Would an ECM Rose by any Other Name still Be this Confusing?

 Sometimes when you try to categorize and label something, you miss a lot of the underlying complexity.

The healthcare industry is especially good at this. Consider labels such as ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) or its cousin ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) or OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) or DSPS (Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome). 

Or ED, which I won’t define further because the joke potential is far too rich. However, judging by the volume of ads on television, ED must be the single most pressing issue facing humanity.

Conditions are sometimes identified and labeled quickly in order to apply a cure that masks a great deal of complexity. 

Usually these simple labels and their proposed cures are accompanied by a torrent of facts and disclaimers that belie the very simplicity the label was supposed to imply. The long string of rapidly spoken legal and health disclaimers at the end of any drug pitch have brought a whole new set of embarrassing and uncomfortable subjects and conditions right into our living rooms. (Just between us guys – would you really wait 4 hours before seeking medical attention?)

Which brings me to that string of initials used to describe our industry. You know the one I mean. It's OK to say it. Don't be embarrassed: ECM.

ECM and ED have a lot in common. Hah – I bet that's never been said before. Looking at the fine print in a newspaper advertisement this morning, I noticed that a side effect of ED pharmaceutical remedies can be "a decrease or loss of vision or hearing – sometimes with ringing in the ears and dizziness." At times, I've heard end users describe ECM (enterprise content management) sales pitches in similar terms.

Gosh, there’s rich joke potential here. But my wife insists I resist the temptation for a string of cheap jokes and get to my point. So here it is:

“ECM” – too simple a label for a complicated space? 

We have spent a decade collectively trying to apply a very simple label to a very complicated technology space. When we all started down this path, it was driven by the need for a more expansive term to describe the changes going on in our industry. We have a special page on the AIIM site to describe "What is ECM?"  Last year we even had a fun contest for a 60-second definition.

We all knew what we were talking about when our industry consisted of these discrete parts: 1) document management; 2) imaging; and 3) workflow (limited solely to the workflow of documents). But as the industry began changing about a decade ago, we needed something more comprehensive to describe the industry we were becoming.

Hence, ECM. The goal was a label like ERP (enterprise resource planning), or CRM (customer relationship management), that could provide a shorthand reference point for who we are and what we do.

This begs the question of whether we are a single industry anymore or more accurately a collection of technologies in search of a business problem to solve (i.e., a mainstream set of technologies). But let me put that question aside for a moment.

Of course, like any simple term used to describe a complicated set of conditions, those selling solutions in our space attached all sorts of qualifiers and explanations to the ECM label to describe what they were really talking about. All of which has had the effect of baffling many potential customers. Because while describing a "space" is important to sellers and analysts and is certainly a handy shorthand, users usually couldn't care less.

A data point to consider.

A few years ago we did a survey in which we asked a sample of user organizations outside our industry whether they knew what the term ECM meant. We even gave them some clues. The result? Less than 30 percent knew what we were talking about. I don't think things have gotten much better since then. This same set of users place a huge value on the importance of effective management of information to their long-term strategic success. What a disconnect!

So I have a question for my readers. In asking it, I don't necessarily want to jump to a conclusion, but launch an ongoing conversation for the next few months.

"Is the 'ECM' label helpful for our industry, or counter-productive?"

Let's hear your thoughts.  Join the dialogue.  Pass this link around and let's get a conversation going. There is no single right answer. Take a chance and chime in with a comment. 

Comments

[twitter.com/piewords]

Look at the question from this angle, what is the alternative...

If we change the term, the education process starts all over. Nobody wants that. Has what we are doing changed? I would say no. It is more complicated and broader than it was 10 years ago, but the basic problem is the same...

Have content, need control

Okay, so there is more to it than that, but while the details evolve, the basic need is still there. We should evolve the definition and discussions, not the term. Until what we do can no longer be rationally covered by the term Enterprise Content Management, we should focus on our definitions and expanding our reach.

As for the definition itself, been working on that through a string of posts. The latest, with some interesting comments, is here.

http://wordofpie.com/2009/12/28/turning-the-ecm-definition-around/

-Pie

[Bryant Duhon]

Have content, need control. I like that. I've tried to sum the industry up that succinctly before, but couldn't get it down to 4 words.

Bryant

[Hanns Kohler-Kruner]

'Have content, need control' is a great 4 word description, but does it capture the essence of ECM enough? I have been watching piewords ECM definition discussion and agree that we need to rethink how we label individual spaces. The borders are becoming less clear and if you look at the current AIIM definition, does it still capture what ECM is and should be all about?

The label is great for a tradeshow and differentiate between archiving, document management and managing unstructured content in a variety of repositories, but Web/Enterprise 2.0 has changed the game again.

I believe and have believed for some time it may be time to either change and update the definition of ECM or find a new acronym that captures the essence of our industry.

Piewords has a nice discussion going on his blog, and I am sure we can get another one going here, but maybe this would be something where a collab space like Google Wave or a wiki could be useful. John?

The discussion about the term ECM has been ongoing in Europe, and especially Germany, the gist being to drop or expand ECM and go for something more holistic, that deals with managing both structured and unstructured content in a controlled manner.

[Julie Colgan]

I'm with Pie. To me, it would be nothing more than self-serving to change the name of the "space"/"industry"/"whatever". The term still fits, we just haven't sold it well.

The problem may stem more from the fact that many in this industry have a rich history of making things more complicated than they need to be, for reasons generally unknown but I suspect it has something to do with hungry egos. "Hey, look, I am BUSY and have LOTS of stuff to do! I'm very smart!"

Simple sells, so stop making it hard.

Personally, I could care less if my boss is aware of all of the details involved with what I direct - I just want her to continue to fund my initiatives, oh, and pay me.

My point is, the complexity of what I do as an information manager is my problem, not my boss'. It's important for me to know the totality of ECM is an overwhelming mass of details and technology while it's only important for my boss to know that funding ECM initiatives will help improve our bottom line.

~Julie

[Michael Elkins]

I'd say we have two issues:

1) There are multiple three letter acronyms (TLAs) used to describe the space and the vendors trying to position themselves. ECM, DRM, EDRM, CMS, WCM have all been used to mean virtually the same thing at one time or another and I'm sure there are a few others I've missed. As an industry, we've been our own worst enemy in that respect. Even with ECM, the "E" is sometimes Enterprise and sometimes Electronic which leads me to...

2) We have a credibility problem. For something that's called "Enterprise" Content Management, there aren't enough enterprise deployments to back that up. The industry suffers from departmentalitis. As much as the ECM vendors have wanted to be like their ERP brethren, which just has not happened. Personally, I'd like to introduce a simple Content and Collaboration Management (CCM) TLA. The cost of changing the marketing materials would be rather high though.