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Enterprise Content Management: Organizing and Managing the Lifecycle

Business Intelligence Strategy

Rich would like to thank Steven Piotrowski, senior consultant, Deloitte Consulting LLP, for contributing to this month's column.

In April 2006, I wrote a column on enterprise content management (ECM) in which I defined the concept of ECM and talked a bit about the ECM lifecycle. The response I've received on that column over the past year has been enormous, and most people I've talked with have asked for more in-depth coverage of the topic. I'm only too happy to accommodate them!

Before delving too deeply into ways to manage and organize the ECM lifecycle, however, we need a working definition of ECM, sort of a primer to establish what ECM is - and isn't. First, ECM is not knowledge management, which is the process by which companies generate value from their intellectual assets through the efficient sharing of knowledge enterprise-wide. It's also not document management, which is the effective storage and retrieval of documents - period. Of course document management is a part of ECM, but it's not the whole.

ECM is the integration of various technologies and processes to manage enterprise content from conception through deployment. Usually, ECM is a corporate initiative to identify, capture and disseminate unstructured information throughout the company. This information can include paper transaction and other records, emails, Web pages, forms, photos and videos, digital certificates, faxes, word processing documents and spreadsheets, and any other paper documents the company might generate.

Typically, ECM includes an effort to organize this content in a meaningful way by creating taxonomies and metadata definitions. It also includes efforts to deliver content through various channels and search mechanisms. It's the effort to organize the content in a "meaningful" way that I'll be discussing in this column.

The ECM Lifecycle

Before discussing organization, however, let's summarize the steps in the ECM lifecycle. They are:

  • Creation
  • Review
  • Storage
  • Distribution
  • Archival/destruction

 Figure 1: graphically illustrates the ECM lifecycle.

Creation is how content is born. It's created through new activities, revisions of existing content and acquisition from a variety of sources. The result is massively distributed content creation.

The next step is review. The review process is driven by various relevant business areas to validate content contributions by using business rules that help contributors create meaningful content through checks that provide accuracy.

Next up in the lifecycle is storage. Approved content is stored in a central repository where it is organized and codified for broad enterprise use and distribution - which is the next step in the lifecycle.

In the distribution step, content is associated with a "presentation layer" for access and distribution. Formatting makes the content conform to the expectations and demands of the user community or distribution channel.

The final step in the ECM lifecycle is archival or destruction. Content is archived or destroyed based on business rules. Content remains in archives, allowing future workers to benefit from past work. It should be destroyed when it has outlived its usefulness. How well companies organize and manage their ECM lifecycle will play a large part in how useful enterprise content is to the company on an ongoing basis.

Taxonomies - Organizing ECM Enterprise-Wide

Effective organization of enterprise content begins with developing a workable, efficient, effective taxonomy system so that the content can be easily and accurately stored, parsed, retrieved and disseminated. Taxonomy is just a 50-cent word for a classification methodology that's used according to a defined system that facilitates information retrieval and determination of information relevance. Taxonomies are typically organized into mutually exclusive groups and subgroups of information.

There are several inherent characteristics that shape effective taxonomies. The first is a well-defined classification schema. A good schema facilitates straightforward identification, arrangement, and management of enterprise content. An effective classification schema might be one that is function-based with multiple levels, such as function, subfunction and activity. An example of a function-based schema could come from the human resources function. The function is human resources; the sub-function would be recruitment; the activity might be job posting. All content - whether it's online or paper based, would be classified and stored under this schema.

An effective taxonomy also has a well controlled vocabulary and thesaurus. This is simply a list of preferred and acceptable variant terms, with relationships - both hierarchical and associative - defined for the company so that the end user can adequately interpret them. Such definitions might include the terms: account, client, group and customer.

Another characteristic of an effective taxonomy is the presence of robust indices that facilitate content browsing by category and personalized views that are meaningful to users. These indices provide a way for users to view their desired content based on subject, or other categories, in the classification schema I mentioned above. For a multinational company, an example would be a set of indices that facilitated sorting content by country, then division, then department.

