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

[Julie Colgan]

Hi Hanns!

A quick observation about your post ... you say "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"

IMO, ECM, in its intended/ideal scope, should easily cover both structured and unstructured content. It's not Enterprise Unstructured Content Management (EUCM), we've just been deploying it that way.

Very much like Michael Elkins says below - there aren't many "enterprise deployments" to point to, however I think that is not a direct or indirect result of what we call the industry, rather it has been our own doing.

Just a thought!
Julie

[John Mancini]

Comments from Daniel Longo, ERMs Regulatory Documentation Analyst -- Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding -- sent via email and reposted by JM...

John: Thoughtful questions and comments. I’m going to vote for counterproductive.

ECM. I have a dislike for 3 letter acronyms to begin with. When IT was young and they were a religion with their own priesthood, it was cool to sound techie, so we all picked up on their lingo to try to sound cool, too.
What do we do with all the time and space we save by not spelling out enterprise content management? I have most of the time/space savings formula worked out, y=x(a-h)2 +2, not the full theory, but starting to look like a parabola.

Breaking it down.
a.) Enterprise. Very few companies refer to themselves as an enterprise. All right, the Starship Enterprise and Enterprise Rent a Car. By the way, what do they call their Enterprise Content Management system? (E2 CM?). None of my co-workers here, or anywhere I’ve worked, ever refer to the business as an enterprise. Sounds too much like the elixir salesman in the 1890’s: Carter Enterprises Snake Oil: cures lumbago, dry scalp and indigestion. Wanna buy some ECM? Cures the enterprise.
Don’t you miss the term “Data Processing” - no initials, short, descriptive, everyone understood, therefore, not cryptic enough (“I’m cool; the DASD uses an RS 232 in the I/O port”)

b.) Content. Kind of a big, vague term. By encompassing everything, it means nothing. Put it together with Enterprise (not the car folks) and now we have this abstract, almost Jackson Pollock, image in our minds. Is the whole the sum of the parts, or are the parts the inverse of the whole? Yes. Thank you for the stopping by, we’ll let you know.
a. Structured and unstructured content. Again, my co-workers have no idea what these terms mean and don’t care.

c.) Management. Still a pretty good term with some value left to it, but becoming a quick and dirty way to make things sound important. It gets attached to too many things – waste management, strategic management - but has meaning when used appropriately- project management, time management. So management can stay in.

What are we left with? I would favor terms used in the office every day. Maybe we can start a couple lists. One with the words to be included like ’document, retrieval, and software’, and another with words to exclude – ‘enterprise, content, product, cloud’. Then we’ll pick one from each column and have a contest for the combinations we like best.

document Retrieval Software
information control

[John Mancini]

Send in by Al Linden via email and reposted by JM....

Alan Linden
AIIM Award of Merit 2009
AIIM Fellow 164

THE HISTORY OF ECM- OR HOW WE GOT THERE

Let’s start by going back to our origins in micrographics and NMA. For the latecomers that was the National Micrograhic Association. Starting with roll microfilm heavily promoted by Kodak it was a semi automated way of finding information using Blip Code technology but the key was finding documents and information. Sound familiar. Added to that was microfiche which had an advantage as a unit record system and some enterprising companies tried to set it up for random access retrieval. Same problem of finding the document or engineering drawing. As computers started to proliferate the initial reaction was to add them to speed up the search and access of the semi-automated systems and this met with some limited success as well.

The PC age started to dawn and the first question that arose was “we are investing all this money in PC’s and where are the ROI and the productivity improvement.” This question led to the formation of the AIIM Productivity Council which I was appointed to Chair. It coincided with the change of name of the organization from NMA to AIIM under the leadership of Truitt Airhart the then President of AIIM. Wrestling with the problems of White Collar Productivity was a far cry from the spools and the reels of the Micrographic age but the group which consisted of Jim Cash of the Harvard Business School and other notables from industry had a tough time getting answers. The answers started to appear when PC’s started to network and it was the connectivity that led to a jump in white collar productivity.

