White Paper
SharePoint and ECM Working Together
Sponsored by:
About the White Paper
White Paper
As the non-profit association dedicated to nurturing, growing and supporting the ECM (Enterprise Content Management) community, AIIM is proud to provide this research at no charge. In this way the education, thought leadership and direction provided by our work can be leveraged by the entire community. Our objective is to present the “wisdom of the crowds” based on our 65,000 strong community. We are happy to extend free use of the materials in this report to end-user companies and to independent consultants, but not to suppliers of ECM systems, products and services, other than IBM and its subsidiaries. Any use of this material must carry the attribution – “© AIIM 2009 www.aiim.org / © IBM 2009 www.ibm.com” Rather than redistribute a copy of this report to your colleagues, we would prefer that you direct them to www.aiim.org/research for a free download of their own. Our ability to deliver such high-quality research is made possible by the financial support of our underwriting sponsor, without whom we would have to return to a paid subscription model. For that, we hope you will join us in thanking our underwriter for this support:
IBM 3565 Harbor Blvd., Costa Mesa, CA 92626-1420 United States Phone: 1 (714) 327-3400 Fax: 1 (714) 850-3176 Web: www.ibm.com/software/data/ecm
About AIIM
Working Together
The survey results quoted in this report are taken from a number of 2009 AIIM surveys, with generally between 160-170 responses from individual members of the AIIM community surveyed using a Web-based tool. We have concentrated on larger organizations with more than 500 employees, and have excluded suppliers of ECM products and services. Invitations to take the survey were sent via e-mail to a selection of AIIM’s 65,000 registered individuals. Respondents are predominantly from North America and cover a representative spread of industry and government sectors
AIIM (www.aiim.org) is the community that provides education, research, and best practices to help organizations find, control and optimize their information. For more than 60 years, AIIM has been the leading non-profit organization focused on helping users to understand the challenges associated with managing documents, content, records and business processes. Today, AIIM is international in scope, independent and implementation-focused, acting as the intermediary between ECM (Enterprise Content Management) users, vendors, and the channel.
About the author Doug Miles is Director of the AIIM Market Intelligence Division. He has over 25 years experience of working with users and vendors across a broad spectrum of IT applications. As an early pioneer of document management systems for business and engineering applications, Doug has been involved in their evolution from technical solution through business process optimization to enterprise infrastructure platform. He has also worked closely with other enterprise-level IT systems such as ERP, CRM and BI, has an MSc in Communications Engineering and is a Member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology. © 2009 AIIM 1100 Wayne Avenue, Suite 1100 Silver Spring, MD 20910 301.587.8202 www.aiim.org © AIIM 2009 www.aiim.org / © IBM 2009 www.ibm.com
© 2009 IBM 3565 Harbor Blvd, Costa Mesa, CA 92626-1420 714 327-3400 www.ibm.com 2
SharePoint and ECM
Process used and survey demographics
Table of Contents About the White Paper: About the White Paper ...................... 2
About AIIM ....................................................... 2 About the author.............................................. 2
Introduction: Introduction ..................................... 4
Different Drivers, Different Decision Makers .............................. 9
White Paper
Process used and survey demographics....... 2
Different Drivers, Different Decision Makers:
Decision Makers............................................ 10
Integration and Connectivity: Integration and Connectivity ........... 10 Scalability....................................................... 11 SharePoint Integrations ................................. 11
Product Evolution the history of ECM suites: Product Evolution the history of ECM suites .................. 4
Joined Up Thinking: Joined Up Thinking ........................ 12
BPM and Workflow .......................................... 4 Vertical domain expertise ................................ 5
Electronic Records Management ................... 5
Conclusion and Recommendations.. 12
The ECM Suite................................................. 5
ECM as infrastructure, BPM as core process . 5 Case Management.......................................... 6 Collaboration and Enterprise 2.0 .................... 6
Underwritten in part by: IBM................................................................. 14 AIIM................................................................ 14
Working Together
Multiple repositories ........................................ 5
Strategies and Usage: Strategies and Usage ....................... 6 Strategies for SharePoint and ECM ................ 7 Strategy Rationales ......................................... 8
© AIIM 2009 www.aiim.org / © IBM 2009 www.ibm.com
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SharePoint and ECM
Multiple content types ..................................... 5
Conclusion and Recommendations:
Introduction
White Paper
