AIIM, the community that provides education, research, and best practices to help organizations find, control, and optimize their information, released new Market Intelligence last week titled "State of the ECM Industry 2011 - How well is it meeting business needs?" The report is available for a free download at this link.  I had posted some thoughts from the 2010 survey at this link and want to revisit those survey items. 

One item that caught my attention last year is how the business drivers for ECM have done such an about face when comparing the reports over the last couple of years.  In the years leading up to 2007, the items categorized as compliance/risk avoidance was increasing as a business driver for ECM while the items categorized as cost/efficiency were declining.  In 2007, that trend reversed itself.  The latest report shows that the gap between those two business drivers continued to widen between 2010 and 2011, but mainly as a result of the compliance/risk avoidance driver falling while the cost/efficiency stayed about the same.  Clearly cost/efficiency is seen as a leading business driver for document and records management projects and priorities.

The AIIM report also shows this data by size of company, and the gap between cost/efficiency as a business driver and compliance/risk avoidance as a business driver is larger among companies with fewer than 500 employees (approximately 49% difference) than in organizations with more than 5000 employees (only a 12% difference between the 2 drivers).  The size of the organization appears to have some bearing on the business drivers for document management and records management projects and priorities.

I attributed the increase in the cost/efficiency driver to the global economic downturn of the last 18-24 months.  AIIM and others also believed that the compliance/risk avoidance business driver would increase over the next reporting period since regulatory lapses had been cited as a major reason for the economic downturn.  That certainly wasn't the case in reviewing this years data.

The respondents also indicated what their top ECM Projects are.  There is probably not a big correlation between business drivers for ECM and current projects as the latter are more tactical than strategic.   I found it interesting, however that implementing electronic records management is still one of the three most important ECM issues or projects for the respondents.  It was in the top spot in last years survey as well.  What was a little surprising was the number 2 issue or project - agreeing to a corporate taxonomy or fileplan.  This issue was number 7 in last years survey.  Certainly a lot of items could be driving this issue from increasing usability (make it easier for users to file their content or records) to improving search results.  The other surprise was that managing emails as records dropped from number 2 in last years survey  to number 5 this year.  I don't believe it dropped because respondents have suddenly implemented better email practices and technologies since email still seems to be a pain point for many organizations.  But it is viewed as less of an issue by the respondents as the percentage viewing it as an issue or current project dropped from 29% to around 18%.  Almost 31% of the respondents describe their management of email as "chaotic", making it more of a surprise that managing emails as records dropped as an ECM project or issue.

A few other interesting points from this years report:

• 72% of larger organizations have three or more ECM/DM/RM systems.  25% have 5 or more.  However, 15% of the largest organizations have no content management strategy in place.
• Consolidation of existing systems into a single-vendor ECM suite is a preferred strategy for 42% of the organizations.
• 68% of installed ECM systems have no browser or mobile access options.

The report is definitely worth having a detailed look at.  Access Sciences has decades of experience in helping organizations sort through the issues around ECRM strategy, policies, procedures and technologies.  Please let us know how we can help you.