White PapersEffective information management is key for an organization to achieve high performance and yet the sheer abundance of unstructured data causes a number of challenges. For example, the cost of data management has increased; finding the right information is difficult; information is not well leveraged among partners and it is not coming together in ways that would yield useful new insights about employees, customers or market opportunities.
To solve these problems, many businesses are turning to Enterprise Content Management (ECM), a suite of technologies used to create, manage and exploit business insights from an organization’s unstructured content. ECM encompasses imaging (which emerged in the 1980s), document management and Web content management (which came on the scene in the 1990s) and since 2000, compliance, records management, integrated search, digital assets and desktop content management.
Point of ViewThe explosion of unstructured data is one of the biggest challenges facing business today.The quantities of documents, images, email,Web content, audio and video are all growing at an astonishing rate. Within corporations,unstructured data currently accounts for 80percent of a company s overall data, and theamount of unstructured data in a company isdoubling every two years.The Rising Importance of Enterprise ContentManagement Untitled DocumentEffective information management iskey for an organization to achievehigh performance and yet the sheerabundance of unstructured datacauses a number of challenges. For example, the cost of datamanagement has increased; findingthe right information is difficult;information is not well leveragedamong partners and it is not comingtogether in ways that would yielduseful new insights about employees,customers or market opportunities.To solve these problems, manybusinesses are turning to EnterpriseContent Management (ECM), a suite oftechnologies used to create, manageand exploit business insights from anorganization s unstructured content.ECM encompasses imaging (whichemerged in the 1980s), documentmanagement and Web contentmanagement (which came on thescene in the 1990s) and since 2000,compliance, records management,integrated search, digital assets anddesktop content management.The business value of better contentmanagementOrganizations across all industries arebenefiting from improved EnterpriseContent Management. For the City ofNew York, Accenture s ECM solutioncreated the first comprehensiveknowledge base across NYC s agencies,enabling a single source of knowledgefor residents and visitors throughNYC.gov and a 3-1-1 call center. As a result, the City of New York hassignificantly improved and simplifiedaccess to New York s more than 900individual government services, makinggovernment more open and accessible.The 3-1-1 call center has received over 30 million calls since it went into operation 3 years ago.Direct cost reductions are the easiesteconomic value to quantify. An ECMinitiative can improve the efficiencywith which people create, maintainand use data. For example, Accenturerecently estimated ROI improvementsfrom improved ECM for a typical client based on client surveys.We found:" cost savings from a reduction in thetime required to find content, valuedat 2,280,000 per year;" a reduction in document creationcosts would save an estimated 2,100,000 per year;" time saved in report submissionswas valued at 82,080 per year and" other workflow benefits were worth 1,368,000 per year.The total yearly savings: 5,830,080 almost 6 million.Harder to quantify, but equally real,are the economic benefits fromimproved product development anddelivery, enhanced competitivepositioning, and increased knowledgecapture and sharing. For example, atelecommunications company hadduplicate and sometimes conflictingcontent in each region, handicappingits ability to increase its productdelivery and internal knowledgesharing. Accenture created a contentmanagement solution that enabled thecompany to consolidate its internalmethods and procedures knowledgeinto a single source.For many businesses, the mostimportant reason to focus on ECM isto help enable regulatory compliance.This is a pressing concern forexecutives who in the newlyheightened regulatory environment arepersonally responsible for the accuracyof critical corporate information.Organizations that have completedECM implementations report positiveimpacts on their corporate ROI. Arecent market study found that over 70percent of surveyed business leadersbelieve their ECM implementationsmet or exceeded expectations. Resultswere positive and consistent acrossorganizations of all sizes.1Content management as infrastructureUntil recently, ECM solutions havebeen delivered as a part of verticalapplications. For example, thenewspaper industry sought outcomplex Web content managementsystems as they rushed to createonline versions of their existingcapabilities combined with complexdigital and video capabilities. Digital and video capabilities led to thedevelopment of a separate digitalrights management system.In the last 12 months, a major changehas been occurring in the ECMsoftware market. In response to agrowing corporate demand for moreconsolidated solutions that can addressbusinesses unstructured content needsin a holistic manner for example, Web content, document and emailtogether through