With the advent of the PC Imaging Technology stared to appear on the scene with the likes of the Wang and the Filenet systems, at an AIIM conference in New York. These were truly revolutionary as the attempted to fully automate the semi automated systems of the micrographics age. As these systems started to gain traction it started to look at Imaging Systems as the solution to the problem as initially a great space saving device to replace paper and micrographic records . Of course we no longer have paper or micrographic records (NOT) so now we wrestle with all. three. This was the period when the focus was on the technology. The new scanners and all types of robotic optical disk systems and associated technologies would solve all our problems

The somebody named Thorton May got up at an AIIM conference and said where was the ROI on all this imaging systems . Well what did ROI have to do with the latest Pixel enhancement? Then someone in the insurance industry got up at an AIIM conference and said low and behold after saving money on space storage they started getting major improvements in their imaging system by changing procedures. Wallah we know had Workflow improvements and a whole new genre of Software and Companies designing Workflow Products.

Now looking at the industry we had Scanning (imaging), workflow and still storage and retrieval. Why it almost looked like ECM. But wait there was more to the offer somebody from ARMA probably a hybrid type said what about Records Management So the hard core imaging folks like myself said “What is that”. Then we found out we had been doing Records Management all along but not in a good way as we were technology not Policy oriented. Suddenly a long overlooked disciple that primarily operated in the Basement was elevated to sit alongside IT to set up the rules and policies for what we had been doing. all along. So Records Management was added to ECM

Somewhat in parallel but actually a short time after people looking at Workflow processes stopped and said wait a minute what we need is “ Business Process Management to analyze what the Workflow tools were telling us . In other words we had it backwards. The BPM came before the Workflow. So Wang for one sent all its analysts back to boot camp for BPM training. So BPM was added to ECM status.

Meanwhile back at the ranch remember the productivity improvement by networking PC’s. Well what were all those PC’s doing, why E Mail of course along with document and spreadsheet creation and some databases thrown in. The game was a foot let’s throw in Electronic Mail Management as part of ECM. Lets be reasonable it’s electronic, it has lots of information and an occasional smoking gun and the volume is to big to ignore.

With the addition of a variety of other technologies such as OCR which been around for some time and coupled with forms management and integral part of an imaging system but then the WEB came along and everything changed again. Change being the only constant in our industry.

Which brings me to my final point we have already coined Knowledge Management as a higher level for using the information we have. Personally I vote for Wisdom Management it’s shorter and catcher than ECM and as I have gotten older it has more of a ring to it.

Alan Linden
AIIM Award of Merit 2009
AIIM Fellow 164

[Joyce Query]

Yikes I hate the thought of starting over with another name and do agree we may have not done a good job on education--at least not educating Executives who are, at least in our experience, unaware of the advantages.

We came up with our own name to describe it to our customers "InfoExchange" but have to admit it still leaves out what all is going on.

It is rare to find an organization that addresses ECM on an enterprise basis--most solve single problems. It's my dream to find one progressive organization with the same vision -- how wonderful it would be to properly and holistically tackle the issues!

The problem is not with what we call it. We need to get Executives in tune with the advantages it can provide.

[Mark Mandel]

My opinion is that we should keep it and strengthen it. When the term was first coined, as president of the National Capitol Chapter we spent a chapter season with "Defining ECM" as the theme. We had speakers from Forrester and various others and it was remarkable how similar the definitions were.

Also, think of it from the end user angle - when trying to sell it within an organization, you need to call it something. That coalesces everything around a common theme: RFPs, application names, system benefits, training, documentation, etc. If they have not heard the term before, they accept it easily and use it from that point forward.

The major problem with the acronym is that it is not commonly known outside of our core audience. However, that is not because the acronym is not good, it is because our core audience is too small. We should spend more time branding AIIM and ECM and spreading the word outside our little clique.