What is a good definition of ECM?

Gartner sees ECM as an umbrella term for the following core components; Imaging, Document Management, Electronic Records Management, Web Content Management, Workflow, and Document Centric Collaboration. But ECM is not only about technologies, and AIIM defines ECM as the strategies, methods and tools used to capture, store, manage, preserve and deliver information in support of business processes. We developed a few years ago a roadmap to explain ECM in more detail, which is also the foundation of our ECM Practitioner training course.

I also like Russel Stalters’ BetterECM definition of ECM: “ECM is a management practice that provides for governance of an information management environment toward the goal of improving compliance, information reuse and sharing, and operational performance. ECM is a structured approach employing methods, policies, metrics, management practices and software tools to manage the lifecycle of information and to continuously optimize an organization’s collections of information and information management processes.”

My colleague Carl Frappaolo from AIIM Market Intelligence developed to the following model to explain ECM:

 

I like this one model since it expands the definition of ECM to include other content related technologies, but also addresses the need for security vs. collaboration and innovation.

What is your definition of ECM? Let me know.

By Atle Skjekkeland.

Comments

[Greg Clark]

Hi Atle,

I blogged about this a few months back. Here's the link: http://www.c3associates.com/2007/03/28/ecm-resources-and-thoughts-on-the-definition-of-ecm/

My definition focuses on simplicity and getting right to the point:

Enterprise Content Management is about helping us manage our information better. It’s about helping us work together by providing simple tools to share our documents and communicate with one another. It also helps make sure that we’re in compliance with the rules that govern our organization by providing a secure central location to store electronic files and references to paper files so we keep what we need to keep and get rid of what we’re allowed to get rid of.

I'd appreciate your thoughts (and the thoughts of your readers) on my definition.

All the best.

G.

[Laurence Hart]

I posted an entry on Redefining ECM back a couple of months ago. I feel we need to bring ECM into the SOA world while trying to invigorate the community.

-Laurence

http://wordofpie.wordpress.com/2007/08/09/redefining-enterprise-content-management/

[Ted]

I would submit that "ECM" is a business discipline focused on "content" - defined (in my opinion) generally as "information packaged in a manner as to facilitate web-enabled discovery and collaboration by people". Note I didn't say "net-centric", stressed people vs. machines, and included the very important word "packaged". This basically expresses content as controlled material intended for presentation on websites, email or collaboration tools. There obviously exist many other types of data/information/intelligence/insight that aren't treated or known as "content" by my definition...and therefore shouldn't fall only under ECM. Records, for example. I'll submit that manually or digitally-preserved records, and the "Enterprise Records Management (ERM)" capability in place to deal with them, can take forms ranging from paper to RFID signal traffic data to XML files to websites. Yes, some is content, but much is not. Therefore, Carl's framework posted above is probably more appropriately abstracted up a conceptual layer to the idea of "Enterprise Information Management", vs. ECM.

[Online Website Editor]

nice and informative post, thanks a bunch.