Tail wagging the ECM dog

Added By Alan Pelz-Sharpe at 22-Sep-2009 | Twitter: @eiwatch |

Sometimes a secondary service or subsystem in a content management platform can gum everything up.  This came to mind when a couple of our advisory clients ran into trouble with some non-core -- but important -- services.

In one case a MAM (Marketing Asset Management) project became bogged down in expensive and time consuming technical issues regarding an associated search platform. In the other client's case, they eschewed a thorough, RFP-based selection process in favor of simply buying an additional module from their incumbent Web CMS vendor. This turned into a highly costly and difficult situation.

The common thread: both enterprises wrongly assumed that adding subsidiary functionality to a core system would be easy. In the former situation what was sold as an "out of the box" search connector proved anything but. In the latter, the additional module from an incumbent vendor was in fact something acquired from another vendor 5 years ago -- and a technology that has always refused to play nicely with their core ECM platform.

Unfortunately for these two clients the tail ended up wagging the dog, with all of their efforts  now focused on complex integrations that should on paper have been simple connections.

Suffice it to say that connectors can resemble "treacle soup." As for 'suites', all the major ECM vendors suites were in large part assembled by acquisition, for example Open Text, Autonomy, EMC, IBM have added key components to their "Suite" offerings by acquiring and then integrating outside technologies. Some pieces have integrated easily and successfully others have been more of a challenge. There are examples of Suites that have been built from the ground up - for example Objective and Hyland -- yet even these too have to integrate with heterogeneous computing environments and though homegrown, they have elements that are stronger and weaker than others.  In some cases bringing in best of breed outside technology to replace elements of major Suites makes good sense.

With the value of hindsight the MAM client should have realized sooner rather than later that their digital assets were in a mess, and bolting on a sophisticated search system was not a solution to that situation. Remember, chaos in chaos out. Further, due diligence regarding the search vendor and its "connectors" could have uncovered plenty of warnings.

Likewise the team that avoided the RFP process should also have done their homework better. Short circuiting the selection process will speed your project up in the short term, but experience from the field tells us that it can deliver negative mid and long term consequences - short circuiting the selection process simply short changes you the buyer and user in the long term.

Categories: Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Digital Asset Management, Enterprise Content Management, ADAM