Best Practices: Developing An ECM/BPM Strategy

Over the past two years, we have synthesized best practices for developing an enterprise content management (ECM) strategy from 20-plus in-depth ECM strategy reviews, numerous workshops, and more than 500 ECM inquiries from our business and government clients. While it's possible to deploy ECM from an infrastructure/technology perspective — many companies do just that — best practices start with using the business context, not the technology perspective, to determine how content gets used across the enterprise. Once you take a business process (BP) perspective, BP pros — working in conjunction with content and collaboration (C&C) pros — can envision comprehensive ECM service packages, identify gaps, and create a consensus road map. This BP/C&C team can implement and align governance with shared services and specific business processes. Looking beyond best practices, next practices include bringing emerging information workplace technologies and mobility into ECM/BPM strategy development. By adding a BP perspective to your well-constructed ECM strategy, BP pros can provide a solid foundation for business processes to succeed.