Pitfalls: as hidden dangers, we work hard to learn where they are so we can avoid them.  The roads we travel are full of pitfalls, including potholes, winding roads, and dangerous intersections.  Fortunately, helpful signs direct our driving so we can avoid the bumps, cracks and turns, and reach our destinations safely.

Unfortunately, avoiding ECM pitfalls isn’t as easy at first glance.  Each content management project is unique, and there aren’t any signposts.  Yet the most common pitfalls in ECM projects are universal. If you understand the challenges that typically arise and plan with the pitfalls in mind, you can travel the path to ECM success with confidence. This article will help you make sound choices as you walk the path to document and process automation. 

ECM challenges typically result from:

1. Lack of vision  & leadership
Establish and communicate your company’s vision.

• What will your company look like in a year? Three? Five? Ten? 

Communicate how ECM supports your vision.  If people are expected to embrace your project, they need to understand why ECM is important, and how, with staff help, it will help the company to meet its goals.

2. Poorly aligned business & IT goals
For an ECM project to succeed, goals must be aligned. Make sure:

• Your IT staff understands the business goals, routine processes technology is expected to support, and business challenges it’s expected to solve.
• Your business managers understand IT’s limitations based on the project’s human resources & funding parameters.

In today’s world, Business and IT need each other to succeed.  Work hard to understand each other’s goals, needs, challenges, and limitations and collaborate on a plan.

3. Projects that are too  broad or too narrow
Walk – don’t run.  If your project is too ambitious, it will be overwhelming and won’t be embraced.  If it’s too narrow and doesn’t consider long-term business needs, it may become irrelevant quickly and breed frustration.  Note:

• Even if you start with a departmental implementation (which is wise), consider how your documents and processes intertwine with other business areas, and how you might lay the foundation now for added efficiency later.
• Classify information that has value.  Don’t over-index (cumbersome and wastes time) or under-index (delivers poor results). Index logically and uniformly so people consistently find what they need.

Don’t scan every piece of paper.  Only capture information that will be needed later for business purposes or compliance.  Keep your taxonomy focused.

4. Failure to involve everyone who will be affected
Staff members who handle documents and related processes understand nitty-gritty procedural details that are essential to smart automation.  ECM requires a drill-down approach to content management that delivers those details up the management chain so document handling issues can be addressed effectively.  Ask your staff:

• Who needs to handle each document type, when, and for what reasons?
• Are there document types that could be consolidated, resulting in fewer forms to store and search?
•  For which business processes is each document type needed?
•  How can those processes be streamlined or improved?

To ensure complete buy-in, you must involve your managers, IT, & end users. If they’re not consulted, you’ll make assumptions and costly mistakes, eroding enthusiasm & jeopardizing your project.

 5. Overlooking front-end capture
Storing documents in an electronic filing cabinet at the end of their useful life deprives you of tremendous cost savings from point-of-receipt capture and electronic processing.  From email to faxes, software applications, voicemail, audio, video and more, business content is scattered and growing. Capture valuable content as it’s received or created for maximum value.

Scanning documents upon receipt or creation makes content immediately useful to everyone who is authorized to access or act on it.  If you don’t engage in front-end capture, you’re not managing your content effectively.  Start with day-forward scanning and image historical records gradually. Get the most useful information into your system first.

6. Failure to integrate business systems
Digitizing your documents is an important step toward content management, but its effectiveness is limited unless you get all of your digital content under one roof.  Ask yourself:

• What software systems are used in our business?
• Where else does business information reside?
• What information is shared between systems (such as customer contact information) that could be re-used in multiple systems through effective integration?
• What information is recreated for use in multiple systems that could be extracted and reused to save time?
• What infrastructure is needed to make integration possible?

Unless you integrate your business software systems, accounting, human resources, contract management, and more, you will still have data duplication, redundant or conflicting documentation, and errors. 

 7. Poor project management
ECM implementations need a knowledgeable enthusiast at the helm who understands people’s diverse needs, is well organized, highly motivated, and works well with different personalities.  Make sure your project champion:

• Understands business needs as well as IT capabilities so s/he can bridge the gaps;
• Has experience creating realistic timelines, milestones, benchmarks, and proactive recourse in the event expectations aren’t met;
• Is an excellent communicator, verbally and in writing;
• Is aware of best practices and is committed to following them.

A second-rate project manager results in a second-rate solution.  You deserve better.

 8. Underestimating time requirements for proper implementation
Time is money; no business can afford waste.  Yet if you fail to assign sufficient resources for each project phase, you’re inviting failure.  Allow adequate time for:

•  Candid needs assessment
• Appropriate vendor selection
• Solution design
• Project planning
• Implementation
• Thorough testing
• Change mgmt.
• Staff training

Inevitably, as projects progress, discoveries will be made that cause you to re-think details.  Drive your project forward steadily to ensure timely completion, but allow enough time to do things properly.  It’s more difficult and costly to make changes after an ECM project is already in place than it is to invest time up front.

9.  Solution is implemented too slowly
If everyday business challenges are threatening steady ECM progress, take advantage of your vendor’s professional services or hire additional staff for the project.  Also, remember that as business needs change in response to the marketplace, your solution may require alterations.  Remain focused, yet flexible.  Keep in mind that if your ECM project is constantly shoved to the back burner, the solution you wholeheartedly pursued may no longer be appropriate by the time it’s implemented.  If it loses relevancy, it may be abandoned. 

Steady momentum is critical if you expect to see results. Choose vendors whose solutions offer you the flexibility you’ll need to adapt.

10. Insufficient change management
Just as fashion designers must create clothing people will wear, and road crews must design highways that people will traverse, ECM systems have to be intuitive and user friendly for people to use them.  Many robust technologies fail because end users’ needs haven’t been thoroughly considered, or they’re simply too hard to learn.  Make sure your ECM solution is:

• User friendly, with flexible work spaces, helpful online tool tips, and drop-down menus to guide your staff through scanning, indexing, and processing.
• Easy to administer, so your IT staff isn’t overwhelmed trying to support it.
• Even intuitive systems require basic training.  Assure your staff they will get the support and instruction they need to be confident and successful.  Prepare, train, and empower them to succeed, and they will.

Jim Thumma is Vice President of Sales & Marketing at Optical Image Technology. A session on the “Common Pitfalls in ECM and How to Avoid Them,” with Jim and a Kodak colleague, will be spotlighted at the ITEX tradeshow in Las Vegas in early March. For more information visit www.docfinity.com / www.itexshow.com.