Enterprise content management (ECM) implementation in South Africa
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/09565691211222081 |
| Published date | 23 March 2012 |
| Pages | 37-56 |
| Date | 23 March 2012 |
| Author | Shadrack Katuu |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
Enterprise content management
(ECM) implementation in
South Africa
Shadrack Katuu
Department of Information Science, University of South Africa,
Pretoria, South Africa
Abstract
Purpose – This article aims to assess how enterprise content management (ECM) has been
implemented in South Africa.
Design/methodology/approach – The article is a five-part analysis of the concept of ECM. The
first part outlines a perspective to ECM based on predecessor and related terms such as EDMS and
ERMS. The second part reviews literature generated in South Africa on electronic records and
document management over the last decade as well as a discussion on value added resellers in the
country. The third part provides the results of the survey of ten South African institutions. This
section includes an outline on the research methodology used as well as analysis of the data and a brief
discussion of the research implications. The fourth part provides concluding remarks and the fifth part
is a list of references.
Findings – A literature review conducted by the author reveals that there have been few published
sources on institutional experiences related to implementing electronic document and records
management in South Africa. However, the survey published in this article reveals that South African
institutions have as much as eight years of ECM implementation experience, a majority using ECM
applications from one company and the most common ECM applications modules installed within the
organizations being records management, document management and imaging. These survey results
suggest additional research is needed to assess proprietary vs non-proprietary applications as well as
the impact of value-added resellers to ECM implementation.
Originality/value – As the literature review has shown, ECM implementation in South Africa has
received minimal attention beyond graduate level research. This article provides an analysis of
empirical data on ECM implementation in South Africa and serves as a baseline for more
comprehensive studies in the future.
Keywords ECM implementation,Electronic document and recordsmanagement,
Enterprise contentmanagement, Snowball sampling,South Africa, Value-added resellers,
Document management, Electronic documentdelivery
Paper type Case study
Introduction
Enterprise content management (ECM) is a concept that has been used by records and
information professionals for at least a decade. As early as 2001, Karen Shegda from
Gartner, a leading research and advisory firm, discussed core integrated document
management software functionality and noted that key vendors were morphing their
products into content management systems (Shegda, 2001). In the same year Bob Ward
of Teamware Group, a technology consulting company, published an article arguing
that content management was a growing sector in the information technolo gy industry
and titled it enterprise content management (Ward, 2001).
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0956-5698.htm
ECM
implementation
in South Africa
37
Received 29 April 2011
Revised 10 November 2011
Accepted 21 December 2011
Records Management Journal
Vol. 22 No. 1, 2012
pp. 37-56
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0956-5698
DOI 10.1108/09565691211222081
Since then, discussions on ECM applications and implementation have been
numerous and widespread throughout the world. However, as this paper will
demonstrate, discussions on the subject in South Africa have remained buried in the
pages of graduate research papers in information management. This article seeks to
bring the discussion about ECM out of the halls of academia. In an effort to contribute
to the scarce literature on ECM in South Africa and to relate the developments to those
in other parts of the world, this article presents the findings of a survey of ECM
implementation across a selection of ten South African institutions.
In this five-part analysis, the situation with ECM in South Africa is examined in
depth. The first part outlines a perspective to ECM based on predecessor and related
terms such as EDMS and ERMS. The second part reviews literature generated in South
Africa on electronic records and document management over the last decade as well as
a discussion on value added resellers in the country. The third part provides the results
of the survey of ten South African institutions. This section includes an outline on the
research methodology used as well as analysis of the data and a brief discussion of the
research implications. The fourth part provides concluding remarks and the fifth part
is a list of references.
ECM
As an introduction, this section discusses why ECM, and not other related terms, has
been used as a point of departure, outlines the understanding of how ECM could be
defined and outlines its constituent parts.
The evolution of ECM
ECM is a term that has been in competition with others such as Integrated Document
Management Software or Systems or IDMS (Shegda, 2001), Electronic Document
Management Systems or EDMS, Electronic Document and Records Management
Systems or EDRMS as well as Electronic Records Management Systems or ERMS.
Robert Blatt (2011), an ECM industry specialist, argued that terms such as EDMS and
ERMS have been used almost interchangeably with ECM for several years.
ERM systems evolved from early automated techniques for managing hard copy
records while EDM systems evolved from software designed to build concordances
and then became automated techniques for managing hybrid collections of largely
similar types of documents such as procedure manuals (McDonald, 2011). EDM
systems were also often referred to as Document Imaging Management (DIM) systems
since they were used to scan and save images of hardcopy documents for central
storage and easy retrieval (Cvision Technologies, 2011). ERMS and EDMS came
together in the mid to late 1990s as EDRMS. According to John McDonald, a world
renowned electronic records specialist, “since then there have been important add-ons
and improvements such as email integration and workflow.” He adds that the most
important step has been the migration of these tools into the web environment where,
in many cases, they have been integrated with web content management tools – hence
the name content management to embrace the emerging and wider role of applications
thus far known as EDRMS (McDonald, 2011).
For the purpose of this article, ECM is viewed currently as the final point in an
evolutionary process, where other concepts such as EDMS and ERMS were
predecessor concepts. The evolutionary process accommodates predecessor concepts
RMJ
22,1
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