one solution largevendors have responded by acquiringsmall niche providers or extendingtheir products to provide comprehensiveend-to-end solutions.Equally important is the rise of ServiceOriented Architecture (SOA) as a nextgeneration architectural model, whichenables disparate applications tocommunicate and share informationmore readily. SOA has the potential toreduce the cost of implementing ECM,especially data migration and dataconversion. SOA will enable cross-application content access and sharing, such as the integration ofcontent management with customerrelationship management more easilythan ever before.The result is an emerging concept of ECM as infrastructure. The goal ofwhich is to make ECM technologymore like electricity less visible butmore easily available to everyone inthe enterprise. Comparable to the riseof enterprise resource planning (ERP)systems, which aggregated enterprisesystems into a consolidated solution,ECM solutions seek to consolidateaccess to unstructured content socompanies can reduce data hardwareand software costs, and integrateinformation they have in ways thatwill reveal new insights.ECM is thus becoming a part of thecore IT infrastructure investment. ECM will be less visible but essential:centrally funded, supported anddeployed; operating with enterpriseclass scale, availability and reliability;and capable of delivering core servicecapabilities that can be leveraged tosupport specific applicationrequirements.1ECM Implementation Trends 2005 AIIM IndustryWatch Survey.Untitled DocumentThis agency encompasses 29 officesand staff, hundreds of websites, and millions of pages, each with adifferent navigation model, contentstructure and visual presentation.Among other challenges, the agencywas struggling to maintain Webcontent in an era of burgeoninginformation and limited resources.With Accenture s help, the agency is moving to a shared services model,with multiple applications across 29 agencies leveraging a common,highly flexible and extensible Webcontent management infrastructure.This solution will be extended toinclude several documentmanagement applications.This agency has been able to mobilizeWeb content for a new look and feel a better online experience forcustomers based on a topic-focusedapproach to the site content, seamlessnavigation between agency sites andeasy access to desired information andfunctionality. The result has been asignificant increase in the user base:one agency site reports a monthlyincrease of 206 percent. OutdatedWeb content can now be identifiedand archived, and the agency can now create high volume applicationswith custom components and flexiblearchitectures.In the future, leading businesses willoperate with one or two corporate ECM platforms, virtualized datasources, and loosely coupled contentand applications, with contentaccessed via open web-basedstandards. Those conditions will enable high performance.And that future is coming quickly.Content especially unstructureddata will continue its explosivegrowth. The need to manage data, forregulatory compliance and businessadvantage, becomes more pressingevery day. ECM initiatives alreadydeliver impressive ROI and otherbenefits. And technology platformsand vendors are maturing. Forbusinesses that aspire to highperformance, it is time to beginplanning for ECM as infrastructure.Case in point: A complex government agency Accenture recently approached ECM as an infrastructurechallenge in working with a large U.S. government agency that provides information on food, agriculture and natural resources.Untitled DocumentAbout Accenture Information Management ServicesAccenture Information ManagementServices is a global cross-industryorganization focused on bringingclients solutions to better manage their business, interact with customersand make strategic, financial andoperational decisions. Working acrossAccenture s service lines and industrygroups, the 9000* consultants in this organization specialize ininformation management servicesincluding business intelligence, portals & content management anddata management & architecture. For more information about Accenture Information ManagementServices, visit www.accenture.com/informationmanagement.*as of March 1, 2006.About AccentureAccenture is a global managementconsulting, technology services andoutsourcing company. Committed to delivering innovation, Accenturecollaborates with its clients to helpthem become high-performancebusinesses and governments. Withdeep industry and business processexpertise, broad global resources and a proven track record, Accenture canmobilize the right people, skills andtechnologies to help clients improvetheir performance. With more than129,000 people in 48 countries, thecompany generated net revenues ofUS 15.55 billion for the fiscal yearended Aug. 31, 2005. Its home page is www.accenture.com.For further information about how Accenturecan help you optimize your enterprise contentmanagement, please contact:Tamara D. Alairys, Executive Director, Portals & Content Management, Globaltamara.d.alairys@accenture.com Scott Schaftlein, Manager, Enterprise Content Management Offering Leadscott.schaftlein@accenture.comMichael Kuhn, Senior Director, Portals & Content Management, EMEAmichael.kuhn@accenture.comCopyright 2006 AccentureAll rights reserved.Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture.
