Reimagining legacy ECM with Box: Part I
Content is everywhere. It comes in many forms, and it powers business today.
Whether you’re working on building and launching new products, marketing to potential customers, or supporting existing clients, your processes run on content. In fact, according to a recent study by IDC, 90% of an organization’s data is unstructured.
But unlike structured data, which is easily queried, analyzed, and reported on, unstructured data has historically been difficult to manage, especially at scale. One of the more traditional approaches to managing it involves enterprise content management (ECM) systems, often implemented for specific business areas such as finance, HR, sales, marketing, customer service, and so on.
This fragmented approach has led to a variety of disparate, disconnected systems and a disjointed way of managing unstructured content — one that’s expensive, difficult to secure, and ultimately reduces the productivity of all stakeholders involved.
With the ECM approach, critical data is often strewn across siloed systems and fragmented applications, exposing an organization to enormous risk because important, sensitive, and even regulated content can be found everywhere. It also slows productivity as users jump from system to system and workflows break between separate applications. And it leads to an increase in spend, both in licensing fees and the overhead of administering multiple systems and trying to tie them all together.
While organizations have modernized legacy business systems such ERP, CRM, and HR, they remain hampered by a reliance on outdated ECM systems to manage their unstructured data.
“Most ECM systems mimic traditional paper-based document management and are no longer suitable for digital-first realities. A reevaluation of industry needs and consensus on the way forward is essential.”
-ECM in 2024 and Beyond – Reframing the Equation
Legacy ECM systems were developed and implemented decades ago, long before the rise of the cloud, mobile workforces, and AI. The most common shortcomings of legacy ECM systems typically fall into three categories.
Legacy ECM systems were designed 20-30 years ago to provide a standard approach for digitizing, storing, retrieving, and managing files in a secure on-premises environment. They were not designed to meet the needs of today’s modern, cloud-driven workforce and have generally failed to keep up with customer needs and expectations. This has had a drastic impact on employee productivity and efficiency, and prevents companies from taking advantage of new technologies like AI.
The responsibility of managing and maintaining legacy ECM systems has become a burden for IT staff who are often faced with limited resources, budgets, and a multitude of other responsibilities. The need to customize legacy ECM systems to satisfy ever-changing business requirements requires continual investment from IT and an overly complex tech stack. Additionally, the number of people in today’s workforce with the skills to manage legacy ECM systems is rapidly dwindling.
Today’s workforce expects a consumer-like experience from the systems they use at work, with capabilities like easy external collaboration, automated workflows, seamless integration with other systems of record, electronic signatures, and an engaging user experience. But these capabilities were not built into legacy ECM systems. Instead, they’ve been offered as bolt-on products with additional costs and complexities, providing a fragmented experience for users and too much reliance on IT.
Even more challenging, there have been a number of acquisitions involving ECM technologies which have led to a decline in product innovation. Acquiring companies seemingly seek to drive ROI through a steady stream of maintenance revenue. Rarely, if ever, have these acquisitions resulted in increased investment in the technology platforms themselves. This has also caused confusion in the market, as several vendors have overlapping ECM products within their portfolios, further diluting engineering resources and eroding their ability to innovate.
Today, advanced technologies like AI can transform how organizations tap into the value of unstructured data to run smarter and faster. But legacy ECM systems end up slowing you down, causing your organization to fall behind the competition.
Now is the time to reimagine ECM.
In our next blog, we’ll dive deeper into content management and what to look for in a modern content management system. In the meantime, to learn more about reimagining ECM with Box, please join us for BoxWorks on November 12, in San Francisco or virtually. Register today!