Inf Syst E-Bus Manage DOI 10.

1007/s10257-009-0124-6 ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Towards a business process-oriented approach to enterprise content management: the ECM-blueprinting framework
Jan vom Brocke Alexander Simons Anne Cleven

Received: 6 May 2008 / Revised: 17 November 2009 / Accepted: 9 December 2009 Springer-Verlag 2009

Abstract In todays digital information age, companies are struggling with an immense overload of mainly unstructured data. Reducing search times, fullling compliance requirements and maintaining information quality represent only three of the challenges that organisations from all industry sectors are faced with. Enterprise content management (ECM) has emerged as a promising approach addressing these challenges. Yet, there are still numerous obstacles to the implementation of ECM technologies, particularly fostered by the fact that the key challenges of ECM adaptation processes are rather organisational than technological. In the present article we claim that the consideration of an organisations business process structure is particularly crucial for ECM success. In response to this, we introduce a process-oriented conceptual framework that systematises the key steps of an ECM adoption. The paper suggests that ECM and business process management are two strongly related elds of research.
This article is an extension and revision of ideas originally presented at the 16th european conference on information systems (ECIS 2008) in Galway, Ireland (vom Brocke et al. 2008). J. vom Brocke (&) A. Simons Martin Hilti Chair of Business Process Management, Institute of Information Systems, University of Liechtenstein, Fuerst-Franz-Josef-Strasse 21, 9490 Vaduz, Principality of Liechtenstein e-mail: jan.vom.brocke@hochschule.li URL: www.hochschule.li/iwi A. Simons e-mail: alexander.simons@hochschule.li URL: www.hochschule.li/iwi A. Cleven Institute of Information Management, University of St.Gallen, Mueller-Friedberg-Strasse 8, 9000 St.Gallen, Switzerland e-mail: anne.cleven@unisg.ch URL: www.iwi.unisg.ch

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Keywords Business process management Content Document management Enterprise content management

1 Introduction As early as in 1970, Alvin Tofer coined the term information overload in his highly regarded book Future Shock (Tofer 1970). Todays digital information age is characterised by steadily decreasing storage costs, which in turn have lead to a tremendously increasing information ood, thus fullling Tofers forecasts. According to a recent IDC study, the amount of digital information produced annually will mount up to nearly 1,800 billion gigabytes by 2011, which is approximately ten times more than in 2006 (Gantz et al. 2008, p. 3.). Gartner states that most of the data captured today is unstructured (7580%) and can be hardly found when needed (as cited in OCallaghan and Smits 2005, p. 1271). So it has been estimated that information workers spend up to 30% of their working day searching for data and approximately 1525% on non-productive, primarily information-related tasks (Burnett et al. 2006, p. 11). As a consequence, a socalled information chaos caused by large amounts of unstructured data and compromising the ability to manage and control information is the rule rather than the exception in contemporary organisations (Swartz 2007a, p. 14). The efcient administration of digital information is not a new topic and has been widely discussed in the context of information management (Peppard 1999, pp. 80ff.). From the early days of the information systems (IS) discipline, information management has been a major research topic (Power 1983, p. 13). Since then, various concepts for controlling an organisations digital information assets, such as document management (Sprague Jr 1995) or records management (Hayes 1990), have been investigated. Later on, the adoption of the Internet exceeded this discussion and gave rise to the development of new concepts, for example, Web content management (McKeever 2003) or digital rights management (Cohen 2003). The latest development is now marked by the term enterprise content management (ECM). The benets ECM holds for organisations seem endless and so it has been argued that ECM technologies can enable an enterprise-wide rationing of content inen et al. 2006, p. 627). Specically, ECM (Smith and McKeen 2003, p. 648; Tyrva holds the promise of enhanced consistency and timeliness of content (Rockley et al. 2003, pp. 14f.), improved internal and external collaboration, cost savings in information processing operations, value-added customer services, and fewer errors iva rinta and Munkvold 2005, p. 2). Because in products and services (Pa organisational knowledge is captured in enterprise content, ECM can further act as an enabler of sustainable knowledge management (Chiu and Hung 2005; also compare Davenport and Prusak 2000; Iverson and Burkart 2007, p. 404). Finally, one of the main drivers of ECM is the need for compliance (Swartz 2007a, p. 14). A recent survey among 741 organisations found that 63% of the companies polled had not even begun to analyse the risk they are facing from inaccurately managing digital information; 43% had no clear approach for meeting issues of compliance resulting from the variety of governmental and industry regulations, such as