SharePoint has become one of Microsoft’s most successful products of all time. Initially promoted in its 2003 release, the 2007 update propelled SharePoint into use in over half of the AIIM community1, and the 2010 release looks likely to add further momentum. Its initial appeal has been as an extension of staff-facing intranet applications, with the addition of collaborative work spaces or “team-sites”, and the provision of a number of Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 tools such as expertise profiles, blogs and wikis. Collaborative working and project sites inevitably contain a number of stored documents, and SharePoint provides version control and check-in/check-out functionality to deal with them. Indeed, we have consistently found that over 80% of SharePoint users in the AIIM community use or plan to use SharePoint for document management in this way. However, in the same survey, only 8% of the larger organizations (>500 employees) considered SharePoint to be their Enterprise Content Management (ECM) suite. We have also found that the rapid adoption rate for SharePoint has created confusion in many organizations as regards to their future strategy for information management, particularly those with existing and established ECM and Records Management (RM) systems. A number of alternatives arise: • Separate systems - SharePoint for collaboration and ECM for content and records management. • A single sign-on portal providing access to both. • Integration between SharePoint and an underlying ECM or RM repository for robust records management. • Migration to SharePoint as a single collaboration and content management system. • Utilize the collaboration and Enterprise 2.0 functions provided by existing ECM suite suppliers instead of SharePoint.
To understand the positioning, capability and usage of SharePoint in comparison with the longer established ECM suppliers and products, it would be useful to trace the history whereby a somewhat specialized application from 20 or more years ago has developed into a fundamental part of the IT infrastructure. Most established ECM vendors can trace their origins to document scanning and imaging systems developed in the late eighties and early nineties for scan-and-retrieve applications. Data-basing the documents allowed the Document Management (DM) functions of indexing, security and version control to be added. An early breakthrough was full-text Optical Character Recognition (OCR), which although not reliable enough to replace the master image, provides sufficient coverage for a full-text search to find the image and present it.
Working Together
Product Evolution – the history of ECM suites
BPM and Workflow A far bigger breakthrough, particularly as regards the financial returns achievable from imaging, was the concept of Workflow. A paper or forms-based processing trail, involving multiple photocopies passing in and out of mail trays, can be replaced with a single scanned image of the form or correspondence, moving through the process steps in a pre-defined way with serial, parallel, or conditional paths. This level of Business Process Management (BPM) provides for considerable optimization of the process, reducing unnecessary steps, and removing physical barriers to the location of processing staff. Enhanced BPM capabilities have included the capture of information from forms using much improved OCR techniques, allowing automatic matching of identifiers such as invoice numbers with records held on transactional systems such as finance and ERP. Improved tools for process modelling, optimization and simulation have enhanced the management of document-centric BPM, and merged it with transaction-centric BPM and Enterprise Application Integration (EIA), linking up other enterprise software applications.
© AIIM 2009 www.aiim.org / © IBM 2009 www.ibm.com
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SharePoint and ECM
We have measured the current thinking amongst our survey respondents and in this white paper, we will set out to explore some of the background to these findings. We do not plan to focus on the relative feature-sets between SharePoint and traditional ECM suites, but more to consider the enterprise implications of different SharePoint and ECM strategies, and how to combine the best of the two product types.
Vertical domain expertise
White Paper
One aspect of this deeper involvement in the business process has been the vertical domain expertise built up over the years by the original document management and workflow vendors, particularly in such industries as finance, healthcare and engineering, as well as local and national government. A range of centralized, distributed or outsourced processes have been built out from the original single-process focus of the early applications.
Multiple content types The next evolutionary step towards the ECM suite of today was the combining of electronically generated documents with scanned paper images into a common “content” store, managed by a single database. A user searching for supplier correspondence does not need to know if it is the scanned copy of the signed contract, a PDF file of the associated drawing, an email discussing changes, or a fax of the delivery note. An added driver for content management in the mid-2000s was regulatory compliance and litigation discovery.
Electronic Records Management As these electronically stored documents move through their lifecycle they are likely to fall under a defined retention scheme, and the need for Electronic Records Management (ERM) systems arises. These provide a secure and robust store with fileplan classifications, designated access rights, delete protection, and defined retention schemes. Although some of these systems were originally developed to manage physical documents and records, they quickly evolved to encompass electronic images and files, and have more recently merged with, or developed as modules of, “active” document and content management systems.