The final characteristic of an effective taxonomy is a set of metadata standards. Metadata contains descriptive information about a piece of content - i.e., data about data. You can think of metadata standards as a sort of library card catalog (for those of us old enough to remember them!) that describes the enterprise content in a uniform manner that makes it easy to find. An example of metadata terms that describe a particular piece of content might be: author, document title, creation date, and subject. Each of these terms would be defined uniformly throughout the company.

Taxonomy Types and Their Potential Benefits

Now that we know what makes an effective taxonomy work, let's move to a discussion of the different types of taxonomies. There are myriad types of taxonomies out there, but there are three types that are probably the most commonly used:

  • Subject based
  • Organization based
  • Function based

Subject-based taxonomies are the type initially discussed, where the content is organized first by subject area - usually in alphabetical order - beginning on a broad basis and then narrowing as the organization becomes more precise. Organization-based taxonomies simply reflect an organizational chart - of people, subject matter, departments, etc. - and are arranged according to how they're managed. Function-based taxonomies arrange content based on functions and activities that produce the content. This usually means that the activities generated by the company's business processes are used to create the taxonomy.1

Each type of taxonomy has its pros and cons. Subject-based taxonomies are often useful because they are intuitive for users to navigate, but they often don't support compliance and security requirements. And sometimes they can't be used enterprise-wide because of their rigid nature.

Organization-based taxonomies are also easily understood by users, but sometimes they don't provide adequate details on the relationship between an organizational area and the information it produces, consumes, owns, or manages. They're also susceptible to change when the organizational chart changes - which is too frequently for some companies.

Function-based taxonomies provide business context to information as it is understood and used within a business activity that has created or used the information. They're also the least susceptible to change, as functional structure is based on generic business activities common to the company. However, function-based taxonomies are a relatively new approach to taxonomy creation, and it might take time for business users to adopt this type. Also, since function-based taxonomies are so new, there might be a need to create them from scratch, whereas there are vendors that sell out-of-the-box subject- and organization-based taxonomies that often require little customization.

Whichever type of taxonomy works most effectively for your company, the potential benefits of creating and implementing a consistent, comprehensive ECM taxonomy are significant. They include the ability to:

  • Organize and connect fragmented information by business practice;
  • Efficiently and effectively manage structured and unstructured content;
  • Improve usability through more efficient content search and navigation;
  • Support the use of applications such as search engines, portals, Web sites, ECM and non-ECM;
  • Reduce duplication of work while standardizing and providing consistent access to corporate information;
  • Help resolve organizational issues around terminology and meaning;
  • Use metadata, when applied to unstructured content, to operate as though ECM is structured data;
  • Help employees to collaborate through a controlled vocabulary and a consistent frame of reference;
  • Improve organizational integration, which can reduce costs and increase innovation (across business unit and geographic boundaries).

As you can see, the potential benefits of effectively managing enterprise content are many, and it's relatively easy to establish and follow an enterprise taxonomy for ECM. However, the question, "Is it worth it?," still lingers in the minds of many in the C-suite. We'll discuss ways to get an answer to that - and show you ways to implement it as well - in next month's column, when we discuss building the business case for ECM.

This publication contains general information only and Deloitte Consulting LLP is not, by means of this publication, rendering business, financial, investment, or other professional advice or services. This publication is not a substitute for such professional advice or services, nor should it be used as a basis for any decision or action that may affect your business. Before making any decision or taking any action that may affect your business, you should consult a qualified professional advisor. Deloitte Consulting LLP, its affiliates, and related entities shall not be responsible for any loss sustained by any person who relies on this publication.

Reference:

1. Content on the various taxonomy types, and their definitions, was taken in part from the following source: "Taxonomy Design Types" by Barbara Blackburn, AIIM e-Doc magazine, http://www.edocmagazine.com/article_new.asp?ID=31478 

 


Rich Cohen is a principal in Deloitte Consulting LLP's Information Dynamics practice where he is responsible for the strategy, development and implementation of data governance, data warehousing, decision support and data mining engagements to support the emergence of world-class business intelligence applications. Cohen has more than 27 years of experience in the design, development, implementation and support of information technology in a variety of industries. Over the last 18 years, he has had extensive experience in the creation of technology strategies, implementations and deployment of CRM and business intelligence solutions to drive improved business performance.

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