CIOs and business owners have similar ECM concerns. They need the technologyto champion business processes, minimize risk of non-compliance and — this isthe take-home — to accommodate various levels of user proficiency. The latter isoften overlooked or worse, dealt with by creating elaborate and costly trainingprograms. In any ECM strategy and implementation — one size doesn’t fit all. Aplatform that enables a utilitarian approach to the use of ECM is the most successful.With the pressure to do more with less extending across the globe, to new businessacquisitions and remote or mobile employees, collaboration technology is, andwill continue to be, a top priority in ECM.ECM is not just a platform and a technology, it’s an enterprise philosophy. Anorganization that bands together and institutionalizes ECM best practices acrossvarious business functions (even IT!) and user proficiency will attain or sustainmarket leadership and deliver great ROI to all investors.
Key ECM areas
To set ECM priorities across the life sciences enterprise, there are many points toconsider, like company size, number of products, current investments and evencompany culture. In general, the degree of success achieved in developing an ECMstrategy will be determined by addressing as many needs as possible across thebusiness. The prime strategic role of ECM is to support collaboration and effectivesharing of information assets across various related business functions. Thefollowing is a list of ECM strategic areas:1.Team collaboration2.Corporate (internal) portal3.Document and record management4.Business partner (external) portal5.Search6.Workflow7.Regulatory compliance8.Effective integration with ECM interfacing business applications
From ECM to ECCM (Enterprise Content and CollaborationManagement)
To date, ECM tools have delivered great value to life sciences firms. The commondenominator across ECM areas is the ultimate exchange of some form ofdocumentation, be it internal or external. It’s the engine for the staged assemblyof reporting and submissions packages and gives heavily-regulated units a wayto store, secure and repurpose their critical documents.While ECM systems have served the document management needs of the regulatedparts of the life sciences market well, customers have long been calling forimprovement in collaboration tools, and the ability to mine data across structuredand unstructured data stores. In highly-regulated industries like life sciences,many companies are prudently looking at options or are at the “early adopter”phase of deploying collaboration tools. Concerns are mainly around the need forsecurity and, of course, minimizing the risk of non-compliance. Other, less-regulatedindustries are predictably further down the path toward full integration andenterprise-wide deployment.For life sciences companies, collaboration is no longer an optional part of ECM.The next generation of ECM tools will bring a convergence of document managementand new collaboration tools, and offer improved ways to unlock value across datatypes using powerful and widely-available enabling technology.
True ECM capability in the collaboration space
ECCM will deliver “submission quality” document management tools withcollaboration as a primary driver — rather than as an afterthought. Because ECMcollaboration tools in the past have been suboptimal or inconvenient, users tendto prefer collaborating outside the ECM system — though still using its rich documentmanagement feature set.
| The Future of Enterprise Content Management |
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ECM is not just a platform anda technology, it’s an enterprisephilosophy.
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