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13
The vision of enterprise contentmanagement (ECM) as a singlesystem to manage all contentbecame popular in 2000 and 2001.In theory, having a single, central-ized system to organize and man-age all of an organization’s contentinto an accessible and navigableelectronic library is very attractive.Companies must manage a widearray of assets, including internalhow-to documents to support busi-ness processes, internal and exter-nal correspondence, marketingliterature, and product documenta-tion. Organizations are buried indigital content, leaving peoplescrambling to find the right infor-mation when they need it.Both vendors and customers enthu-siastically embraced the ECM visionof transforming content from achaotic mess to an organized andpowerful asset. Recently, however,this vision has been the focus of substantial criticism from cus-tomers and industry analysts alike.In practice, implementing one sys-tem to manage all electronic con-tent within an enterprise has turnedout to be impractical, risky, andexpensive. As a result, customersare turning to solutions with lesslofty claims and more reasonablecosts. Increased attention to middlemarket vendors and open sourcesoftware is evidence of this trend.
WHAT IS ECM?
Despite its widespread use, there is very little consensus on the mean-ing of the term “enterprise contentmanagement.” Seasoned CM pro-fessionals typically describe ECMasa set of best practices and toolsto manage documents. These prac-tices address authoring, formats, workflow, storage, publication, andarchiving. Steve Manning of theRockley Group lists ECM, along with Web content management(WCM), digital asset management(DAM), and learning content man-agement (LCM) as distinct cate-gories of content management [4].The Association for Informationand Image Management (AIIM)definesECM as “technologiesusedto capture, manage, store,preserve, and deliver contentanddocumentsrelated to orga-nizational processes” [1]. In other words, the “enterprise” refers to thesubject of the content rather thanall content contained within anenterprise.In 2000, ECM became an industry buzzword to describe a class of commercial software that could“manage all of your content typesfor all of your business challenges”[6]. How did ECM go from beingstandards and practices for manag-ing content to a solution to manageall content? There were a numberof market forces at work.First, companies found themselvesswimming in documents but starv-ing for information and not sharingacross departmental boundaries.Information is power, but it isuseless when scattered acrossemployee hard drives and e-mailin-boxes across the enterprise.
Vol. 18, No. 5
From Enterprise Content Managementto Effective Content Management
by Seth Gottlieb
CONTENT MANAGEMENTDEFINITIONS
Web content management (WCM)
refers to technologies that managecontent on a Web site. WCM systems tend to be “page” or “article” focusedand use a publishing paradigm ofworkflow and approvals. During theInternet bubble, WCM attracted muchattention in the CM space.
Records management (RM)
refers totechnologies and processes used tostore records (such as e-mail anddigitized copies of paper documents)over time.
Document management (DM)
refersto technologies used tostoredocuments. Typically these systemssupport basic file storage plus ver-sioning, access control, and basicmetadata capture.
Digital asset management (DAM)
systems establish a library of reusabledigital assets with a focus on imagefiles (such as logos) and media files(audio and video).
 
The large WCM companies, suchasVignette and divine, had reachedthe apex oftheir market and lookedat enterprise content as an attrac-tive sector to pursue. The largedocument management compa-nies, such asDocumentum andInterwoven, retaliated by trying tobreak into theWCM space. Thetwocamps launched a featurechecklist war. To be recognizedbyindustry analysts as a player inthe ECM sector, nearly every con-tent management system (CMS) vendor claimed it could holistically solve the crisis of content growingout of control. This content crisisresonated with customers who were willing to suspend theirdisbelief in the hope that ECM really  was the magic bullet to solve it.
THE “ERP OF CONTENT”
From a marketing perspective, ECMis an excellent term because it con-notes “enterprise class” and createsan up-market brand. Targeted CMSproducts that were worthy of con-sideration by large companies wereeffectively excluded because they didn’t carry the ECM label. ECMbecame the “ERP of content.” ECM vendors asked customers to stan-dardize on an architecture or suiteof products and, in return, promisedefficiency, control, and better intelli-gence. To fulfill this promise, ECM vendors extended their products oracquired other products to deliverfunctionality in what came to bedefined as the three areas of ECM: WCM, DM, and DAM.But there are several inherentflawsin the vision of becomingtheERP of content. First, ERP isfocused on automating and sup-porting certain well-defined and/ or highly regulated businessprocesses (accounting, humanresources management, manufac-turing, etc.), and there is standard-ization on the structure of the data,the organizational roles of its users,and how it is used. While the busi-ness environment is starting tochange in regard to regulating themanagement of content, contentmanagement is still less defined.“Content” is an abstract term thatspans a diverse set of assets, users,and uses. Everyone within an enter-prise is responsible for producing orconsuming some sort of content.Users do not think of all these assetsas being variants of “content” to behandled in a uniform way. Why should the system? Managing con-tent is often inseparable from thebusiness processes and organiza-tions that the content supports.Consequently, content manage-ment is a specific, rather than gen-eral, enterprise problem. Sharinginformation across departments isan enterprise problem, but ECM isnot necessarily the solution. Whileexecuting an ERP project is a formi-dable challenge,
1
ECM projectscould be considered even riskierbecause of the diversity of require-ments, stakeholders, and goals andthe comparative difficulty of meas-uring the benefits. It is difficult toalign the goals of project sponsorsfrom across the enterprise, and as aresult, ECM projects are hard to sell.