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SarbanesOxley, Basel II, or the health insurance portability and accountability act (HIPAA; Swartz 2007b, pp. 22f.). Companies that do not succeed in implementing a digital information policy risk far more than just loosing efciency. Against this background it is not surprising that ECM has been evolving into a concept of high relevance to all industry sectors. The ECM market is hot and is getting hotter (Andersen 2008, p. 66): Forrester Research expects that the demand for ECM software (ECMS) will exceed $3.9 billion by the end of this year (McNabb et al. 2005); the META Group even estimates the market for ECM services to be nearly twice as big (META Group 2004). Notwithstanding the remarkable practical interest in ECM, until now the IS discipline has not paid much heed to the concept iva rinta 2006, p. 648)even though ECM has already been (Nordheim and Pa inen et al. identied as an important and complex subeld of IS research (Tyrva 2006, p. 628). There are numerous obstacles that organisations may face when they adopt ECM and White (2002) states that the implementation of content management solutions is probably the most complex rollout an organisation will manage (p. 22). One explanation can be found in the awareness that ECM challenges are not only technological, but above all organisational (Munkvold et al. 2006, pp. 7577; iva rinta 2004; OCallaghan and Smits 2005, p. 1274; Tyrva inen Nordheim and Pa et al. 2006, p. 628). In the present paper, we claim that the consideration of an organisations business process landscape in particular is crucial for ECM success. First, we argue that the analysis of business processes provides a suitable basis for identifying content and its users as well as the different systems in which content resides. Second, any ECMS implementation affects an organisations business inen et al. 2006, process structure in turn (Salminen et al. 2006; cited in Tyrva p. 628), as employees are required to get used to new ways of creating, storing and publishing content (Pullman and Gu 2008, p. 2). Consequently, we posit that organisations should take business processes as both the starting point and target of an ECMS implementation. Grounded in the above discussion, the present paper provides a business process perspective onto the concept of ECM and presents a process-driven, conceptual framework that systematises the major steps of an ECM adoption. Established approaches from the business process mangement (BPM) discipline, most notably business process specication and analysis, are proposed to identify work ows with a high potential for improvement by means of ECM support. Specically, business processes serve as the foundation for assessing both an organisations content as well as required ECMS functionalities. The development of the framework has been informed by the idea of adapting ECM reference processes (so-called ECMblueprints) and embedding them into an organisations existing business process structure. These blueprints nally serve as guidelines for both implementing ECMS and re-designing affected business processes. This research follows the design science paradigm (Hevner et al. 2004; March and Smith 1995). Design science generally aims at developing an artefact that draws from existing knowledge, such as established models and theories (Hevner et al. 2004, pp. 80ff.; Peffers et al. 2008, p. 49). The practical relevance of the research problem has been identied as being crucial for design science research (Hevner and March 2003, p. 112; Rosemann and Vessey 2008). Consequently, in the next

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section, we discuss the importance of business processes for an ECMS implementation. In order to ensure that our design objectives are consistent with prior research, we conducted a literature review in the eld of ECM, which is summarised in Sect. 3. The literature review supports the appraisement that process-oriented guidelines can rarely be found in ECM research. Section 4 then explains the theoretical background for ECM-blueprinting. In Sect. 5, we present the ECMblueprinting framework and illustrate its application by means of an example case. However, ECM-blueprinting rather seeks for systematising the major steps required for ECM adoption as opposed to providing denite instructions for implementation. We thus discuss the necessity for developing more detailed guidelines for all phases of ECM-blueprinting in Sect. 6 before we conclude with a brief summary.

2 Understanding ECM inen et al. 2006, ECM represents a relatively young eld in both academia (Tyrva p. 627) and practice (Dilnutt 2006, p. 39). This becomes particularly apparent in the lack of a widely accepted understanding and denition of the concept of ECM, or as Smith and McKeen (2003) put it: if theres one thing that all the experts agree on, it is that no one really knows exactly what ECM really is (p. 648, citing Gilchrist 2001). ECM rather forms the latest buzzword in the content management arena and has yet to be rmly dened (Mescan 2004, p. 55). Likewise, one could argue that there are various related and well-researched conceptssuch as document management, content management or Web content management (Liu et al. 2007, p. 56)and that further academic effort is not justied. On the contrary, ECM is increasingly perceived as the state of the art for storing and retrieving content and documents in practice (Aleksy and Schwind 2006, p. 60) and it has also been argued inen that ECM forms a rich research phenomenon for the IS discipline (Tyrva et al. 2006, p. 628). Nevertheless, ECM has received little in the way of attention in inen the related scientic communities so far (Pullman and Gu 2008, p. 4; Tyrva et al. 2006, p. 627). The term ECM was mainly coined by software vendors and business analysts. According to Blair (2004), it was introduced in 2001 by the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM), a professional ECM forum for practitioners (p. 65). The AIIM originally dened ECM as the technologies used to create, manage, customize, deliver, and preserve information to support business processes (Wikipedia 2009a). As this early denition focuses on the technological dimension of ECM only, one may consider it decient. While it is indisputable that technologies play an important role for any ECM adoption, ECM certainly represents more than just a piece of software (Augustyniak et al. 2005, p. 644). The various ECM challenges organisations are confronted with when adopting ECM cannot solely be solved on the basis of technologies: The people, processes and technology of ECM are the keys to understanding these challenges and addressing them in strategic ways (Blair 2004, p. 66). Other studies also acknowledged this perception by calling ECM a strategy rather than a solution (Mescan 2004, p. 55) or stating that ECM is about the interaction of business with content, people,

