Enterprise Content Management Consulting

Information Architected’s consultants have advised many of the world’s largest organizations on how to maximize the ROI and effectiveness on their Enterprise Content Management initiatives.

Our ECM Consulting Services Include:

Content Audit
Needs Assessment
Readiness Assessment
Current-state and Future-state Business Architectures
Gap Analysis and Change Management Strategy Development
Corporate Information Governance Development
Solution Definition and Implementation Plan

Feeling overwhelmed with baffling marketing hype of most ECM solution providers? Concerned about catching up with the right business and technology practices to best support your organization?

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is not just a technology, or collection of technologies, despite the marketing hype! Unfortunately, even though ECM is now roughly 20 years into it’s evolution, it is also not just an “out of the box” or “off the shelf” application that you install and run with in 99% of organizations who have a real ECM need.

ECM is a system – with business benefits that most haven’t begun to touch… but that’s changing

ECM is a family of technologies, leveraged individually and collectively to maximize the reuse and sharing of corporate intellectual property, while simultaneously lowering the risk from potential misuse.

The advent of digital content has opened up the door to opportunity for every organization. Content can be created at rates never before imagined, ranging from simple word processing files to digital video. A single e-mail, can share content with literally thousands of people around the globe, instantly.

More importantly – enterprise content can be managed and manipulated to drive specific business practices and outcomes. Content no longer has to be a passive resource, filed away awaiting retrieval. It can be integrated into processes and applications to drive decision making, establish communities, trigger actions and become self-policing.

But the challenge of ECM is two fold. To maximize ROI on content, access should be wide and open. To minimize the risk associated with misappropriation of content, access must be monitored and controlled. ECM strategies must balance these two seemingly opposing objectives, and define a business and technology approach to support that balance.

Our Consultants Can Provide Targeted Advice on How You Can:

Establish a corporate content strategy
Align technology and business strategies for ECM
Maximize reuse of content and increase effective communication
Minimize risk from misuse of content
Establish corporate information governance
Develop a corporate information architecture
Align business processes to corporate information resources
Increase the effectiveness of corporate intranets and enterprise websites

Our ECM Consulting Services Are Time and Cost-Effective

We work with your team to develop a customized strategy and implementation plan for ECM. Our consulting is cost and time effective, because we apply a set of time-proven methodologies that provide focus and velocity to each client engagement. These include:

MIKE2

MIKE2 is a flexible, modular and comprehensive model developed through an open source project. It is the only industry standard approach to ECM needs assessment and solution development, and a standard with which IAI is intimately familiar. MIKE2 is a structured methodology for assessing users’ needs and requirements within an electronic document-based framework. It sets the stage at an enterprise level for user expectations and technology issues and standards for the project, and takes a holistic view of the ECM project, gathering and appreciating enterprise-wide basic needs, expectations and constraints.

Document Cross Function Matrix

The Document Cross Function Matrix is an IAI developed methodology that plots document creation/source against document usage/leverage. It provides a facilitated framework in which to identify high leverage applications (i.e., those that minimally affect the authoring process, but extensively affect reuse). It can also be used to illustrate how a single subscription to a third-party document can be leveraged across an organization.

ECM Business Architecture

The ECM Business Architecture is an IAI developed structured template for exposing and analyzing the current-state and future-state of ECM within an organization along 8 separate but related facets. The IAI ECM Business Architecture is the foundation of objective gap analysis and change management strategy.

ECM BizTech Grid

This methodology is used to track the degrees of complexity associated with ECM component technologies across your business architecture. It illustrates the overlap in technology solutions and the cost/needs requirements across the organization. It is this level of analysis that provides insight into the need for integration and different security schemes.

Business Process Blueprint

These graphical depictions of your business processes provide a high level appreciation for the intricacies of each targeted process, including the relationship between process, content sources and legacy applications. . These issues are typically the focus of technology application and/or process redesign. Schematics may also be used to introduce, at a high-level, re-engineered processes or implementation strategies.

Content Inventory

These series of spreadsheets facilitate the inventory of your organization’s pertinent content resources, and relevant facets for each source, including ownership,relevant document attributes, such as size, frequency of creation and access, and security access restrictions.

Enterprise Content Governance Document Template

The Enterprise Content Governance Document Template is a framework for establishing a comprehensive, (or updating an existing) Corporate Information Governance Document. The Governance Document is the culmination of the analysis. It defines the scope of your ECM solution and the processes and roles required for ongoing content stewardship.

ECM RFP Template

The ECM RFP Template is an IAI developed best practice for translating user needs into a, effective request for proposal.

Though no two implementations will be exactly the same, there are critical best practices to implementation that should be followed. Information Architected provides the guidance and methodologies necessary to ensure the success of your ECM initiative.

Can We Help You?

Confused by best of breed component technology solutions versus ECM suites?
Need a strategy to configure and customize an ECM solution platform that integrates technologies such as document management, workflow, web content management, content security, records management, search, taxonomy, imaging and meta data
Wondering how to position ECM within your organization to both drive collaboration and content sharing, as well as manage compliance and content security?
Do you need to migrate and integrate legacy applications and siloed content repositories into an ECM?
Need to reconcile collaboration with corporate governance?
Do you need to better leverage the potential value of enterprise content and increase collaboration and knowledge sharing?
Do you need to establish content management as a corporate asset, and provide a documented Information Governance Plan?

If You answer Yes to any of these questions – then Information Architected can provide the assistance you need.

If you are tired of the unapproachable, expensive, “ivory tower” consultants and analysts of the world, or the integrators who only promote the solution they resell, we are the antidote to provide realistic, affordable and relevant strategic solutions for your business needs.