Multiple repositories At the same time as the capability of the ECM suite has matured, the realization has dawned within larger organizations that their content is likely to be spread over many different systems - some legacy, some from merger and acquisition, some within transactional line-of-business systems - and that it may be more appropriate to leave those repositories in place, but to implement a single-point of access for any employee needing to search the information and knowledge within them. Beyond that single sign-on concept may lie a range of capabilities from enterprise search, role-based security, content migration, and manage-in-place.
Working Together
As the concept of the comprehensive ECM suite has come together over the last 5 years, vendors have builtout their offerings by writing or acquiring modules to deal with more diverse content and processes such as web content management, digital asset management, e-discovery, enterprise search, email management, audio and video objects, component document management, and most recently, collaboration and Enterprise 2.0. At the same time they have improved the robustness and security of the repositories, and the management of the underlying storage systems for long-term archiving and migration.
ECM as infrastructure, BPM as core process The convergence of enterprise-wide information management within ECM and the management of key enterprise processes within BPM has inevitably attracted the major IT infrastructure suppliers into the ECM market, including IBM, Oracle, EMC and, of course, Microsoft. Microsoft and Oracle have developed or assembled fresh product offerings, whilst IBM and EMC have inherited the accumulated experience of two decades of both content management and BPM application via the FileNet, Content Manager and Documentum products. One result of this focus from the largest IT players is the formation of the Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) group which has made strong progress towards a common service-level protocol for interconnecting different content repositories.
© AIIM 2009 www.aiim.org / © IBM 2009 www.ibm.com
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SharePoint and ECM
The ECM Suite
Case Management
White Paper
The most sophisticated application for ECM and BPM is that of case management used in complex claims, customer service, social support and HR applications. These often involve concurrent access by multiple team members and a combination of different document types may need to be added to a case folder at a number of points in the workflow. The process itself becomes a combination of standard procedures and case-specific extensions or exceptions which create a challenge for conventional pre-defined BPM workflows.
Collaboration and Enterprise 2.0 The most recent focus for all of the ECM vendors has been Collaboration and Enterprise 2.0. Although content is involved and generated in these applications, this is not a natural fit for application suites whose prime objective is secure content control and process uniformity. Certainly governance is an issue, and sensitive content is as likely to appear in team sites and forums as anywhere else across the enterprise. Indeed, the situation is made somewhat worse due to the pro-active placing of such content into the public domain. However, the over-riding culture of Enterprise 2.0 is light-touch control and the encouragement of contribution and knowledge exchange. This viewpoint makes itself apparent in SharePoint, and indeed many other collaboration suites, where the open nature of team-site creation has caused proliferation issues in many early roll-outs.
Strategies and Usage
0%
20%
40%
Collaboraon/workspaces
60%
80%
100%
Working Together
Figure 1: Are you using or do you have immediate plans to use SharePoint in the following applications? (N=165 SharePoint users with >500 employees)
Document management (check in/check out) Portal Web content management (internal/staff-facing) File share replacement Enterprise 2.0 (Forums, Blogs & Wikis) Enterprise Search Business Process Management (Workflow) Forms processing Records management Web content management (external/www) Scanning and imaging Business Intelligence (BI) Email management
Current
© AIIM 2009 www.aiim.org / © IBM 2009 www.ibm.com
Planned
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SharePoint and ECM
It seems likely that most organizations using SharePoint did not initially purchase it with a view to using it as their ECM suite. The primary applications are collaboration and intranet portals. As we can see, however, half (52%) of our responding organizations with over 500 employees are already using SharePoint for document management, with a further 31% planning to do so, and this is check-in/check-out document management as opposed to straightforward file-share replacement. In addition we have SharePoint being used for BPM in 23% of organizations, with planned use by a further 37%, and records management in use with 13% and planned for 35%.
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Given the size of these organizations, it would be hardly surprising to find SharePoint being put to use somewhere in the business for any of its possible applications. However, good information governance requires policies and strategies to be in place across all repositories of useful information and, even more importantly, all places where information is stored that is subject to legal or regulatory compliance (we found in another AIIM survey2 that this is likely in 56% of SharePoint installations). Therefore, businesses that already have existing systems for content, document or records management need to have a strategy that shows how SharePoint fits into that information management mix.
