ECM Solutions benefit 70% of organisations

ECM Solutions Benefit 70% of Organisations with Better Compliance and Business Processes: TOWER Software Survey

Changing existing work practices the number one barrier to achieving more widespread information management or ECM benefits

25th October 2005 - Sydney, Australia - Around 70% of Australian organisations say their information management or enterprise content management (ECM) solutions provide them with better regulatory compliance, quicker access to business information and more efficient business processes, according to a new Australian survey by TOWER Software, the leading Australian developer of ECM solutions.

Other information management or ECM benefits organisations experienced were better capture and re-use of knowledge (64%), improved customer service (47%) and better legal discovery (42%). 15% of organisations received no benefits.

Almost all organisations experienced barriers to achieving more widespread benefits from information management or ECM, however, with changing existing work practices the most common barrier, experienced by 74% of survey respondents. Too many information silos (57%) and difficulty integrating with existing systems (42%) were the other main barriers, followed by organisational politics (36%) and cost or ROI (36%).

The launch of the survey results – conducted among senior records management professionals at 53 Australian organisations at the recent Records Management Association of Australia conference in Perth – coincided with the launch of TOWER Software’s flagship information management solution, TRIM Context® 6.

According to TOWER Software’s Managing Director, Martin Harwood, TRIM Context 6 extends the depth and breadth of the company’s information management solutions, combining the best of both records management and ECM tools to drive business change by incorporating information into day-to-day business operations.

“It’s not surprising that changing existing work practices was the most common barrier to achieving more widespread benefits from ECM,” said Harwood. “ECM solutions support an incredibly broad range of content types and functionality and organisations commonly underestimate the implementation challenges involved.

“Information management combines the depth and richness you get by actively managing an organisation’s records and business rules with the breadth of ECM,” he said. “It’s not a big bang approach, it’s about building upon a firm compliance and information retrieval foundation to improve business processes and get a better return on investment.”

The other key findings of TOWER Software’s survey were:

• Paper records and files (chosen by 87% of respondents), electronic documents (77%), electronic records (72%), information security (70%) and emails (68%) were the most commonly managed items by organisations’ information management/ECM solutions;
• 42% of respondents said it usually takes staff ‘minutes’ to retrieve a specific piece of business information, 33% said ‘seconds’, 23% said ‘hours’ and 2% said ‘days’;
• Over 90% of respondents considered the capture and retrieval of paper records, electronic records and emails to be records management functions;
• 85% of respondents considered web content management to be an ECM function, followed by management of workflow processes (79%) and capture of emails (74%);
• Records/document management staff were involved in information management at 94% of organisations, IT staff were involved within 68% of organisations;
• When it came to ECM, IT staff were involved within 89% of organisations and records/document management staff within 80%.

Full Survey Results

Q1. Has your information management or enterprise content management (ECM) solution delivered any of the following benefits to your organisation?

Q2. What are the barriers to achieving more widespread benefits from information management/ECM in your organisation?

Q3. Please tick those items that your organisation's information management/ECM solution manages:

Q4. How long does it usually take staff at your organisation to retrieve a specific piece of business information?

Q5. Which of the following would you consider to be records management (RM) or enterprise content management (ECM) functions?

Q6. Who in your organisation is responsible for information management and ECM?

Charts

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Do you know what ECM is?
Which functions are RM or ECM?
Who is responsible for IM or ECM?
Benefits of IM / ECM solution
Barriers to implementing an ECM
Items managed by IM/ECM solution