1. Biting off more than you can chew.
2. Selecting the wrong tool for the wrong job.
3. Failing to incorporate all of your data.
4. Poor search capabilities.
5. Weak requirements.
6. Failing to understand how people collaborate and utilize content.
7. Immature business processes.
8. Poorly conceived retention policies.
9. Failing to size properly.
10. Failing to integrate into corporate systems and corporate culture.

But the irony is that if you change a few words here and there -- "query" instead of "search," for instance -- this list of gotchas applies just as well to BI deployments. So why have so many enterprises overcome the difficulties of building BI and data management deployments while ECM remains a work in progress for lots of companies and a low priority for all too many?

Having watched both markets for many years, I'd say the key difference in the success of these two technology initiatives has been the focus on business performance. While BI has inspired business best sellers like Competing on Analytics, Super Crunchers and The Numerati, content management vendors and corporate advocates have focused heavily on compliance, e-discovery and archiving in recent years. Would-be buyers of ECM hear about courtroom horror stories and regulatory wrist slaps while business leaders hear BI-related stories about most-profitable customers, promising new markets and cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.

I'm not saying that compliance, e-discovery, archiving, etc. aren't important. But threats aren't inspiring, they don't drive the business and they are mostly dealt with by a small group within the enterprise, including legal, IT and risk officers. The CEO and CFO are busy with the business of doing business, where BI is indispensible. It often takes a compliance or legal incident make the CEO or CFO aware of content, but they likely just turn to lieutenants and say "handle it!." Fortunately, incidents are few and far between.

Want a good example of compelling technology outweighing compliance fears? The City of Los Angeles recently contracted with Google to provide 30,000-plus city employees with e-mail services. No doubt the city council, which actually voted on the matter, heard all about the cost advantages and flexibility of cloud computing. I'm sure Google's mainstream popularity and nexus in California helped persuade. Meanwhile, Alan Pelz-Sharpe recently warned that Cloud Computing has all the makings of records management/compliance nightmare. Will it take a court case to unwind LA's deal? Perhaps, but technology usually moves too fast for courts and regulators to keep up. By the time Cloud-based approaches get called into question, tweaks will be made to placate the suits.

Compliance is certainly not the only reason to deploy ECM technologies, but you don't hear enough about the compelling business cases. The Business Process Management (BPM) community is now telling the automation and efficiency stories once told by imaging and workflow vendors. The Web 2.0/social-networking crowd has resurrected the knowledge management rap originated by document management vendors. In short, the ECM story has been co-opted and sold short.

When you visit our ECM TechCenter, you will find a smattering of regulatory- and compliance-minded information there, but our In-Depth reports will focus on the business opportunities in content. It all starts with getting content under control, as explored in the 10 Gotchas report. In the weeks ahead you'll see a new report on content integration -- something now being fostered by emerging standards such as CMIS (content management interoperability services). Finally, I'll wrap things up with a report on text analytics, technology that makes it possible to wring intelligence from vast stores of content -- be it documents, e-mail messages, comment fields or blogs.

Stay tuned to read more about the opportunities in so-called unstructured information.

E-MAIL  |