PROJECT SCOPE ANDTIME TO BENEFIT
 When ECM tries to universally solvemany distinct CM problemsacross the enterprise, the numberof stakeholders becomes over- whelming and ECM projects growlarge and complicated. Require-ments are difficult to collect acrossdisparate user groups with diverseprocesses. Analysis takes time.Each group must make compro-mises that it would not need tomake if the system were built justfor its use.The result is that the business waitsa long time to receive a CMS that
©2005 Cutter Information LLCMay 2005
14
THE RACE TO ECM
December 2001:
Documentumacquires Bulldog for DAM.
April 2002:
FileNet acquires eGrailforWCM.
October 2002:
Documentum acquireseRoom for collaboration.
December 2002:
Vignette acquiresEpicentric for portal capabilities.
June 2003:
Interwoven acquiresMediaBin for digital RM.
August 2003:
Open Text acquiresGauss for WCM.
August 2003:
Interwoven acquiresiManage for DM.
September 2003:
Vignette acquiresIntraspect for collaboration andknowledge management.
February 2004:
Vignette acquiresTower for DM.
August 2004:
Interwoven acquiresSoftware Intelligence’s RM systems.
August 2004:
Open Text acquiresArtesia Technologies for DAM.
1
 A survey of CEOs found that 65% believethat ERP systems could be harmful [2].
 
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disappoints in the end. After thesystem is deployed, enhancementrequests are often ignored as they are prioritized and reconciled withconflicting requests. Users nolonger feel ownership of the systemand look for workarounds that sub- vert the intent of a unified system.One survey found that more than aquarter of CMS owners were so dis-appointed with their systems thatthey were contemplating scrappingthem and building custom systemsin their place [3].
FROM “ONE THROAT TO CHOKE”TO “ONE NOOSE TO HANG IN”
For some buyers, a major attractionof a universal CMS or suite of proj-ects sold by a single vendor is riskreduction. The components areproven to work together; and if they do not, there is only one phone callto make. However, many cus-tomers seeking this security havehad a frustrating experience. Themajor ECM vendors have beengoing through aperiod of rapidchange both in strategy and in tech-nology. The paceof mergers andacquisitions (M&As) has out-stripped their ability tointegratetheir components. For example, Vignette customers havebeenforced through difficult upgradesasthe product architecture shiftedfrom Tcl to ASP to Java, and theacquisition of Intraspect broughtJython into the mix. Withonemajorproduct release, Vignettecustomers were asked torepur-chase their licenses. Customers of FatWire’s Content Server had toendure a harrowing journey of theirproduct being passed from vendorto vendor through acquisitions andbankruptcies. At one point, a judgeoverseeing a liquidation auctionforced Content Server, along with what is now SilkRoad’s Epriseproducts, into a bundle with ahosting business.This rocky history of M&As andtechnology change has reducedthebenefit of“one throat to choke”to a risk of“one noose to hang in.” An organization’s content is too valuable to be controlled by asinglevendor. Despite some ven-dorbackpedaling, most analystsexpect more M&A activity in thefuture. The content
 will
outlive the vendor. Managing content with asingle product that necessarily hasa fixed lifespan is irresponsible.Customers would do best to hedgetheir bets and stagger their invest-ments in CM solutions. Analysts today are skeptical of ECMvendors’ ability to integratetheir acquisitions. In the openingkeynote panel at the November2004
Gilbane ConferenceonContent ManagementTechnologies
, IDC’s Joshua Duhlbegan the discussion with theprovocative statement “ECM is amyth,” and a lively debate resulted.Most of the panelists concurredthatthey were not aware of anenterprise-wide ECM implemen-tation that successfully managedallcontent types. Furthermore,several commentators assertedthatit would be years before theECM vendors could integrate thetechnologies they had acquired.Interestingly, in the April 2005Gilbane conference opening panel,one analyst who had defendedECM in the 2004 debate made thepoint that there is no one-size-fits-all solution in content manage-ment. Two of the major themes of the spring Gilbane conference were specialization and content-centric applications.Since then, ECM vendors have beentoning down their ECM visions as well. FatWire has repositioned itsContent Server product, an ECMaspirant back in 2001, as a WCMtool. New ECM entrant Oracle callsits product “ECM Light” and “ECMfor the rest of us” by adding version-ing, simple workflow, metadatacapture, and improved authentica-tion to the file system paradigm tocreate an easy-to-use, inexpensivedocument management solution. Vignette’s marketing site now cen-ters on specific business problemssuch as Web site and brand man-agement, employee intranets, andcustomer self-service Web sites.
TIME TO RETHINK 
 While the major ECM vendors werefocused on offering more breadth,many forward-thinking customersstarted to look for specialized andusable CM solutions and ways toshare information between them.They found usability a key successfactor in their CM initiatives becausetheir internal users found ways to work around unusable systems.Two of the most interesting trendsincontent management are opensource and hosted solutions (suchas Atomz and CrownPeak). Middlemarket products that focus on aparticular discipline within contentmanagement (such as WCM, DM, or
Vol. 18, No. 5
15
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