Strategies for SharePoint and ECM Taking our sample of SharePoint users, we asked about their strategy regarding existing ECM suites. Figure 2: Which of the following best describes your strategy with regard to SharePoint and your ECM suite(s) (including DM, RM, BPM)? (N=170 SharePoint users with >500 employees)
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SharePoint is our first significant implementaon of ECM Use ECM for content management and SharePoint for Collaboraon, web design, etc. Integrate SharePoint as a front-end portal to our exisng ECM suite(s)
Phase out our exisng ECM suite(s) in favor of SharePoint
The first thing to note is that for 22% of respondents, SharePoint has been their introduction to ECM technologies, most likely representing an increase in the overall market for ECM systems brought about by Microsoft’s activity. The next group of 27% have made the choice that SharePoint will be their preferred platform for collaboration, web design, and possibly Enterprise 2.0, and their ECM system will continue to provide content and records management services. We will explore some of the reasons given for this in the next section.
Working Together
We have SharePoint and an exisng ECM suite but do not yet have a strategy
A further group of 10% have decided to integrate SharePoint as a front-end portal to their existing ECM suites, with a further 8% planning to purchase a new ECM or records management suite to provide a repository underneath SharePoint. Just 6% of respondents in the sample are planning to phase out their existing ECM suite or suites in favor of SharePoint. Given the likely existence of legacy DM systems or failed ECM implementations within these larger companies, this is a very low number. Of some concern, of course, are those making up the 26% of organizations who do not as yet have a strategy as to how they will roll out SharePoint in relation to their existing systems. It is likely that many of those are currently piloting SharePoint against its possible uses, or perhaps waiting to see what the 2010 release brings.
© AIIM 2009 www.aiim.org / © IBM 2009 www.ibm.com
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SharePoint and ECM
Implement a new ECM/RM suite to work with SharePoint
Strategy Rationales Next we explored the background to these strategy decisions. Figure 3: Which TWO of the following best describe your reasons for retaining your existing ECM suite(s)
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
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0%
60%
We do not feel that SharePoint can match the industry-specific requirements that are available in our DM/RM/BPM/ECM suite(s) We do not feel that SharePoint would preserve the classificaon and findability that we have created within our exisng DM/RM/ECM suite We feel it important to retain the security and integrity of a dedicated DM/RM system We do not feel that SharePoint can readily meet the standards that we require (DOD 5015, MoReq2, etc) We are not happy to embed our archive content into the SQL database We do not feel that SharePoint can match the Business Process Management capability of our BPM/ECM suite
Working Together
Here we see an understandable range of reasons. 55% feel that there are functional elements missing in SharePoint, and we explore this further in the next question. Having made a considerable implementation investment in their existing ECM suites in such areas as user roles, policies, metadata standards, etc., 44% were not prepared to give that up in favor of SharePoint, and 17% could not write off their financial investment. A third of respondents cited the fact that they only ever intended to use SharePoint for point functions such as web design, internet forms or search. Moving a step further to clarify reservations about SharePoint functionality compared to existing ECM systems, 56% felt they would be unable to meet industry-specific requirements. It is interesting that in Figure 3, support issues do not come up as a big issue, and yet in Figure 4, industry-specific requirements heads the reservations list. This may be a confusion between product support and application support. Certainly in the early years of SharePoint, the Microsoft channel was somewhat inexperienced in content management in general and vertical industry requirements in particular. It may be that the larger system integrators are now better experienced with SharePoint, but that it generally takes many product development cycles before industry-specific requirements feed back into standard product features.
© AIIM 2009 www.aiim.org / © IBM 2009 www.ibm.com
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SharePoint and ECM
We do not feel that SharePoint integrates well with our exisng scanning and capture
Figure 4: Which of the following best describe your reservations about SharePoint compared to your existing ECM suite(s)? (Max THREE)
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60%
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We do not feel that SharePoint can match the industry-specific requirements that are available in our DM/RM/BPM/ECM suite(s) We do not feel that SharePoint would preserve the classificaon and findability that we have created within our exisng DM/RM/ECM suite We feel it important to retain the security and integrity of a dedicated DM/RM system We do not feel that SharePoint can readily meet the standards that we require (DOD 5015, MoReq2, etc) We are not happy to embed our archive content into the SQL database We do not feel that SharePoint can match the Business Process Management capability of our BPM/ECM suite We do not feel that SharePoint integrates well with our exisng scanning and capture
Working Together
Also making a strong showing is the concern about classification and findability within SharePoint compared to the more robust taxonomy management and fileplans within existing ECM suites. Other AIIM surveys3 have shown that many organizations are moving towards automated classification systems on the basis that these are likely to produce more reliable indexing than human input from reluctant or timepressed users. The more sophisticated records management systems can trawl different repositories such as email, ERP or CRM, automatically declaring appropriate candidates as records based on standard content and metadata characteristics.