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processes, and tools (OCallaghan and Smits 2005, p. 1274). Correspondingly, the AIIM just recently updated its ECM denition, which now also considers strategies and methods (Wikipedia 2009a). In the present paper, ECM is dened as the strategies, tools, processes, and skills an organisation needs to manage all its information assets (regardless of type) over their lifecycle (Smith and McKeen 2003, p. 648). First, this denition emphasises the organisational character of ECM as discussed above (as it underpins the relevance of strategies, processes and people for ECM). Second, the denition reveals that ECM seeks to manage the entirety of the information assets captured within an organisation: ECM systems have emerged from the convergence of related technologies, such as document management, Web content management or records management systems (Clark 2007, p. 10; OCallaghan and Smits 2005, pp. 12711274). ECM therefore not only aims at administering ofce documents or Web sites, but also records, e-mails, photographs, drawings, or audio and video les (Dillnut 2006, p. 40; OCallaghan and Smits 2005, p. 1273). ECM vendors provide large application suites that integrate all of an organisations information regardless of its type or source (Bridges 2007, p. 31). Hence, we follow Sprehe (2005), who considers enterprise information management and ECM as strongly related, if not identical, approaches (p. 300), and use the terms information and content synonymously in this paper. In summary, ECM is still one of the rather ambiguous concepts in IS research and practice. Yet, it is widely perceived that ECM helps organisations to manage not only structured and unstructured content (Roy et al. 2005, p. 405), but also records; knowledge generation, codication, and distribution; collaboration; and business processes across an enterprise (Andersen 2008, p. 62). The vast number of different information assets created and used within an organisations business processes, however, hampers tailored ECM adoptions. As the plethora of vendors competing on the ECM market provide software products with varying functionality, organisations need to understand their content situation in order to support both the selection and implementation of ECMS. A marketing brochure, for example, may be created by several authors and changed very frequently. Hence, it particularly requires ECMS functionalities supporting the collaboration process. In contrast, an invoice requires specic retention functionalities which, in turn, must adhere to certain legal standards. The ECMS then may have to ensure that the invoice is stored for a given archiving period and/or that user access is tracked or prohibited. Besides, content is commonly captured in different systems and accessed by a variety of different usersmany of whom require specic ECMS support and user rights. As a consequence, the diligent analysis of content is the prerequisite for ECM adoption success and represents a highly complex and challenging task. This study is grounded in the perception that the analysis of business processes can provide valuable information on the organisational requirements of content (e.g. content users, software systems and affected business activities). The decisive role of business processes in the context of ECMS is further nurtured by the awareness that establishing an overall ECM concept also requires the consideration of change in the organisational structure, especially with regard to business processes and

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inen et al. 2006, automated work ows (Salminen et al. 2006; as cited in Tyrva p. 628).

3 Related work As indicated, only few studies primarily focus on the concept of ECM. A main reason must be seen in the variety of IS reference disciplines dealing with related concepts, including knowledge management, information resource management, IT compliance, and data management. Certainly, another important cause is the youth iva rinta (2006), ECM has been gaining of the eld. According to Nordheim and Pa ground in IS practice since the 1990s (p. 649); as indicated, Blair (2004) dates the origins of the term ECM back to 2001 (p. 65). It seems as if ECM attracted IS scholars attention not before the turn of the millennium. EBSCOhost, for example, lists no academic journal articles on ECM published before 2002 (search term ECM). While there are long research traditions in ECM-related areas, such as document management (e.g. Dourish and Edwards 2000; Yiu et al. 2006), Web content management (e.g. Dewan et al. 2003; McKeever 2003), records management (e.g. Hayes 1990; Sprehe 2005), or digital rights management (e.g. Cohen 2003; Hollaar et al. 2005), there are relatively few contributions that explicitly focus on ECM as characterised in the previous section. In the following, we discuss eight prominent examples of such works (compare Table 1). The discussion reveals that the ECM literature primarily focuses on technological and strategic aspects of ECM and/or reports on specic ECMS implementations. Specically, it is our intent to document that process-oriented guidelines are rare in ECM research. Reimers work (2002) considers the role of business processes and estimates the impact of ECMS implementations on business performance (p. 17). He differentiates between three stages of ECMS deployment that progressively inuence the effect on the overall business value (compare Fig. 1), namely: (1) business processes built

Table 1 Selected contributions in the eld of ECM Source OCallaghan and Smits (2005) Munkvold et al. (2006) iva rinta (2004) Nordheim and Pa iva rinta (2006) Nordheim and Pa iva rinta and Munkvold (2005) Pa Reimer (2002) Rockley et al. (2003) Smith and McKeen (2003) Main contents/focus ECM strategy development Contemporary issues of ECM (e.g. infrastructure and change management) Customisation of ECMS Strategic development and implementation process of ECM ECM objectives and impact, content and enterprise model, change management Structure and functionalities of ECMS Development of a unied content strategy ECM concepts and benets, content stewardship, ECM governance

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Increased competitiveness from refined business processes

Business impact

Cost savings in reduced physical handling

(1)

(2)

(3)

