Enterprise Content Management
Electronic systems are not restricted to simply managing documents. Electronic systems can easily manage other forms of information
that would not typically be considered documents, including:
- Parts of a document, often called "chunks"
- Aggregations of documents, like a binder
- Rich media like audio and video
- Threaded discussions, on-line meetings, email, etc.
The term "document management" is too restrictive and has been replaced by "content management".
Content refers to any piece of information that exists within an organization and content can be
divided into the following four categories:
- Controlled:
Content and/or relationships under revision control. Controlled content may be structured or unstructured
as described below.
- Uncontrolled:
Content that is not under revision control. It may exist on the LAN Drive or other storage systems.
- Structured:
Usually considered as data stored in databases, but may also include spreadsheets and other forms of
structured storage.
- Unstructured:
Usually refers to documents and other electronic or physical media containing information.
Relationships
Relationships describe how one piece of information is associated with another and this information
must be managed appropriately. This is usually done by first modeling the relationships and information using
a modeling methodology such as the Unified Modeling Language (UML). After the model is completed it is implemented in an
appropriate data or object database systems.
In practice, relationships are managed in several systems such as ECM, PLM, ERP and other database applications. One of the
challenges of any architecture is how to support the relationships of pieces of information that are not stored in the same system.
As a first step it is helpful to at least provide access to all the pieces of information regardless of how and where it is stored.
This capability is one of the central themes of an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system.
Business Model
A business model usually refers to the information model and process model that describes what and how information moves
throughout the company.
Data Models describe what information is being managed and how it relates to other pieces of
information. This is often captured using modeling semantics such as an Entity Relationship Diagram.
Process Models describe the flow of information throughout the company. This is usually captured
in a Gane and Sarson diagram.
Object Models attempt to describe both the data and process elements in one model. The Unified
Modeling Language (UML) is used to capture this information.
Most organizations have multiple systems that contain elements of the overall data model and process models. The ECM
system itself will introduce another model that will be used to describe product, project, and document information. Some of
this information can also exist in other systems such as ERP. There will never be one system in an organization that will
contain all the information and their relationships. Therefore it is important that the reference architecture support:
- Searching for information in multiple information systems.
- Viewing of information stored in multiple information systems.
- Synchronization of replicated information.
Business Use
Typically a business process requires access to corporate documents in order to complete a business transaction. Business Use
processes can be divided into two categories:
- Transactional:
These kinds of processes involve interaction with business transactions usually found in data processing
environments. (Operational Documents)
- Non-transactional:
These kinds of processes involve the creation, storage, and retrieval of corporate intellectual assets.
(Knowledge Documents)
Web Based
It is anticipated that all of the organization's information systems and applications will include web accessibility. This will also
bring along with it several and diverse web architectures. It is not the goal of ECM to present a single architecture that
all applications must comply with. Rather, it is the goal to define an overall environment that will support common
infrastructure functionality such as: Security, Single Sign On, Web Browser Interface, and so on. Where possible the support
for multiple web architectures is allowed and encouraged as needed by the organization. However, constraints must exist in
order to provide for the common infrastructure building blocks.
