The Business Case for ECM – Linking Tactical, Operational and Strategic Benefits

A business case for ECM should show clearly how the ECM-related project will help to achieve one or more of the organization’s strategic aims and objectives. It is, in fact, essential in the business case for a move to ECM to link tactical problems with consequences, and through to strategy. Functionality such as check in/out, version control, audit trail and workflow delivers tactical benefits, but we must also show how these benefits support the organization’s overall strategy.

This diagram attempts to convey the situation.  We have the three levels – strategic, operational and tactical.  Different levels in the organization are generally interested in these different levels of benefits:

• The management or executive board are interested, primarily, in the strategic benefits;
• The business area managers are interested, primarily, in the operational benefits; and
• The users and other stakeholders are interested, primarily, in the tactical benefits.

Most organizations have their strategic performance measures captured in a Balanced Scorecard or KPI’s.  These drive the performance measures and targets at the operational level. And these, in turn, drive the performance measures and targets at the tactical level. The reverse direction is the case when it comes to contributions to benefits. The benefits that are achieved at the tactical level contribute to the performance measures and targets at the operational level. And the benefits that are achieved at the operational level contribute to the performance measures and targets at the strategic level.

Thus the key messages are:

• First, the management or executive board must drive the agenda for ECM, with the heads of the business areas (the key stakeholders) at the operational level demanding the benefits that they require from the investment in ECM, and thereby setting the objectives for the ECM-related project;
• The business case must reflect this situation and explain, convincingly, how the benefits will be achieved at the tactical, the operational and the strategic levels.

How to do this? Take a look at my previous posts “What are your benefits of ECM”, “How to implement ECM”, and "ECM instead of point solutions?"

Comments

[Gary Goldsmith]

How do you get the executive board interested enough in ECM so that they will drive it? Most project initiatives do not identify ECM explicitly in their project scope making it difficult to spot the ECM related projects and difficult to attribute cost to ECM. Business seems too busy running a business to be concerned about ECM.