ECM deployment phases

Fig. 1 ECM impact on business performance (Reimer 2002, p. 17)

around physical information handling, (2) same business processes, with information handled electronically, and (3) simplied business processes, exploiting electronic information handling (p. 17). Though the latter in particular underpins the relevance of business process re-design in the context of ECM, Reimers contribution primarily focuses on the structure and functionalities of ECMS (pp. 18ff.). Due to the prevalent obscurity regarding the meaning of ECM, Smith and McKeen (2003) discuss relevant terms (pp. 648f.), ECM benets (pp. 649ff.) and organisational concepts like content stewardship and ECM governance (p. 651ff.). Similarly, OCallaghan and Smits (2005) distinguish ECM from related approaches (pp. 12711274) and thereby reinforce the perception that ECM is an integrative concept for managing the entirety of an organisations information assets, which also underlies the present study (p. 1273). They suggest a framework for ECM strategy development and provide advice for the cost/value assessment of ECMS implementations (pp. 1276f.). Rockley et al. (2003) present a comprehensive guidebook for developing a unied content strategy. Their contribution includes instructions for assessing the return on investment (ROI) of ECMS implementations (pp. 43ff.). Nonetheless, Rockley et al. (2003) primarily focus on aspects of content collaboration andconsidering the length of their workonly marginally address the relevance of business processes for an ECM adoption, for example, in the context of workow systems (pp. 335ff.) and change management (pp. 401ff.). Other studies in the eld of ECM discuss exemplary case studies of ECMS iva rinta (2004), for implementations (e.g. Munkvold et al. 2006). Nordheim and Pa example, present a framework for ECMS customisation. Later, they explore the strategic development and implementation process of ECM (Nordheim and iva rinta 2006). They also acknowledge the relevance of process-oriented research Pa iva rinta 2006, pp. 648, 661). Finally, Pa iva rinta and on ECM (Nordheim and Pa Munkvold (2005) summarise 58 mainly practice-oriented case narratives shared by the AIIM and discuss contemporary issues of ECM, including the objectives and

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impact of ECM, an enterprise and content model, and ECM-related change management. They conclude that ECM is an integrative concept of information management that tackles different related areas, such as information resource management or electronic document management (also compare Munkvold et al. 2006, p. 86ff.). In summary, we argue that there is a lack of contributions discussing the relevance of business processes for ECM adoptions. The ECM-blueprinting framework presented in this paper suggests business processes as both the starting point and the target of ECMS implementations and, therefore, proposes to both analyse and re-design an organisations business process structure when implementing ECMS. The following section provides the theoretical basis that prepares the ground for the ECM-blueprinting framework.

4 Framework of ECM research inen et al. (2006) share our perception that there is a lack of ECM research Tyrva and propose a framework aimed at stimulating the academic interest for the eld (p. 627). They distinguish four relevant research perspectives, namely: content, inen et al. 2006 in technology, processes, and enterprise (compare Fig. 2 and Tyrva the following). Research questions related to the content perspective pertain to information about content (primarily semantics), users (and their relations to certain content assets) and the often various systems (in which the content assets reside). The content perspective thus particularly relates to the identication and organisation of content as well as its creation and use by both employees and IT (pp. 628ff.). The technology perspective addresses hardware, software and inen standards that support the management of content. On the one hand, Tyrva et al. (2006) hold technology as an important enabler of ECM. On the other hand, however, they conclude that the main focus of ECM research must address systems rather than technologies (as an ECM system encloses a number of technologies; p. 630). The process view involves both the development and deployment of processes and particularly relates to the implementation of content lifecycle activities (p. 631). In fact, there are many models of information or content lifecycle management (Reiner et al. 2004; Smith and McKeen 2003, pp. 651ff.). Lifecycle activities include capturing, creating, reviewing, editing, iva rinta and distributing, publishing, storing, archiving, and deleting content (Pa inen et al. (2006) specically identify shortcomings in Munkvold 2005). Tyrva ECM research concerning the process perspective (p. 631). Finally, the enterprise perspective describes the economic context for ECM and, therefore, especially pertains to social, business and legal aspects (p. 630). We consider this perspective to be relevant to all other perspectives; it hence constitutes the background of Fig. 2. We argue that an ECM adoption has to fully consider the four dimensions explained above. The ECM-blueprinting framework thus addresses each of these perspectives in an integrated manner.

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Enterprise

Processes Development Deployment

ECM research Content Users Information Systems Technology Hardware Software Standards

inen et al. 2006, p. 628) Fig. 2 Framework of ECM research (following Tyrva

5 The ECM-blueprinting framework 5.1 Overview The ECM-blueprinting framework is illustrated in Fig. 3. It distinguishes between different phases (symbolised by arrows), results (symbolised by rectangles) and methods (being applied within the phases). The framework suggests that an ECM adoption should start with a business process analysis (phase 1). Analysing conceptual specications of an organisations business processes, herein symbolised by an event-driven process chain (EPC) model (Scheer and Schneider 2006, pp. 607ff.), serves two primary purposes: First, content can be identied as it is accessed within the processes. Second, those processes, or parts of processes, that benet the most from ECM support can be detected (visualised by the dark coloured process elements). Next, the content identied is analysed (phase 2). We propose to use attributes and attribute values in order to specify content. The results can be presented in the form of morphological frameworks (Knackstedt and Klose 2005, p. 35), for example. This systematisation then prepares the ground for the analysis of the appropriateness of available ECMS functionalities (phase 3). That said, the organisational infrastructure (including both a companys business processes and content assets) is assessed in order to be able to align the IT infrastructure with the according business requirements. Functional decomposition diagrams (Martin and McClure 1985) can provide a suitable means to systematise ECMS functionalities that are required to manage certain content assets.

