What the coming year is preparing for us: ECM development trends in 2012

From the translator . The beginning of the New Year is an excellent occasion to take stock and analyze future prospects. Not so long ago on the website of the company Doculabs we found an interesting article by Joe Shapley ( part 1 and part 2 ). We could not but pay attention to this article: while developing and implementing our own electronic archive system , we try to keep track of all current global trends and changes. We offer a somewhat abridged translation of this article to the attention of our readers. The author of the article reflects on current trends in the foreign market for ECM-systems. Inviting our readers to the discussion, we suggest reflecting on what will be the development trends of ECM in Russia in the next few years.



1. Growing interest in theory and methodology
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Questions of the theory and methodology of ECM today are the subject of lively debate. Switching to electronic document management is not in itself a panacea for solving current problems of an organization: in order to use ECM-systems software products efficiently and effectively, it is necessary to know how and with what methods information is managed in general. The introduction of ECM systems should not be an end in itself; It should help to solve the most complex problems, taking into account the specifics of a particular organization.
Interest in theoretical issues is also growing because at present there is a paradoxical situation in the field of information culture: information-based approaches to working with information are rapidly becoming obsolete, but in many areas still retain their positions, and new approaches and methods not formed. Therefore, the widespread transition to electronic document circulation and electronic storage of documents inevitably entails a rethinking of many organizational and methodological issues.

2. Expanding the scope of ECM technology

ECM-systems are being implemented in organizations engaged in a wide variety of activities. If earlier the main users of ECM-systems were banks, financial organizations, insurance and pharmaceutical companies (i.e. organizations whose activities are focused on working with documents), today they are introduced into machine-building, mining, chemical enterprises, etc. p., that is, where work with documents is not a key element of activity: all these organizations produce and sell something, and work with information is of a secondary (concomitant) nature. Moreover, in these organizations for a long time, the relevant automation of the relevant processes was carried out using not ECM solutions, but other technologies.

It does not follow from the above that a radical change in business models took place in these organizations. Rather, something else happened: the attitude towards working with information changed and, as a result, the need arose to introduce ECM. The following factors contributed to this, in particular:

• the increase in the number of information stored electronically
• expanding interaction with the audience through social media
• intensive development of ECM-systems themselves, expansion of their functionality

3. Increased focus on collaboration and social media.

A striking trend in recent years is the inclusion of social elements in ECM-systems. Currently, ECM-systems are not only and not so much thought of as tools for automating documents and document storage, but also as tools that allow you to create space for collaboration. Collaboration tools include, for example, tools for simultaneous editing of a document by several remote users, tools for creating and maintaining a corporate portal, for working with corporate blogs and wikis, for integrating with social networks, etc.
Translator's comment. This tendency of ECM development seems to us somewhat contradictory. First, the introduction of “social” functions often does not contribute to solving real problems that organizations face, but rather they are a tribute to fashion, which often leads to the same excessive complexity of ECM systems. Secondly, all social functions can in principle be implemented using other software. Thirdly, as Lubor Birdiek, marketing director of Open Text Corporation, noted in his article , collaborative and social-oriented software can hardly be classified as ECM-systems in the strict sense. There is a great danger of a terminological confusion, misleading all participants in the ECM market.

4. Forming a realistic approach to maintaining records

One of the reasons why the introduction of records management systems (English records management, RM) in large organizations often ended in failure, is the incompetent system of policies and procedures for storing records. In many organizations, the system of rules for maintaining records is so complex that it is difficult to follow and maintain with the help of any technological means. In addition, records management approaches, created for information on paper, are completely unsuitable for working with information stored electronically.

As a result, records in electronic form are saved once and for all, in several different systems, on several different carriers - and this despite all the efforts to restore order.

Currently, many organizations are introducing more practical approaches to record management, which consist not in circumventing existing rules and regulations, but in trying to enforce standards and rules using existing technologies. One of the most promising approaches is the enlarged classification by the storage period of documents (English big bucket classification , literally “classification by the principle of“ large buckets ”), according to which information is divided into 3 large categories, not 300, as well as refusal from an approach to saving records based on events (eng. event-based retention).

It is difficult to predict what further development of the above trends will receive, but it seems that the number of organizations using new approaches to record management will only grow in 2012 and subsequent years.

5. Enterprise 2.0?

The issue of Enterprise 2.0 has recently been the subject of lively discussions both in the overseas and in the Russian ECM community. However, all these discussions are still purely speculative than practical, and the reasons for this are as follows:

• Enterprise 2.0 technologies can hardly be called mature
• There is no certainty that Enterprise 2.0 technologies really help solve actual problems facing organizations
• there are practically no examples of successful implementation of Enterprise 2.0 technologies; exceptions are individual attempts in the areas of branding and marketing.

However, it is impossible not to admit that in recent times there have been real opportunities to use Enterprise 2.0 technologies to optimize Enterprise 1.0 business processes (for example, in such areas as interaction with customers and partners, product management, recruitment). It seems that in the coming years, this trend will be further developed.

6. New players entering the market: major players have competitors

Once upon a time, there were a huge number of players on the ECM systems market for large organizations offering systems for every taste.
Starting from 2009, this market was finally redistributed between the major players: IBM, EMC, OpenText, Oracle (In English sources, these companies are called the Big Four, The Big Four).
At present, small and medium-sized companies (for example, Hyland) are entering the market, trying to compete with the Big Four, offering products for large corporations, and not just for small organizations.

In 2012, the number of small companies challenging the Big Four will increase significantly.