• Home
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Special Offers
Business Intelligence Info
  • Business Intelligence
    • BI News and Info
    • Big Data
    • Mobile and Cloud
    • Self-Service BI
  • CRM
    • CRM News and Info
    • InfusionSoft
    • Microsoft Dynamics CRM
    • NetSuite
    • OnContact
    • Salesforce
    • Workbooks
  • Data Mining
    • Pentaho
    • Sisense
    • Tableau
    • TIBCO Spotfire
  • Data Warehousing
    • DWH News and Info
    • IBM DB2
    • Microsoft SQL Server
    • Oracle
    • Teradata
  • Predictive Analytics
    • FICO
    • KNIME
    • Mathematica
    • Matlab
    • Minitab
    • RapidMiner
    • Revolution
    • SAP
    • SAS/SPSS
  • Humor

ECM software's false tradeoff: User access vs. IT control

April 9, 2016   BI News and Info
TTlogo 379x201 ECM software's false tradeoff: User access vs. IT control

As the workforce gets more mobile and dispersed, enterprise software has to satisfy an increasingly difficult balance…

between accessibility and control.

While workers need software that is centralized and makes files easy to access, enterprises need to be able to lock down that information, protect it and prevent it from being leaked, hacked or left on a tablet in an airport. That’s a tall order for software: to make files easily accessible without lots of logins and firewalls, while at the same time ensuring that enterprise data is secure and protected.

Add to this management challenge the fact that enterprise content management (ECM) options have proliferated during the past several years. Enterprises have a dizzying array of ECM software tools to choose from, which is exacerbated by the often diverse needs presented by different portions of any given organization. It then begs the question: Can today’s enterprise get the value from ECM technologies with the largely cloud-based, mobile-enabled population?

ECM software: Disruptive force or here to stay?

It’s no secret that there are numerous services that allow organizations to address various capabilities of ECM. In particular, simple file sharing, through services like Box, Google and Dropbox, has changed the way many companies exchange information and collaborate among workers. Easy-to-use, Web-based and mobile-enabled file-sharing services provide ways for employees across geographies and computing environments — mobile versus PC versus Web. These services greatly improved the accessibility of content for workers — regardless of device, location or company affinity. But, among other issues, they have also created fragmentation in the document lifecycle management process. In making it simple to drop files in a highly accessible location, the content is often orphaned from governance, access security and automated management policies.

The goal is to rally around a single technology.

Legacy ECM software severely restricted access to content, largely based on access control lists or even simple licensing restrictions. By contrast, cloud-based ECM tools, with few ties to corporate identity software, created the opportunity to expose content to virtually anyone in the world. Account owners could dynamically create a repository, add content and enable individual access with little trouble — even incorporating federated identity solutions such as Yahoo IDs, OpenID, Facebook accounts and Microsoft (Live) accounts.

What should be clear to most technology and business leaders is that these cloud-based ECM technologies are here to stay. Organizational efforts to control their use have yielded little success. All further efforts should instead focus on incorporating these tools into the enterprise as part of the digital workplace. The first step should be identity management.

Creating a unified, controllable, secure and integrated identity management system should be paramount. One of the key factors in cloud ECM tool adoption is ease of use; users have turned to services like Box because the barriers to entry are low, with no virtual private network access or extensive login required. The top draw is the ability to easily gain access to these technologies, regardless of location and device. Organizations like Google, Microsoft and Amazon have begun to offer scalable services for creating unified identity management that ties external and internal identities, including the ability to use those identities for accessing commercial, cloud-based ECM services. This means organizations can create secure access without burdening users with arcane, difficult login processes.

Once a company establishes a manageable and universal identity management approach, it needs to create a findability solution. Often, organizations use search tools to enable findability. While that’s a good start, numerous findability approaches need to be implemented together, where the content repository and content search are intertwined. Enabling findability enables a variety of other efforts as well, such as content personalization, content discovery and the effective application of metadata to content objects. Once a findability technology and methods are in place, companies give employees an easy way to find content — a common complaint — and create mechanisms to allow regulated firms to adhere to regulatory and policy-driven compliance requirements — e.g. e-discovery and Sarbanes-Oxley Act requirements, for example.

Finally, apply real and integrated content rights management to ECM tools. Security applied at the repository level, regardless of the repository, is neutered when the content leaves the store. Organizations that need to provide uninterrupted content governance and security must implement a rights management approach that can be attached to individual content items. Information rights management technologies prescribe what each recipient or content consumer can do with the content — from no access, to full edit rights, to view only without printing or saving capabilities.

Extracting value from ECM software

There will be organizations that may not be able to take advantage of cloud-based ECM tools; however, they represent the minority. Many organizations have opportunities that go unrealized. There are ways to ensure the benefits of cloud and mobile enterprise content management are captured.

The first step is managing change. More often than not, migrating to newer technologies is simply a matter of change management — getting organizational standards to accommodate the change and encouraging the right sort of behavior from individual employees. Enterprises should focus on small but effective shifts in work to highlight advantages and minimize business disruption. An easy one is simply making repositories and content interaction truly mobile — create a compelling mobile experience.

Once you have a change plan in place, identify commodity workloads — e.g., file sharing — that can yield perceived value without creating undue risk. While many firms already use a variety of file-sharing tools, the goal is to rally around a single technology, with the corresponding change management mechanisms to produce a standard within the organization. Employees should think about file sharing as synonymous with this tool.     

Finally, address regulatory or policy challenges head on. It can often be easier to simply revert to “we’re regulated” or “legal won’t approve this” as excuses for not adopting ECM software. As mentioned earlier, there are real and necessary restrictions in a few circumstances. However, most cloud vendors and the associated ECM tools have addressed these regulatory hurdles. It’s time to put the benefits of cloud environments into action.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)


ECM, collaboration and search news and features

Access, Control, false, software&#039s, tradeoff, User
  • Recent Posts

    • C’mon hooman
    • Build and Release Pipelines for Azure Resources (Logic Apps and Azure Functions)
    • Database version control: Getting started with Flyway
    • Support CRM with New Dynamics 365 Field Service Mobile App
    • 6 Strategies for Achieving Your Business Goals in the New Year
  • Categories

  • Archives

    • January 2021
    • December 2020
    • November 2020
    • October 2020
    • September 2020
    • August 2020
    • July 2020
    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • April 2020
    • March 2020
    • February 2020
    • January 2020
    • December 2019
    • November 2019
    • October 2019
    • September 2019
    • August 2019
    • July 2019
    • June 2019
    • May 2019
    • April 2019
    • March 2019
    • February 2019
    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • November 2018
    • October 2018
    • September 2018
    • August 2018
    • July 2018
    • June 2018
    • May 2018
    • April 2018
    • March 2018
    • February 2018
    • January 2018
    • December 2017
    • November 2017
    • October 2017
    • September 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • April 2017
    • March 2017
    • February 2017
    • January 2017
    • December 2016
    • November 2016
    • October 2016
    • September 2016
    • August 2016
    • July 2016
    • June 2016
    • May 2016
    • April 2016
    • March 2016
    • February 2016
    • January 2016
    • December 2015
    • November 2015
    • October 2015
    • September 2015
    • August 2015
    • July 2015
    • June 2015
    • May 2015
    • April 2015
    • March 2015
    • February 2015
    • January 2015
    • December 2014
    • November 2014
© 2021 Business Intelligence Info
Power BI Training | G Com Solutions Limited