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How Do You Manage the Unmanageable?
Documents - whether paper or digital - constitute the fastest growing component of most organizations' information assets. U.S. businesses create more new electronic content each year than all the materials currently contained in the Library of Congress.
If you realize the importance of managing those assets better, on-demand may be a more effective and lower cost alternative to installed software. But is it right for you?
The paradox is that while you want more control, you don't want to impede the flow of good information to those who need access to it. How do you accomplish both? How do you manage the explosion in content and resolve all of its associated problems?
The Problems that Plague You
- Outdated Information. You want your field organization and customers to have the latest and most relevant product and pricing information. Because there is no immediate way to share updated material, field representatives use old information because it's the information that's available. As a result, inaccurate pricing and product information goes to the customer. Your organization loses valuable time and business revenue.
- Blind Spots. You are still using paper processes in some parts of your company, and these paper processes lead to "information black holes" - documents and other content that are hard to discover, retrieve and manage.
- Lack of Access. Your goal is to have geographically dispersed employees, remote workers, distributors, and clients collaborate on projects, contributing information and reviewing that which is created among team members. Projects include: preparing proposals, sharing competitive information, resolving billing disputes, re-purposing marketing materials, and much more. Relying on specialized remote access software (e.g. VPN), however, that is not usable on every company's network may mean someone is out of the loop. Your goal is at risk of being realized.
- Wasted Time. You send a document by e-mail for several people to review; each edits the document resulting in several uncoordinated yet edited versions. Your company spends time you don't have to reconcile the pieces.
- Technology Roadblocks. You send out an e-mail only to have it rejected by the receiving party's system as being too large. The data is critical, but cannot be delivered either because the message itself is too large or the user's inbox is full (of other large e-mails and attachments?). Your project is delayed and time spent working around this limitation is a drag on productivity and a distraction from higher-value tasks.
Barriers to Purchasing an Enterprise Content Management System
Traditional ECM installations involve the selection and procurement of generalized content management software, specialized department modules, configuration, customization, hardware, installation, integration, training and, in some cases, additional database optimization. User setup is generally time intensive and static, with upgrades and maintenance to the system supported by the customer, on the customer's premises.
Even though ECM on the whole is a proven category, in which big software vendors generate up to $1.3 billion in sales annually, many buyers remain disappointed with their investment. Unfortunately for customers, analysts estimate that up to 90 percent of enterprise DM licensed "seats" are not deployed. Why the gap? A closer look at the dynamics and economics of deploying DM across a large organization reveals several possible reasons:
1 Cost. A traditional DM software license that is installed in a company, customized for use in a specific application, deployed across a group or several groups, will begin at approximately $20,000 per department or single application. However, industry analysts indicate that software cost, over three to five years, is typically only 15 to 20 percent of the total project cost. In the end, what looked likely an affordable $20,000 investment, may likely cost more than $100,000 - with enterprise-wide systems coming in at upwards of $1,000,000.
2 Time to Implement. Often, IT professionals approach projects by designing a complete solution on paper, then developing, and deploying it. This approach of shooting for a 100 percent solution has two consequences. It drives up the cost of implementation, and is frequently off-the-mark as initially designed, requiring updates in the field.
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