Collaboration, Search, And Compliance Drive 2010 ECM Investments

Forrester recently surveyed 170 information and knowledge management (I&KM) professionals with decision-making roles in enterprise content management (ECM) about their plans for the coming year. Their organizations will continue a steady investment in ECM, with an emphasis on improving content search, sharing, and compliance. Web content management (WCM) and records management (RM) are also areas for ECM investment. While enterprises desire an end-to-end ECM suite that covers all content needs, in actuality they continue to have multiple ECM point products and/or suites in place. Companies will consider SaaS and open source ECM alternatives, but more for persuasive content initiatives than for business or transactional. Return on investment (ROI) remains an issue: A majority of firms can't prove ROI, likely making approval for ECM investments more difficult. But that investment continues to have great value in terms of information worker productivity, as the amount of content enterprises produce continues to increase.