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(5) Business process re-design ECMBlueprints

(1) Business process analysis

Content assets
Support

ECMS

(4) ECMBlueprints adaptation

(2) Content analysis

ECMS functionalities

Content properties (3) ECMS analysis

Fig. 3 The ECM-blueprinting framework

The ECM-blueprinting framework is informed by the concept of adapting reference processes, so-called ECM-blueprints, for implementing ECMS with regard to an organisations individual content situation (phase 4). ECM-blueprints describe how the aforementioned content lifecycle activities (e.g. capturing, creating, editing, or archiving content) can be implemented and are adapted on the basis of the attribute values of content to the organisations specic needs (compare Becker et al. 2007, pp. 38ff.). Finally, the adapted ECM-blueprints are integrated into the existing business process structure (phase 5). This may also require the redesign of business processes, as the adoption of ECM will often cause changes in work practices, in particular related to the implementation of the content lifecycle activities. In other words: the new opportunities of creating and using content also require the re-assessment of existing business processes. The execution of certain activities (e.g. capturing or archiving content) may then be supported by the ECMS (symbolised by the shortened process chain, in which the ECMS supports the dark

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coloured activities which had originally been conducted manually). For identifying activities that offer a high potential for improvement through ECM support, the resulting benets can be assessed based on potential cost reductions (e.g. reduced storage or personnel costs). In order to account for changing requirements of managing content (as well as a companys business processes), the framework exhibits a circular logic. In the following, ECM-blueprinting is described in more detail. It is particularly intended to demonstrate how far ECM-blueprinting covers the perspectives of the ECM research framework as explained in the previous section. 5.2 Phase 1: business process analysis ECM-blueprinting proposes that analysing business processes based on conceptual models provides the starting point for an ECM adoption. Thus, the most important content captured within an enterprise can be identied. Moreover, studying its business processes can enable the organisation to assess the organisational context of content (including the employees accessing and using content and the IT systems that are involved). Phase 1 thus primarily addresses the rst two perspectives onto content of the ECM research framework (content users and systems), since it allows uncovering the relationships between employees and content as well as the different systems the content resides in. Furthermore, analysing business processes also provides the means to identify business activities and areas that can largely benet from ECM support. Figure 4 provides an example that prepares the ground for the following explanations. The process depicted in Fig. 4 is invoked by a customer who requests a proposal. First, the customer information is accessed. The customer may either be a new or an existing client. The customer advisor thus needs to either create a new client record or to search for an already existing le (within a shared directory). In the example, the customer advisor calls the customer management for assistance if he or she is unable to nd the client record in the shared directory (this function is not part of the main process description and thus displayed in a separate process as depicted by the renement symbol; compare Sect. 5.6). Only then the product catalogue is accessed and the process can be completed by sending the proposal to the customer. The process model also species exemplary lead times as well as probabilities for the functions and events by using clock and P symbols. The function Get customer information, for example, takes an average of 2.5 min as accessing an existing client record (respectively the creation of a new one) takes 2 (respectively 4) min (taking into account an occurrence probability of 0.75 [respectively 0.25%]). Just like the product catalogue access ( 2 min), these activities offer a high potential for improvement through ECM support in terms of reducing operating times and, thereby, personnel costs. 5.3 Phase 2: content analysis The second phase of ECM-blueprinting relates to the analysis of content that was identied within phase 1. The rst challenge of this phase is to decide which content

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Process chain (EPC)

Content

User

System

Customer asks for proposal

Get customer information

P

2.5 min.

Client record

Customer adviser

1/4
XOR

3/4

Customer is a new client

Customer is an existing client Customer adviser

Create new client record

4 min.

Find client record

2 min.

Client record Customer management Shared directory

XOR

Customer information available

Get product catalogue

2 min.

Product catalogue

Customer adviser Shared directory

Product catalogue available

Sales service

Fig. 4 Example: business process analysis

will eventually be controlled by the ECM solution (OCallaghan and Smits 2005, p. 1271). Moreover, the properties of content have to be assessed with regard to the abovementioned lifecycle phases in particular. The media of content (e.g. paper or digital), for example, represents a relevant property as paper documents need to be captured rst, before they can be stored in the ECMS repository (which, in turn, requires the use of different scanning functionalities, e.g. optical or intelligent character recognition). Accordingly, phase 2 primarily relates to the third view of content of the ECM research framework (i.e. information about content). Regarding the content perspective, many approaches in the eld of ECM focus on technological aspects (e.g. metadata and taxonomies). Due to the organisational character of ECM, however, analysing content does not only mean to understand its iva rinta and Peltola 2001, technological, but also its socio-organisational context (Pa pp. 5ff.). As indicated, we propose the use of attributes and attribute values in order

