What about WCM (and BPM, etc.)?
In the peer-review process of the model, some of our readers thought our definition of ECM was too narrow. To quote from the document:
For the purposes of this model, we focus on the commonly understood scope of ECM as concerning principally document and records management, along with associated services and processes like imaging, workflow, and archiving, among others. The model does not directly concern itself with Web Content Management (WCM) and related, publishing-oriented disciplines, although some of the concepts below apply to those programs as well. Similarly, the model does not address data-oriented information management, such as Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing.
In theory, much in this document could pertain to cognate disciplines in the information management universe, but at that point, we thought it would get too abstract and lose its practicality. (Erik Hartman, one of the participants in this effort, is working on a broader “Information Management Framework.”) If the past eight years — since the term ECM came into vogue — have taught us anything, it is that enterprise document management and web publishing are two very different (albeit related) practices. At some point, it might be worth putting together a WCM Maturity Model. And as you might know, there are already several different BPM maturity models.
But, first things first. Let’s tackle what is already an enormous problem set, in ECM.
Filed under: ECM3 | 1 Comment
Tags: BPM, Definitions, ECM, Scope, WCM
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First of all my compliments for this great work and fantastic initiative.
I do however have a remark about the post above. I can understand you need to find the balance between the right level of abstraction and practicality. WCM is more about publishing whereas DM and RM are more focussed on internal business processes.
Having said that, RM and DM can just as well be regarded as disciplines on their own. They have their own specific uses and techniques. And what about Knowledge Management, Collaboration, Search and Social Networks. They’re all related to unstructured information (content). I thinkit’s a slippery slope discussion to include or exclude any of these solutions in an generic ECM Model.
All these different disciplines share a number of techniques, processes and implementation guidelines (best practices), but they also have there own specific best practices. And to make matters even more interesting (or worse as you please), emerging ECM solutions tend to be a blend of different types of content management solutions. A DM platform can offer collaboration and BI functions, a KM solution can offer federated search and so on.
So, although I’m a big fan of the ECM maturity model, it seems a little bit arbitrary to me pick just DM and RM and put them on an ECM island. I do think that a few specific guidelines and remarks for specific ECM solutions would actually make the model more practical. This is the way I approach this issue right now while working on a new version of the Dutch Content Management Methodology called COMET.