ECM Customers Will Determine Who Wins

OK, for most of the last month those of us that play in the ECM playground have all been a buzz about SharePoint 2010 and the doom it spells for ‘legacy’ ECM vendors.  At the same time, I’ve seen ‘new’ (less than 7 years old) ECM vendors jump on the bandwagon of opportunity to take a shot at the stalwarts of the industry.  Whether we’re talking about a longtime vendor’s inability or ‘slowness’ to change its architecture, the commoditization of basic content services, or the pro’s and con’s of an open source model, to me it is all beginning to sound like the same boring noise….

“SharePoint has won…”

“Open Text tries to be a platform but can’t get all its acquired technologies in order…”

“EMC/Documentum has lost focus of selling an ECM platform in exchange for vertical case management solutions…”

“Open source let’s you test your implementation strategy before having to pay for it…”

It’s taken me a few weeks, but I’ve finally honed in on what is really bugging me about this virtual conversation.  It’s being had mostly by vendors and consultants (including SI’s, etc.) and very rarely is there input from actual customers of ECM.  At the end of the day for any of us who are blogging or tweeting about this subject, theorizing about what’s going to happen in our industry, isn’t it our customers who really have the final say?  We can banter around our opinions with each other, but I think it would be very valuable for us all, vendors/partners/consultants/customers, to share what real world decisions are being made instead of what we in the industry think is going to happen.  Isn’t that supposed to be the true value of all this social media and networking tools, to bring the whole community together?

So, to hold myself to this standard here are my thoughts on the effect SharePoint may have on the ECM industry.  I’ve based these on real conversations of the last 45 days with actual customers/users (AmLaw 200 law firms, US Federal Government, Global Media/Entertainment, State & Local Government, and a Global Consulting and Accounting firm) of ECM technologies (SharePoint, Open Text, Documentum, and Autonomy iManage):

• New Buyers of Basic Document and Records Management: For organizations of any size that, today, do not have a document management solution, SharePoint will be the de facto leader.  It is a natural extension of Office, it just makes sense.  The same is probably true for organizations first beginning to venture into the world of records management….especially the smaller ones and those not overly concerned with physical records.  Again, it just makes sense.  Does this mean that the legacy vendors or up and comers won’t take some of this business? No.  But, if anyone’s business case for growth is still based on an assumption that there is great opportunity here they are in trouble.  Enterprise, as in ‘the whole organization; every single piece of content',’ Records Management is a different animal I’ll come to in a bit.  Open source alternatives here will thrive in local government and new companies that consider themselves technologically savvy and cutting edge.

 

• Existing Owners of Document and Records Management Applications:  As long as they don’t feel they are being gouged by their vendor, they’re probably not going to take on the expense of migration to a new platform.  I had one of the multi-billion dollar customer actually laugh at my suggestion that they might consider migrating at some point.  “Why would we do that,” was his response, “let’s talk about our three year vision.”  There simply is nothing so compelling about SharePoint to warrant this group throwing away all of the money they’ve invested in it for years.  Of course there are exceptions; those that do feel they are being gouged on maintenance, those that simply never saw value or were incessantly plagued with bugs, etc.  In these circumstances, I think SharePoint will be the ‘go to’ position as well.  That said, customers who have owned and used ECM technologies are a bit more educated and will probably give others a look as well.
  
  But, the obvious key here is value…the customer has to continue to see the value of their investment.  If they don’t, then the incumbent is toast and SP will likely eat them for breakfast.

 

• The Hybrids, Enterprise Records Management, and CMIS:  Many of the largest users of ECM today don’t know it, but CMIS will be the answer to many of their long time prayers.  Rarely do I speak with a customer today that does not already have more than one ECM technology in play.  Yet, they all have continuously looked for a way to unify them.  I think this is another area where SharePoint will greatly benefit…as well as the ‘legacy’ vendors.  I can’t count the number of times that I’ve spoken with a customer that has technology X in use as its official RM application but has very little up-take by end users beyond those involved with the RM practice by trade or those mandated to use it.  What both SharePoint and CMIS provide the legacies with is a way to truly execute an Enterprise RM Strategy.  SharePoint is probably the easiest application out there to get end users to use….they already use Office every day.  It’s not a stretch to believe that SharePoint can become the front end to nearly any and all ECM initiatives.  On the backend, the CMIS protocol(s) potentially allow an organization to surface the content in all of the disparate apps they may have in a consistent SharePoint UI while also providing the mechanism by which a single RM app could manage said content regardless of where it originated from.  Of course, in my opinion, a lot of that vision depends on how/if the CMIS standard evolves.  Laurence Hart (@piewords) has a tremendous discussion and wish list for CMIS 2.0 here http://wordofpie.com/2009/12/08/looking-at-cmis-1-0-thinking-of-2-0/ 
  
  To date, not a single Global 1000 customer that I’ve personally spoken to (at least 100 over the last 12 months) is seriously considering using SharePoint 2010 as an enterprise wide RM standard.  Does that mean some won’t someday?  No.  I’m just sharing actual facts from actual customer conversations.  Plenty are considering using SP 2010 for departmental RM initiatives and plenty of smaller companies are going this route, but for the big guys…as soon as you begin talking about more than office documents as records the SP discussion fades away.  This is where the longtime RM vendors can live in the RM space for the next 5 to 10 years.

I guess the one thing I’m trying to get across to my industry colleagues is that customers are still going to buy the solution they feel best fits their own individual needs.  No matter how many tweets we have for or against a particular vendor, no matter the amount of money spent on marketing, the ECM customers I speak to want a solution that works for them.  As much as I enjoy reading all of the conversation and viewpoints between all of us ‘in the industry,’ I really wish that our discussion in the ether could better involve the customers we all service.  As great as our social media tools are, I fear that the terrific dialogue we have is lost on the customers.  Are they not using these tools yet?  Are they just lurking?  What can we do, collectively, to bring them into our conversations?  I’d like to blog and write more about my thoughts and opinions on ECM, but I want it to be heard by my existing and future customers.  Without them, all this blog or #ecm Twitter streams are good for is getting me “known” by my peers.  That might help me get another job someday, but it certainly won’t help me grow my business.  For that, I’ll keep the personal conversations alive and well…after all, my golden rule has always been “People buy from People.”