Different Drivers, Different Decision Makers For many years, AIIM has mapped the key business drivers for investment in ECM systems against compliance, cost reduction, and customer service. Compliance and cost reduction have vied for first place over the last few years, currently running at 44% for cost-reduction and 41% for compliance amongst the 500+ employee organizations. In many ways, this reflects the two main planks of ECM mentioned earlier, content management for compliance and BPM for productivity improvement. Given the scale of ECM, RM and BPM investment that has been made against these two aims, and the vital role that they play in protecting corporate governance and improving process productivity, it is hardly a surprise that most organizations are in no mood to experiment with a new and relatively unproven product for these business critical applications, no matter how unifying the concept might be. Many will also have invested in vertical market customizations to best match their specific requirements, both from the compliance viewpoint and the core Line of Business (LOB) processes.
© AIIM 2009 www.aiim.org / © IBM 2009 www.ibm.com
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SharePoint and ECM
Reflecting requirements for highly secure records management in the government sector, aerospace, and other highly regulated agencies, 21% cited compliance with standards such as DoD5015 and MoReq2 as an issue. These are demanding standards which require test certification by the vendor, and may be mandated in certain sectors.
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As mentioned earlier, Case Management is the “state-of-the-art” in combined ECM and BPM capability provided by the longer established ECM suppliers such as IBM, EMC and Open Text. Although sophisticated in its approach, case management is very flexible and has wide applicability in areas that might otherwise be difficult to process manage. The assured compliance that case management brings to these applications creates a strong driver for adoption as primary line-of-business support, adding direct business value, as well as providing a robust content infrastructure for the rest of the organization. Collaboration, on the other hand, is relatively new as an enterprise-level technology, and is to an extent seen more as a communications technology or enabling infrastructure rather than as a core aspect of business process. There is no doubt that a rapid ROI can be achieved from reduction of business travel and time spent in meetings, and a harder to measure, but more fundamental ROI from improved knowledge sharing and better leveraging of staff expertise. The even more informal Enterprise 2.0 and social media aspects are more likely to be driven by a corporate style and innovation policy rather than potential financial returns.
Decision Makers We can infer from this, therefore, that proposals for investment in collaboration tools are likely to come from Heads of IT, or even more likely IT staff who have been early adopters of Web 2.0 and social media, and that CEOs and Project Leads are willing to sponsor these initiatives in order pull together an inclusive and sharing team attitude. Investments in ECM, BPM and Records Management, on the other hand, are likely to be more enduring, affect a larger proportion of the workforce, and are potentially more disruptive to implement. Proposals will come from Line of Business managers, information managers, and compliance officers and decisions will be made by finance officers, corporate secretaries and functional heads.
Figure 5: Which of the following would best describe who is driving and controlling SharePoint sites and applications in your organization? (N=164 SharePoint users with >500 employees)
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Records Management IT with input from Records Management
Working Together
0%
IT with no input from Records Management No one, but we have set up rules and metadata guidelines No one, and it's completely out-ofcontrol
Integration and Connectivity One of the potential drivers for implementing a unified collaboration and content management system is the historical difficulty of interconnecting different repositories. At first sight, the simplicity of maintaining all content in a single, truly enterprise-wide, content management system is attractive. However, as mentioned earlier, the reality in most larger companies is a plethora of content repositories, quite frequently with more than one candidate vying to be the unifying, all-encompassing ECM system. What also becomes apparent is that content, and particularly records may be generated from any number of line-of-business and enterprise systems, and ideally, they would all be funnelled into a single, secure records management system. © AIIM 2009 www.aiim.org / © IBM 2009 www.ibm.com
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SharePoint and ECM
All of which is a recipe for confusion where SharePoint is concerned, as shown in Figure 5.