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Product catalogue Attribute Media Format Confidentiality Change frequency ... Attribute value Paper Digital Text Low Low Graphics Average Average ... High High Attribute Media Format Confidentiality Change frequency ... Client Record Attribute value Paper Digital Text Low Low Graphics Average Average ... High High

Fig. 5 Example: content analysis

to characterise content (Becker et al. 2004, pp. 616f.; Knackstedt and Klose 2005, p. 35). The exemplary business process introduced above reveals two content assets; the client record and the product catalogue. Figure 5 presents selected characteristics for the two content assets. The morphological framework assigns content attributes to possible attribute values (Knackstedt and Klose 2005, p. 35). The client record, which contains only text elements, is stored in a digital format. The product catalogue in contrast is archived both in paper and digitally and may also contain graphical elements. Besides, the client record is highly condential and infrequently changed, whereas the product catalogue is even accessible to external persons and also altered more frequently. Thus, the attribute values represent characteristics of content; they imply a deviant treatment of the two content assets and, consequently, different requirements at the technological level. A high change frequency may, for example, require a high availability and short access times. Consequently, the ECMS functionalities providing the means to meet these requirements need to be identied next. 5.4 Phase 3: ECMS analysis The third phase of the ECM-blueprinting framework relates to the analysis of available ECMS and thus to the technology view of the ECM research framework. There are various ECMS solutions with differing functionalities (compare, e.g. Burnett et al. 2006, pp. 98129). The main challenge of this phase is thus to identify those ECMS products that provide the functionalities which best t an organisations requirements. We suggest analysing available ECMS functionalities with regard to the content lifecycle activities they support. In order to provide a systematic overview, ECMS functionalities can be arranged in the form of functional decomposition diagrams (compare Fig. 6).
Fig. 6 Example: ECMS analysis

Access

Identifcation

Authentication

Authorisation

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The Access of content concerns the two main activities of the presented EPC (Get customer information and Get product catalogue) and may require the implementation of the following three exemplary ECMS functionalities: the Identication of content handles different locating mechanisms (on the basis of certain metadata, e.g., customer name or reference number). With regard to access control, it often will be necessary to check whether the employee who requests the content is the one he or she claims to be (Authentication) and whether he or she is permitted to access the content (Authorisation). Just like the identication of content, authentication as well as authorisation can be supported by different functionalities (e.g. full text or title search; single sign-on etc.). ECM systems often comprise of a huge number of functionalities. Most content assets, however, do not require the entirety of these functionalities. Thus, organizations are challenged to identify which functionalities are required for what contentan exercise that may be guided by the characteristics of content, i.e. its attribute values. This can be illustrated by the condentiality of the two exemplary content assets: In contrast to the client record (being highly condential), the product catalogue is even accessible to external persons (e.g. by Web access). Neither authentication nor authorisation is thus required to control the access of the product catalogue. In summary, phase 3 of ECM-blueprinting primarily serves the purpose of identifying ECMS functionalities required for managing an organisations content assets. The framework can then, in turn, support the selection of the most suitable ECMS products. 5.5 Phase 4: ECM-blueprints adaptation The present study is part of a larger research project, which also pertains to the development of reference processes for ECMS implementation (ECM-blueprints). Examples of such ECM-blueprints include the capturing, editing or archiving of content. It is thus intended to support the process view suggested by the ECM research framework. As the management of content is a highly specic task, the ECM-blueprints have to be adapted to an organisations individual content situation (phase 4). For that purpose, design principles of reference modelling, like conguration (Becker et al. 2004), specialisation, aggregation, instantiation, or analogy can be applied (vom Brocke 2007; Becker et al. 2007). A simplied ECM-blueprint for the given example is shown in Fig. 7. It illustrates how the access of content can be implemented by applying the three ECMS functionalities presented above. The process involves the search for content on the basis of metadata, log-in procedures and the control of content access. In the example it becomes apparent that the adaptation of ECM-blueprints can be accomplished by means of congurative reference modelling. The different attribute values (characterising the two content assets) are used as conguration parameters. The resultant (adapted) access blueprint for the product catalogue thus contains no activities or events that relate to authentication or authorisation (symbolised by the shaded area).

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ECM-Blueprint (EPC): Access
Client record Product catalogue ECMS functionality

Content has to be accessed

Content has to be accessed

Enter metadata

Enter metadata
Identification

Content is identified

Content is identified

Enter account

Enter password

Authentication

XOR

XOR

Account is not authorized

Account is authorized

Password is valid

Password is not valid

Authorisation

Deliver content

Deliver content

Content is accessed

Content is accessed

Prohibit content access Content is not accessed

Fig. 7 Example: ECM-blueprints adaptation

5.6 Phase 5: business process re-design The last phase of ECM-blueprinting addresses the re-design of content-related business processes. In the following, the approach is demonstrated for the activity Find client record (contained in the exemplary EPC displayed in Fig. 4). Within the original process model, the customer advisor has to call the customer management for help if he or she is unable to nd the requested client record in the shared directory (as illustrated on the left-hand side of Fig. 8). The re-design of the process according to the adapted access blueprint eliminates this procedure, as the customer advisor is now empowered to searching the client le using the searching mechanisms provided by the ECMS. Moreover, the unauthorised access of the client record is restricted by the means of log-in procedures (compare the right-hand side of Fig. 8).

