It seems as though almost every company I talk to these days has SharePoint installed somewhere.  Most of those companies already have at least one other ECM solution installed so all of those new SharePoint seats are being implemented instead of an already established ECM solution.  In fact, in many of those companies, the number of SharePoint users now greatly exceeds the number of users on the traditional ECM solution.  In just a few short years, SharePoint has gone from the scrawny little kid to one of the bullies on the ECM block.  How did this new kid on the block get to be such a force and what does it mean to existing ECM vendors?

Traditional ECM’s ERP-like model

Many major ECM companies have modeled themselves after ERP companies (or are ERP companies).  Just as customers would say “we’re an SAP shop” or “we’re an Oracle shop,” ECM vendors wanted to be thought of in the same light, and in some respects, they were.  With a high per seat cost and a deployment model that often required a small army of consultants directly from the vendor, ECM vendors were a lot like their ERP counterparts.  Is it any wonder ECM deployments often stalled after the first department?  Companies often spent considerable sums of money just to train a small group of individuals who would then be responsible for maintaining what had quickly become a one-of-a-kind solution, driving up the costs even further.  While this model sustained the ECM vendors, it was not a model that led to explosive growth.  Few companies that have purchased enterprise licenses from a traditional ECM vendor have actually deployed them to the entire company.  Studies by Gartner and AIIM affirm that few companies have any strategy for enterprise ECM deployments and less than half of most company’s information is actually managed by an ECM solution.  All of this led to a large opportunity for a player willing to take a different look at how the ECM market works.

The SharePoint model

If there’s one thing that can be said about Microsoft, they plan for the enterprise.  SharePoint has been able to reach a much broader audience even though it lacks many of the features offered by traditional ECM engines.  SharePoint has excelled at exploiting the holes left by the traditional players.  After all, if less than 45% of a company’s information is currently managed, users will have a difficult time finding what they need.  When a tool like SharePoint comes along that provides users the ability to quickly and easily capture and share the information that is important to them, they will embrace it with gusto.  Consider the following:

·         SharePoint provides adequate collaboration features without having to purchase an add-on.  This includes simple collaboration workflow capabilities, and content sharing capabilities.

·         Standard templates are provided to quickly and easily create sites to meet the needs to teams and projects.  These templates allow the site creators to very quickly deliver a working site and still have the ability to give it a custom look and feel.  Features are easily added without requiring a team of developers which is why SharePoint has become a focal point for social networks and other knowledge based applications.

·         Content libraries are easily added to enable content collaboration.  This has both good and bad implications, but from a user’s point of view, having access to a site where they can put information that they can share with their peers overrules the need of the company to control content silos.

·         Microsoft has a very large and robust partner program that encourages innovation.  Traditional ECM players have not encouraged the same level of innovation and, in many cases, have discouraged partners by pulling services in house.  As a result, SharePoint resources are relatively easy to find and new solutions are continually being developed for the platform.

Back to the traditional players

While SharePoint’s features have been good enough for most users, they’ve not been good enough for all users.  As a result, many companies that had been pushing to standardize on SharePoint across the enterprise have had to scale back and re-incorporate traditional ECM players within their plans.  The question is, for how long?  What can the ECM players of today do to ensure their value in the SharePoint world?  All of the ECM players now provide some integration with SharePoint.  The initial assumption was that users would collaborate in SharePoint and then move the documents to the ECM engine.  This leaves the traditional ECM player serving as nothing more than repositories for static content and as the records management solutions in the near term.  Is this a viable long term strategy?

What’s next for traditional ECM COMPANIES?

What happens next is yet to be seen.  Microsoft will continue to add functionality to SharePoint, and as they do, the gap between SharePoint and the traditional ECM players will continue to narrow.  Where does that leave traditional ECM players?  A few possible thoughts:

·         If a Web Part provides access to a repository where users can store and collaborate on content, does it matter if it comes from Microsoft or an ECM vendor?  ECM vendors should be looking to expand the capabilities of their SharePoint interfaces.  The strength of these vendors lies in the robust capabilities of their repositories rather than their user interfaces though they are doing all they can to play catch up.  Rather than promote the use of document libraries, ECM vendors should be making it easy for users to have full access to a robust, proven ECM repository and doing that transparently. 

·         Embrace the flexibility and openness of SharePoint.  It should not take a team of professionals to stand up a new site.  SharePoint has benefited from having an easily customized and tailored interface that just about anyone can use.  As a result, users have been able to create new and unique ways to use the product.  The ability to “make it their own” has had a definite impact on the adoption rate of SharePoint in general.  ECM vendors need to encourage that flexibility and creativity within their own solutions.

·         Focus on the enterprise.  ECM vendors have become accustomed to selling departmental solutions rather than enterprise infrastructure and they’re not using all of the tools in their toolbox.  The big players bring a lot of capability to the table including solutions for data management and business intelligence that would greatly improve the ability to deploy ECM to the enterprise.  All too often though, these product groups are segmented and know little about each other’s products and how they relate.  The big vendors need to encourage collaboration across product lines develop solutions that benefit the client and assist in enterprise deployments.

·         Provide the SharePoint Web Parts as a core component and not an add-on.  In other words, don’t promote the use of SharePoint document libraries, making it easier to exclude the use of the ECM repository unnecessarily. 

·         Interoperability is a two way street.  If I like a certain SharePoint feature, can I incorporate it into the vendor’s interface?  When someone provides a better interface that lets me continue to use the features I like, I’ll be more likely to transition.

Conclusion

There’s a lot of change in the ECM realm and the future looks very bright.  SharePoint is obviously not driving all of the change, but it is definitely having an impact.  Changes to ECM user interfaces will continue as vendors seek to keep pace with how users access information.  Vendors who embrace enabling technologies such as data management and taxonomy management will enjoy an advantage over point solutions in the quest for the enterprise.  With a new release of SharePoint on the horizon, the next twelve months should be fun to say the least.