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Most of the long-standing suppliers of ECM and RM systems have developed a wide range of connectors capable of integrating their systems underneath a host of applications such as finance, ERP, HR, logistics, CRM and email. Indeed, in this respect, a collaboration system would be no different, allowing team-sites in particular to be safely and uniformly archived. These integrations allow records to be declared as they arise, and safely archived in the ECM repository. As mentioned earlier, an interesting aspect of this process is that auto-declaration or auto-classification mechanisms have been developed for many of these integrations, overcoming staff reluctance, and in many cases improving classification accuracy. Alternatively, “sweep” technologies can harvest records from these systems based on intelligent agents.
Scalability Scalability and volume are also important elements of such integrations, particularly with regard to emails, which in larger organizations could very rapidly swamp a back-end repository if not suitably filtered. Solutions for this problem generally involve a combination of auto-declaration, carefully regulated storage scenarios, and well planned disposition rules. A further requirement for integration with other systems arises from the BPM viewpoint. Document-centric BPM is likely to require touch-points with data from other systems, and when this is extended to transactioncentric BPM, even closer integration is likely to be required. Increasing availability of service-level interfaces and SOA will ease the technical difficulties here, as will CMIS for the content repository connections.
SharePoint Integrations
Figure 6: Which of the following systems have you integrated with SharePoint?
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Document management system Web Content Management system ECM System
30%
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60%
Working Together
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Business Process Management system/toolset Records Management system Document Producon Management system Main line-of-business system Finance Scanning and capture system Email management system CRM ERP None of these Current
© AIIM 2009 www.aiim.org / © IBM 2009 www.ibm.com
Planned
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SharePoint and ECM
As we can see from Figure 6, there is a strong appetite for interconnecting SharePoint with other systems. In particular, we can see that 23% have integrated existing document management systems, with a further 30% planning to do so. Similar scenarios apply to both ECM and RM systems, going from around 13-14% now to a total of 40-50% in the future.
Joined Up Thinking
White Paper
The two most prominent drivers for information access architecture sit at opposite ends of the controlversus-innovation spectrum. At the control end is the legal discovery process where significant savings can be made if information of all types and categories, and from all potential “custodians”, can be searched from a single interface, and in addition, if a legal hold can be placed on that information to prevent deletion, movement or change. At the innovation end is the realization that for most organizations, it is easier to search for things outside of the organization, on the web, than it is to find knowledge and experience on internal servers and repositories. Corporate knowledge is locked away, originally on paper in filing cabinets, now on shared drives, email systems and separate electronic repositories. Both of these drivers point to the need for a single point of access, or portal, to span existing repositories. Figure 7: Thinking about your plans in the next 2 years to provide employees with a single point of access to content repositories across your organization, which of the following is the best description of the approach you plan to take or have taken? (N=228 all users with >500 employees)
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10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%
Migrate content to a centralized ECM system Provide a single-sign-on portal using SharePoint Provide a single-sign-on portal using an alternave provider
Use a dedicated Enterprise Search engine
We do not have any significant repositories to link up
We can see from these responses that 38% of larger organizations plan to migrate content onto a single, centralized ECM system (not measured as to whether that might be SharePoint or not) whereas 32% plan to use a single sign-on portal. Over half of these plan to use SharePoint as their portal. We also see that 10% plan to use an enterprise search engine to find information, although this will not necessarily help with setting a legal hold on it. There is obviously not a right or wrong answer here. It depends crucially on what existing systems are in place, and how successful they have been as regards flexible application and general staff acceptance.
Working Together
Not planning to link up repositories
Conclusion and Recommendations In the introduction we suggested five possible scenarios for combining SharePoint and ECM: • Separate systems: SharePoint for collaboration, ECM/BPM for content management, and documentcentric processes • A single sign-on portal providing access to both SharePoint and ECM/RM • Integration with SharePoint of underlying ECM and RM repositories for robust records management • Migration to SharePoint as a single collaboration and content management system • Utilizing collaboration and Enterprise 2.0 platforms from the existing ECM suite vendor We have seen that the most popular strategy - for those that have one - is to utilize SharePoint for collaboration, and ECM systems for content management and process management, thereby maximizing return from past implementation investment, whilst providing a separable and more manageable platform
© AIIM 2009 www.aiim.org / © IBM 2009 www.ibm.com
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SharePoint and ECM
Provide a single-sign-on portal using Open Source
for the newer and less well-defined areas of collaboration and Enterprise 2.0 . One of the strongest reasons for adopting this strategy is the vertical market expertise, customization and depth of functionality that is available in long-standing ECM, BPM and RM solutions.
