This presentation describes how to improve an existing ECM system.

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#AIIM
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How to IMPROVE your
ECM implementation?
Atle Skjekkeland - askjekkeland@aiim.org Image source: Lego.com

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ECM is NOT Easy
What would you say are your biggest current issues with your ECM system(s).
(Max THREE)
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
Improving user adoption across the business
Consolidating/connecting multiple repositories
Dealing with emails as records
Improving the level of training and expertise of our staff
Agreeing an IG policy and applying it to our ECM/RM
Standardizing taxonomies and aligning search
Clearing out the ROT, fixing bad data
Taking the load off users with auto-classification
Rolling out a mobile capability
Strategy decisions on cloud
Dealing with rapidly expanding storage requirements
Holding back the flood of cloud-based file-synch and collaboration…
Complying with the NARA "Managing Government Records…

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What are the biggest on-going issues for SharePoint in your organization?
(Max THREE)
Top 10 SharePoint Challenges
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%
Persuading users to manage and share their content in
SharePoint and not elsewhere
Achieving uniformity of classification and metadata
structures
Lack of expertise to maximize its usefulness
Aligning governance, security and usage policies with other
enterprise apps
Linking to other systems and repositories
Maintaining and upgrading our in-house customizations
The user interface is still difficult
Managing rapidly increasing storage volumes
Keeping up to date with version upgrades
Whether to move away to emerging products or other
options

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What Should Have Been Done…

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Schedule a 2-day ECM Health Check
Steps:
1. Conference call to plan the assessment, identify stakeholders, and
schedule in-person meetings.
2. 1-on-1 meetings with project leader, solution sponsor, and 2-3
local users
3. Meet with solution team to review feedback and draft online
survey that we distribute to all users and stakeholders.
4. Distribute the online survey and give staff 3-4 days to respond.
5. Produce report summarizing the findings with recommendations.
 This includes a high-end benchmarking of your implementation against
50+ other implementations.
 Get recommendations for improving your ECM implementation.

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Stakeholder Interviews
http://mike2.openmethodology.org/wiki/ECM_Maturity_Model_(ecm3)
Topics:

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Online Survey
 Distribute an online survey to system users
 Identify what works, and what doesn’t work
 Sample findings:

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Criterion Definition Test
Intuitive Easy to use Can users navigate quickly to content they need,
without getting permanently de-railed?
Unambiguous Clear boundaries between
categories, sub-categories
Can users quickly identify the appropriate
category? Is label sufficient, or do they need to
“open a folder” to look at content?
Hospitable Can accommodate all current &
expected content
Examine potential future content & judge
fitness of taxonomy
Consistent &
predictable
Allows users to anticipate what they
will find
Are the arrangements between levels of
hierarchies, sorting within a level, clear &
internally consistent?
Relevant Reflects user perspectives & their
view(s) of content
Can user queries be translated into taxonomy
structure? (Ex: “I’m looking for an after action
review on one of our innovation projects last
year”)
Source: Organizing Knowledge, Patrick Lambe: http://www.organisingknowledge.com/
Identify Improvements
Critical success factors for your information: taxonomy

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Criterion Definition Test
Parsimonious Structure offers no more or less
than is needed for the content
available
Are there any empty taxonomy nodes? Are
there any that have extremely large amounts of
content with no subdivisions? (Ex: Misc.)
Meaningful Structure fits the user’s mental
model(s)
As users browse content, are they confused by
content within categories or sub-categories?
Wrong label?
Durable Will not need frequent change As users “tag” content into the taxonomy, do
they complain about having no appropriate
category? Confusion about conflicting
categories?
Balanced Consistent levels of detail and
depth
Is the taxonomy “lumpy?” Are users
underwhelmed with the amount of content in
some categories, and overwhelmed in others?
Source: Organizing Knowledge, Patrick Lambe: http://www.organisingknowledge.com/
Identify Improvements
Critical success factors for your information: taxonomy

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Get Data to Make Decisions
Sample Survey Findings
 The current ECM solution is NOT considered an improvement compared to network
drives.
 There is a need to improve external collaboration, workflows, and drawing
management
 84% of staff use the ECM solution, but 49% feels it slows them down. Only 28% of
users feel it is doing an OK job.
 51% of users DON’T think the ECM solution provides any value.
 54% of staff use solutions like Google Docs and Dropbox to get work done.
 The performance issue is still a real problem for 74% of users.
 Folder-navigation is considered difficult to work with.
 Overall evaluation of ECM solution is only 2.45 on a 5-point scale with ECM partner
being considered the biggest problem (1=poor, 5=excellent).
 71% of respondents think it’s time to review requirements and rethink the approach.

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Get a Maturity Assessment

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Get Recommendations
Schedule a 2-day ECM Health Check for your implementation
Contact: Atle Skjekkeland askjekkeland@aiim.org
 "If you work with your organization’s information or collaboration resources and
technologies, you’ll surely find AIIM a treasure trove of resources." Andrew McAfee,
Professor and author, Enterprise 2.0 and Race Against the Machine
 "AIIM has a unique perspective on all things Content. Technology, trends and
customer adoption patterns are changing so rapidly that it is becoming impossible to
keep on top of what is important to us - how will our customers adopt new
technology in applying content to their business. AIIM has the community reach,
interaction with vendors and ability to ask the questions that matter, which has
allowed us to understand how content will be deployed, who will be responsible and
how does it apply to critical business processes in the enterprise. No one else has
been able to provide this industry perspective". John Newton, Chairman and CTO,
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