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You don’t need an ECM strategy

Written by James Robertson, published December 5, 2008

Categorised under: Information management

Janus Boye has written a post arguing that you don’t need an ECM strategy. To quote:

Over the last years, I’ve heard consultants, analysts, experts, gurus and even some vendors preach that strategy is the vital ingredient that’s too often missing in many organisations. For ECM projects, I certainly agree that technology is rarely the right place to start, but still earlier today at the Online Information conference in London, I argued that an ECM strategy is not required.

Amen to this! I’ve said before that organisations should avoid long-term strategies, and the 10 principles of effective information management are focused squarely on delivering tangible business benefits.

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3 Comments:

  1. Scott Liewehr commented on December 7th, 2008

    Hi James. I agree with the spirit of Janus’ post (avoiding the inevitable “analysis paralysis”), but I hesitate to endorse it completely because I worry that some may take it out of context and get the wrong message. In this Age of Innovation where new features and “cool” technologies are springing up almost weekly, we need to make certain to avoid the trap of implementing technology for the sake of technology and keep our customers’ needs and interests at the forefront of our mind. Janus advised his readers to “simply ensure [they] continue to demonstrate progress”, but I prefer your use of the phrase “tangible business benefits” over “progress”. Some may need to be reminded that “progress” is not defined as a successful launch of *any* feature, but rather that it is the implementation of features or functionality which gets us closer to some pre-defined goal or which satisfies a pre-identified need (business benefit, as you put it). Typically, these needs and goals are defined during the planning process which need-not be long and drawn out. There are many flavors of strategy, and I’d prefer to advise short, strategic check-ups which serve to maintain a focus on our users, their needs, and the tools we’ll implement to satisfy those needs, rather than avoiding any such process altogether.

  2. Martin White commented on December 10th, 2008

    I’m still a strong proponent of strategy. Journeys of a thousand steps are fine but if you don’t know where you are heading there is good evidence from the scientific literature that if blindfolded you cannot walk in a straight line.

    Strategy is not meaningless pontification or writing reports for the sake of doing so. The aim of a strategy is to know where you are heading, and when I send out my intranet strategy framework I suggest to people that if what they then write is longer than 6 pages or so then they have lost the vision and the plot.

    With an ECM you are going to spend a lot of money, and telling people that in six months there will be a pilot but after that you are not quite sure is difficult to sell.

    Don’t tell me that you have no strategy for your business and that you wake up each morning and start afresh. Even your high quality standards are a strategy.

    End of sermon

    Martin

  3. James Robertson commented on December 10th, 2008

    Yes, the trick is to have a *good strategy*, not just a strategy document. Of course, the strategy could call for a model of incremental development, in which case, all may be happy :-)