content in a wide variety of structured and unstructured forms from a wide variety of sources, through a wide variety of channels. The idea of a single enterprise repository for your content now seems very outdated.In addition, digital transformation has been driven by a range of disruptive technologies that all impact on how an organization works with its content.
In fact, it was this emergence of digital business needs that led to re-assess the Electronic Content Management space in 2016:“Cloud, social collaboration, mobile and analytics technologies have transformed demands and expectations for content in digital business. The variety and volume of content continue to grow. So does its importance: increasingly, IT and business leaders use content to complement or even drive digital business processes.”According to Gartner, the term ‘Enterprise Content Management’ no longer fits the dynamics of the market and should be replaced by ‘Content Services’ driven by a ’. From ECM to Content ServicesThe move to content services defines a new way of connecting content to your digital business.
It delivers tools, techniques, and strategies to empower end-users by making it much easier to work with, share, and collaborate on content. It lets them have access to the right content within the applications that they are most comfortable with.
At the same time, it builds on control and governance functionalities to enable secure information sharing and collaboration across the enterprise and with external partners.AIIM suggests some of the capabilities of content services within its excellent ebook:. Cloud First Content applications quickly deployed, elastic, available from anywhere, with constant updates. These integrate seamlessly with on-premise systems to provide hybrid content services.
Intelligent Capture The ability to standardize disparate input streams and connect or embed them directly with core business processes. Consumer-Grade User Experiences Drive adoption with simple, clean user interfaces, self-signup and simple administration with instant subscription provisioning.
To the five of you who care: Sorry I've been neglecting the ol' bloggy-blog. I have been spending my free time trying to finish recording what will be the first official album from (of course I have a solo black metal project), and things like 'writing half-assed blog posts about semi-obscure albums' have been pushed to the back-burner. OH NO.But here I am, home, too tired to record, listening to some ECM, so, might as well slap together this incredible writeup. Before; this is his second album, and it's definitely one of my all-time favorite ECM records.
Saxophonist Jan Garbarek puts in a reliably sharp, emotive performance, and there's a little bit of sitar and tabla here and there, too, giving it a slightly exotic (ugh) feel. K, I'm done.Track listing:1. Cycle One: Namaste3.
Cycle Two: Trio6. Cycle Three: Quintet and Coda7. Jessica's Sunwheel. I bought the cd in a time when cd's where a lot more expensive than records, and this one, a sampler by the Peaceville Label, was a kind of a 'cheap' promo cd. Accidental Suicide released two albums IIRC after this, but this demo is quite raw and over the top.Try this one, by the great Roky Erickson, who performs regulary in Europe and who I seem the miss all the time. I have this version on a Virgin Records sampler, whicj I initially bought for other bands that were on it.ECM stuff is really nice as well, thanks for pointing them out.