Challenges

Not only managing the business change of ECM systems is challenging, ECM systems make great demands on the enterprise IT infrastructure. If the IT demand of an ECM system is not handled carefully and up to the mark, a poor performing system will be the result. The enterprise employees not only have to cope with the changes in their old beloved procedures and have to adopt to the new “information is everything” policy of the enterprise, they have to interact with the ECM system as well, identifying it as the incarnation of all their suffering. If that system is not only unfamiliar, often equipped with a broad user interface which is not easy to comprehend, but is performing slowly and cumbersome, the ECM system will soon be the most hated piece of software in the enterprise.

So IT architecture planning and implementation is of outstanding importance for the success of an ECM system implementation, not being a warranty but a necessity for being successful. Many ECM systems in the field are performing sub-optimal, not because the IT infrastructure is not capable or not expensive enough, but due to their careless architecture and sloppy design. Implementing an ECM system in IT infrastructure terms is more than just installing the software on a couple of servers and often much more than following vendor blueprints. Wrong IT design of an ECM system generates large follow-up costs for operations and maintenance, not counting the price the enterprise pays by demotivating their employees working with it as they should.

Besides performance there is much more to obey: data protection, computer security, high availability, and business software integration need to be considered and be an equal part of the IT design.

We at netea have designed and enhanced many large ECM-Systems for large enterprises and organisations. Please contact us for further information and see how we can help you in designing or enhancing your ECM system.