Take A Process View Toward Enterprise Content Integration

Transforming business processes depends on access to information from an increasing number of systems, with a wider range of formats, and in greater volume. BP pros who seek to improve processes with business process management (BPM) and dynamic case management initiatives are working to reduce the amount of information to manage, improve information access, and lower enterprise content management (ECM) infrastructure costs. But deciding on the best approach proves difficult. SharePoint's acceleration and emerging cloud offerings will only worsen these investment challenges. Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) shows promise but will not solve interoperability problems for three years or more. As a result, organizations should use content integration software, frameworks, and strategies — enterprise content integration (ECI) — to consolidate archives, federate access, and/or synchronize content. Niche software companies, ECM providers, and systems integrators provide a diverse yet sometimes confusing set of solutions.