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Activity: Find client record
Original process chain (EPC)

Re-designed process chain (EPC)

Customer is an existing client

Customer is an existing Client

Search in shared directory

P

1.5 min.

Enter metadata

0.1 min. ECMS

Shared directory
1/4

[e.g., client name, client number] Content is identified

XOR

Record cannot be found

Ask customer management

2 min.

Enter account

0.05 min.

Enter password

0.05 min.

XOR XOR XOR

Customer information available

Account is not authorized

Account is authorized

Password is valid

Password is not valid

Get product catalogue

Get product catalogue

Fig. 8 Example: business process re-design

The example shows that the use of an ECMS can signicantly reduce the process average lead time. Based on these time savings and the frequency of each activity, personnel cost reductions can be calculated. Finally, summing up these cost reductions for all re-designed processes provides a foundation for the estimation of the total benets resulting from the ECM adoption. In conclusion, ECM-blueprinting is mainly informed by the idea of analysing and re-designing content-related business processes when adopting ECM. Consequently, the suggested approach takes an organisations process structure as both the starting point and target of an ECMS implementation. It must be noted, however, that ECMblueprinting is a top-level, conceptual framework that rather aims at systematising the major steps of an ECM adoption than seeking to provide detailed instructions for implementation. In the next section we thus discuss the necessity for developing further methodological support for all the ve phases of ECM-blueprinting.

6 Discussion Our research towards the ECM-blueprinting framework follows the design science paradigm. The framework is continuously being evaluated in the context of a research project conducted in cooperation with a large-scale international enterprise which is currently implementing ECM processes worldwide. So far, our project work has led us to believe that ECM-blueprinting provides valuable insights that can

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support organisations facing the emerging challenge of ECM. First, the framework reveals the implementation steps that are considered to be most relevant for an ECMS rollout. Second, the framework emphasises the decisive role of business processes for ECM adoptions. Specically, it is suggested that business processes can inform content audits (in particular, the identication of content owners and users as well as IT systems in which the content resides) and thus the selection of the most appropriate ECM technologies. Third, ECM-blueprinting exceeds the technological dimension of ECM and also captures the processes and skills required for managing content. That said, the organisational infrastructure (i.e. content, its users and existing systems) is considered before making decisions on the IT infrastructure. Fourth, ECM-blueprinting illustrates the applicability of conceptual modelling in the context of ECM. However, it is our belief that each of the steps covered by ECM-blueprinting represents a complex task in itself and confronts organisations with a variety of related challenges. In the following, we thus present a research agenda for ECM-blueprinting and discuss the necessity for developing further methodological support for the distinct phases (Table 2). Phase 1business process analysis. The ECM-blueprinting framework proposes business process analysis to be used to uncover those business activities and areas that benet the most from ECM support (e.g. by calculating personnel cost reductions). For measuring and comparing all the economic benets and implementation costs of an ECM project, we consider further guidelines necessary. Several concepts for assessing the economic value of IS implementations have been developed (e.g. for calculating the ROI or the total cost of ownership). There are also business process-oriented approaches (vom Brocke et al. 2010); their applicability to ECM, however, has yet to be estimated. Consequently, we suggest that further research towards the ECM-blueprinting framework must focus on exploring process-oriented guidelines for cost/value assessment of ECM adoptions. Phase 2content analysis. ECM-blueprinting assumes that business processes provide a good starting point for content analysis, in particular for identifying the content most important for an organisation as well as its owners and users. Depending on both the expressiveness of the modelling language applied and the

Table 2 A research agenda for ECM-blueprinting ECM-blueprinting phase (1) Business process analysis (2) Content analysis Research topic/focus Process-oriented guidelines for ECM cost/value assessment Guidelines for interviews with content users and/or document analyses Systematisation of attributes and attribute values Conceptual modelling of enterprise content (3) ECMS analysis (4) ECM-blueprints adaptation (5) Business process re-design ECMS market (and ECMS functionality) analysis Congurative reference modelling (development and adaptation of ECM-blueprints) Content-oriented business process re-design

