Ecm terms

In the past year, product vendors across the ECM spectrum -- from portals to document management to web content management -- have picked up on the demand for collaborative tools. After all, what is an "enterprise" document, a corporate website, an Intranet dashboard, if not a collaborative venture? Witness Documentum buying eRoom, Stellent building its own tools, and now Interwoven collaborating with iManage (which IWOV is presenting as a DM solution). CMS vendors, as always, will have problems integrating disparate content repositories, and the tools are still a bit weak in terms of realtime collaboration. Also, this is an area where the platform vendors (especially Oracle and Microsoft) are staking a major claim. All this makes buyer choices more interesting...Read about the new Interwoven-iManage alliance

A robust ECM solution will allow you to route documents and data electronically so that they can be used to expedite denial processing. After gathering information, your ECM system should be able to consolidate it into a user-friendly format that is viewable on a single master decision screen. Processors then have the data at their fingertips to determine immediately why claims were denied and how to refile them. Submitted by Optical Image Technology

I'm attending the Gilbane Boston show this week. Many analysts value conferences because we get a chance to see vendors (and a lot of Web CMS players exhibit at Gilbane). But for me the best part is talking to end users. In that vein a few observations: many large enterprises have not yet transitioned their websites to an automated CMS; enterprises with homegrown systems remain (rightly) concerned about the cost and expense of that recreating custom logic in a commercial package; web managers are increasingly wary of "ECM" vendor offerings, but often have to struggle against internal dictates for supplier consolidation; terminological confusion reigns. In short, the Web CMS marketplace remains comparatively quite young. Enterprises continue to experiment, and we all still have much to learn...

Both Microsoft and EMC deliver platforms for enterprise content management (ECM) that are designedto meet these needs. Both Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 and EMC® Documentum®provide capabilities for capturing content, organizing, and managing it in a systematic manner,rendering and distributing it as needed, and finally storing it for long-term retention and disposition. Submitted by EMC Documentum

"ECM [enterprise content management] continues to be the hottest sector of the software industry," says HK Bain, CEO of Digitech. The challenge (and the opportunity) lies in determining how to best manage all that content and what outside factors influence how that content is handled. Used with permission from Business Solutions magazine

The term ‘on-demand' has been popping up recently in ECM circles. In this case, ‘on-demand' is used to refer to ECM software hosted by a third party where users pay a monthly fee to access the features of the software on a service basis. Basically, it's like renting an ECM software package rather than investing in an on-premises ECM infrastructure. Used with permission from Integrated Solutions magazine

This AIIM Industry Watch presents the key findings from the ECM-BPM End User Survey conducted in September 2004. There are elements of "I'm From Mars, You're From Venus" in conversations among users and suppliers when discussing ECM and BPM technologies, along with other key industry marketing terms such as workflow and document management.As this survey will show, there is still considerable confusion in the marketplace when end users consider ECM and BPM technology solutions.

I am just back from speaking at the very first ECM Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia -- an excellent event that left me with many things to ponder. Top of the list is the term ECM itself. You see, the attendees I met tended to view ECM as a new and emerging topic, and stated to me from the get-go that virtually "nobody does ECM in Asia". In fact person after person told me (to paraphrase), "In our organization we do document management, imaging, workflow, records management etc -- but we are not doing ECM --we have come here to learn about it"...So what was there for these Investment Banks, Islamic Banks, Insurance Firms, and so forth to learn about ECM? Well, first and foremost that they are only behind the West (if one can call it behind) in the adoption of the acronym ECM. Their usage of the core technologies is on a par, and I suspect in some cases ahead of most international peers.

It's every business owner's nightmare. Customers are canceling jobs in droves. Your company's financial report resembles the Demon Drop at your favorite amusement park. You are forced to terminate key employees and face the very real prospect of going out of business. Tom Bojarski, president of document management VAR EchoStone, Inc., lived through this nightmare. Used with permission from Business Solutions magazine

Today we released of the ECM Suites Report. It evaluates 30 Enterprise Content Management vendors from 5 continents (yes, the marketplace is international). One of the report's more interesting findings was the extent of dislocation today among major vendors. From our press release: Some of the biggest Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Suite vendors are experiencing the most change right now, and therefore, customers' erstwhile "safest" bets might also carry significant near-term risks. A special thanks goes out to the scores of customers and consultants who contributed to our research.