1. Failure is when users do not feel they get what they paid for. 2. Failure is when the overall organization fails to adopt the solution.

 Remove Information Technology teams from the process. Success of an ECM implementation is when the entire business can manage their own content and information without having to rely on IT to help.

 Operations or global communications should champion project with IT as support.  Focus on business needs not features.  Other ECM vendors have had 10 years to deliver customer centric solutions and have failed – Microsoft 2010 will dominate.  Usability is same as MS Office – Technology is no longer focus.  Solving and streamlining business processes becomes the focus.

 Information Architecture is key – Distilling existing features/content of intranet into a concise solution.  Branding must be done professionally – Simply putting logo on site and picking a theme is not enough  Usability Engineering is Important – Site must deliver effective navigation so users can easily find what they are looking for. Usability and IA work in harmony.  Education – All departments must be educated as to what is possible and what the ECM can do to automate their existing tasks  Training – In person and online training must be delivered throughout the organization to reduce resistance to change None of this is technology!

 Document repository easily accessible from anywhere online.  Documents have version control – Tracking of changes – Good for audit  Documents are checked in and out to prevent users from over writing another users work  Centralization of all documents resolves latest version issues and makes backing up documents easy. All Departments benefit from this

 News and Announcements – These can easily be managed with lists and displayed on the home page for the entire organization to see.  Newsletters – Corporate or departmental newsletters can reach the entire organization online – Flip book delivery  Events – Calendaring upcoming events – Employee awareness  Surveys – Survey employees about topics to generate feedback  Polls – Quick Polls keep employees engaged  Blogs – Targeted blogs to promote employee involvement  Discussion Forums – To engage employees in productive discussions to share ideas about a targeted subject

 Employee Handbooks – Handbooks are out of date as soon as they are printed. Online they are always current and versions can be tracked.  Policies – policies online are a perfect solution as they can always be updated with version tracking  Events – Calendaring upcoming events and open enrollments  Surveys – Survey employees about topics to generate feedback  Polls – Quick Polls keep employees engaged  Blogs – Targeted blogs to promote employee involvement  Discussion Forums – To engage employees in productive discussions to share ideas about HR subjects

 Collaboration – Collaboratively work with outside agencies and remote teams to develop marketing and ad campaigns.  Branding – Placing all branding materials online is perfect for making sure the entire organization know the brand material.  Logo – Putting logos online to deliver them to the organization.  Templates – Branded PowerPoint templates, Outlook signatures and business cards can be placed online  Photo Libraries – Photos Marketing would like other teams to use in presentations can be organized online  Style Guide – Marketing should develop a comprehensive online style guide. This is important as the entire organization will be developing their own online presence and having guidance is important.  Blogs – Marketing can test campaigns internally first via Blog to get initial feedback.

 Project Management – Projects can be managed effectively with existing solutions. Team members get alerts about assignments and the entire project can be tracked and reported on.  Issue Tracking – Issues can be tracked and communicated to the end users easily online.  Dashboards – Dashboards can be easily developed to track projects and to communicate to the organization their progress. Web statistics and usage reports can also be published online.  IT Policies – Policies specific to IT can be published online.  IT Forms – Forms should all be online to show the rest of the organization how all forms can be online. IT leads by example.  Business Intelligence – The more IT can do to display company critical information in a way to help the business the more value IT has in the organization. IT has access to the information.

 Collaboration – Sales teams can collaborate about potential bids or clients online and share ideas.  Business Intelligence – Critical sales information can be delivered via a BI Dashboard. This critical information can deliver invaluable real time results to sales teams that can completely change their success.

 Document Management – Back to the basics, document management is what ECM is all about this core functionality.  Version Control – Tracking versions of documents can be critical in legal or audit situations. Many Legal and accounting practices must have some ECM system in place for just this reason alone.  Legal – The federal government has approved some systems such as Documentum as legal in court for maintaining the integrity of documents. This will stand up in court.  Audit – Companies with well organized documents in an ECM solution will do much better in an audit review.

 The most important task of a successful ECM implementation is education.  Knowledgeable leaders must work across the organization to educate them about how they can benefit from ECM

 Hands on training is the best method of initial training on new systems this allows two way communication which can drastically reduce the anxiety of the person being asked to change  Online training works effectively for global organizations where hands on training is not a viable option.  Online training supplements and reinforces hands on training.  Many users publish content infrequently, online resources make good refreshers.

 Taking time to lean the various aspects of the business reveals the real synergies that can be achieved with an effective ECM solution.  IT deploys the ECM the rest of the organization needs to embrace it.  A successful implementation of an ECM will change the way the business functions.

 Digital Content Pros can create the Custom CSS, Master page and Theme to deliver a professional solution to your site.  Our consultants will work with your organization to create a clean Information Architecture that will make your site “Best in Class”.  Our consultants will educate your organization to how they will benefit from an ECM solution.  Our consultants will create online training solutions for your organization and will also personally train your team.