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level of detail of modelling, conceptual descriptions of business processes will often not contain all the information required to gain a detailed understanding of the organisations content situation. In that case, interviews with content users and the analysis of documents can provide additional insights. For characterising content and later adapting the ECM-blueprintsECM-blueprinting further proposes using the concept of attributes and attribute values known from congurative reference modelling. Since there are various forms of content captured in organisations, there is a need for a better understanding of the variety of content attributes (and attribute values respectively) applicable to congurative reference modelling. However, there are not only large amounts and various forms of content; since content is often re-used in different containers, it is also strongly interconnected (e.g. a product description may be included in a marketing brochure, a product handbook and published on the Internet at the same time). So far, ECM-blueprinting proposes the concept of morphological frameworks to describe content assets. However, since these frameworks cannot express theoften manifoldrelationships between different content assets, future research should also focus on conceptual modelling languages for enterprise content, which can facilitate the communication between content users and ECMS adopters (Becker et al. 2006, p. 3924). Phase 3ECMS analysis. The ECM market is booming and continues to consolidate as ECM vendors are widely integrating related technologies into their software products. The timeline of EMC mergers and acquisitions published at Wikipedia shows 27 acquisitions since 2006 (Wikipedia 2009b); moreover, in 2006 alone, OpenText acquired Hummingbird, FileNet was acquired by IBM, and Oracle acquired Stellant (Andersen 2008, p. 66). We believe that ECM vendors will continue to absorb related software products and offer even larger application suites in future. This development may complicate an analysis of available ECMS as depicted by ECM-blueprinting. The systematisation of ECMS functionalities thus is a challenging part for future research in the eld of ECM. Phase 4ECM-blueprints adaptation. We are currently developing a congurative reference model for implementing ECMS that covers the main content lifecycle activities. It is planned that each lifecycle activity will be specied by an ECM-blueprint. It is thus intended that each ECM-blueprint will in turn document the implementation of all ECMS functionalities that support the respective lifecycle phase. Besides, the framework assumes that ECM-blueprints are adapted based on the attribute values of content. Consequently, according to the abovementioned challenges of analysing both content attributes and available ECMS functionalities, we consider it necessary to develop the ECM-blueprints in an evolutionary manner. Moreover, an examination of additional reference modelling techniques like specialisation, aggregation, instantiation, or analogy (vom Brocke 2007; Becker et al. 2007) seems to be promising. Phase 5business process re-design. Finally, ECM-blueprinting seeks to redesign an organisations existing content-related business processes when integrating the adapted ECM-blueprints. While there are well-established approaches for business process re-design in IS research, their applicability to ECM has yet to be assessed. Consequently, future research should also focus on the development of guidelines for re-designing content-related business processes. It must be noted that

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ECM-blueprinting, as introduced in the present study, is based on the perception that primarily single functions of business processes (representing certain lifecycle activities of content) may benet from ECMS implementations. However, one could also imagine ECM as an enabler of new business models and new business processes respectively. In any case, an ECMS implementation provides new opportunities for creating and using content which in turn implies new organisational challenges. We argue that it will be especially crucial to consider the employees perspective in the context of re-designing content-related business processes as employee knowledge and acceptance play a central role for any ECMS rollout (Connelly 2007, p. 41). Given the above explanations, we consider ECM-blueprinting not only as a framework for ECM adoptions, but also as a guideline for future research in the IS discipline. However, it also became apparent that ECM is an emerging area of research that still lacks consistent and well-accepted denitions. Future research should therefore also continue to explore the fundamentals of ECM (e.g. by further distinguishing ECM from related concepts; compare Munkvold et al. 2006, iva rinta and Munkvold 2005). pp. 86ff.; Pa

7 Conclusion In this article, we introduced the ECM-blueprinting framework, which provides a business process perspective onto the management of enterprise content. In doing so, we aimed to contribute to an emerging eld in IS research that has received little attention within the related research communities until now. We argued that business process-oriented guidelines in particular can rarely be found in the eld of ECM. As a response, ECM-blueprinting builds upon established methods from BPM, including business process specication, analysis and re-design. A framework of ECM research provided the theoretical foundation for the suggested approach. The frameworks different dimensions (content, technologies, processes, and enterprise) were used to structure ECM-blueprinting. In order to study the applicability and usefulness of our approach, we are deploying ECM-blueprinting in a real-life industry project. So far, the project has led us to believe that ECM-blueprinting provides valuable insights for adopting ECM. However, we also pointed out that ECM-blueprinting represents a top-level approach thatin the current state of researchrather seeks to conceptualise the major phases of an ECM adoption than to provide specic implementation guidelines. Consequently, we presented a research agenda for ECM-blueprinting. Our research suggests that BPM and ECM represent two strongly related research areas and that their mutual integration marks a major challenge for scholars from both elds. We thus believe that, in order to complement this work, there is need for further BPM research from an ECM perspective: It has already been argued that the boundaries between BPM and ECM are becoming increasingly blurred in practice (Chambers 2007, p. 36). In fact, ECM systems make extensive use of work ow components and, in turn, BPM solutions often build upon similar components as ECMS (Allen 2007, p. 35). However, only little academic work has been carried out

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on the management of enterprise content within BPM research. We hope that our ECM-blueprinting framework may serve as a suitable means for supporting these future research challenges.
Acknowledgments The research described in this article was carried out within the research project ECM-blueprinting. We would like to express our gratitude towards both the Liechtenstein Government and the Hilti Corporation for nancially supporting our work. We especially wish to thank Dr Martin Petry, Bo sterberg Kristensen, Adrian Neumeyer, and Ali Samsa from Hilti Gobal IT for the lively and fruitful discussions of our ideas. Finally, we wish to thank the four anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on earlier versions of this article.

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