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For new users attracted to the ECM concept by the popularity and functional breadth of SharePoint, we would recommend a thorough investigation of the alternative offerings, particularly the business process management elements specific to their vertical market which could in themselves produce a substantial ROI, underwriting the provision of wider content management and robust records management. This investigation should engage with line-of-business managers as well as the IT department. An alternative option for existing or new users would be to utilize SharePoint for a greater part of the active document lifecycle, but integrate an existing – or new – ECM/RM system underneath as the long-term document and records repository. This provides a more robust archive, with more opportunity for automated classification, and more scalable storage management, particularly if emails are to be retained within it. It also rationalizes records retention underneath other enterprise systems, leveraging SOA and CMIS integration protocols. The level of BPM support required in the active-document management system should be considered before making this choice. For either of these options, we would recommend a strategy that includes single sign-on access, with search and e-discovery across multiple repositories, including SharePoint. In fact, SharePoint could be utilized as the portal, as long as it is clear at what point documents and records might best be moved to the more robust ECM store for full lifecycle management. This process can be automated with appropriate “sweep” technology. A manage-in-place capability across other linked repositories would enhance the facility for legal hold, tiered storage and common disposition policies.
Working Together
The fifth option deserves attention. Faced with the impact of SharePoint, the other major vendors have developed their own collaboration platforms and Enterprise 2.0 suites, and have also been forced to adjust their pricing models to better match those of SharePoint. Given their deep records repository functionalities, the work-hardened BPM expertise, functional integration with Office products and now the potentially seamless inclusion of collaboration and Enterprise 2.0, these might present a true enterprise-wide alternative to SharePoint. Finally, If the SharePoint project is being driven by the IT department and there is no records management or BPM expertise within the business, or within the project, we would recommend the AIIM Certificate training program as a sound investment prior to commitment to any of the above strategies.
References 1. “Industry Watch: Electronic Records Management – still playing catch up with paper” published by AIIM, September 2009, free to download at www.aiim.org/research 2. AIIM “SharePoint Governance and Security” White Paper, November 2009, www.aiim.org/research. 3. “Industry Watch: Document Scanning and Capture” published by AIIM, December 2009, free to download at www.aiim.org/research
© AIIM 2009 www.aiim.org / © IBM 2009 www.ibm.com
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SharePoint and ECM
Those considering migration from existing systems to an all-SharePoint environment should consider a feasibility study to ensure that existing security roles, metadata, classification schemes, and retention policies can be mapped and maintained within the potentially more open SharePoint concept. If the existing system is considered to be a “failed” ECM or DM installation, utilizing SharePoint as a front-end might overcome some long-standing issues of user acceptance, and the integration process could add automation elements, allowing the system to be retained as the archive.
UNDERWRITTEN BY
White Paper
IBM Enterprise Content Management solutions enable the world’s top companies to make better decisions, faster. As a market leader in content, process and compliance software, IBM ECM delivers a broad set of mission-critical solutions that help solve today’s most difficult business challenges: managing unstructured content, optimizing business processes and helping satisfy complex compliance requirements through an integrated information infrastructure. More than 13,000 global companies, organizations and governments rely on IBM ECM to improve performance and remain competitive through innovation.
Working Together
For over 60 years, AIIM has been the leading non-profit organization focused on helping users to understand the challenges associated with managing documents, content, records, and business processes. Today, AIIM is international in scope, independent, implementation-focused, and, as the representative of the entire ECM industry - including users, suppliers, and the channel—acts as the industry’s intermediary.
© 2009 AIIM 1100 Wayne Avenue, Suite 1100 Silver Spring, MD 20910 301.587.8202 www.aiim.org
© AIIM 2009 www.aiim.org / © IBM 2009 www.ibm.com
AIIM Europe The IT Centre, Lowesmoor Wharf Worcester, WR1 2RR, UK +44 (0)1905 727600 www.aiim.eu
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SharePoint and ECM
AIIM (www.aiim.org) is the community that provides education, research, and best practices to help organizations find, control, and optimize their information.
