EMC Documentum and vendor shortlists

Earlier this month, EMC launched a press release about their very strong revenue growth. Their content management revenues grew at nearly double the rate of the overall content management software market. This is pretty remarkable as they are already one of the established leaders in that market.

However, we are convinced that this growth could even be higher. EMC Documentum faces two problems which hamper this growth. We believe that these problems are PERCEPTION problems which often make that EMC Documentum is not included in shortlist made up by organizations during the initial vendor selection.

Perception problem 1: EMC Documentum software is very expensive

It is true that EMC Documentum used to be positioned as a very high-end software solution with according prices. But the fierce competition from pure play content management software vendors and the upcoming infrastructure oriented players like IBM and Microsoft have had a major impact on the official price list of EMC Documentum.

Today, EMC Documentum shows a much greater ability to adapt their quotes to the customer's business case and lots of prospects are happily surprised when they look into the proposal.

Perception problem 2: EMC Documentum projects last long, are complex and high-risk

Everybody knows one or two stories of Documentum implementations which went terribly wrong. But of course, a messed up project where the software of the recognized market leader is involved provides a much juicier story. But if one takes a closer look at this failed projects, one will realize that this is often caused by the lack of experience of the implementation consultants involved. Like with all state of the art enterprise software products, an in depth product knowledge is crucial for success: these solutions come with so many features out-of-the-box that most of the needs of customers can be covered by mere configuration of the software. Unfortunately, even today we see that some implementations are done by developers without this in depth product knowledge: often resulting in customizations of the software in order to provide the functionality which is already available out-of-the-box. So involving a good and experienced consultancy firm in your ECM project is a guarantee for having your ECM project successfully finished in time and budget.

Amplexor Webwatch - Useful ECM resources on the Web

One CMS for your web site AND your intranet?

Martin White clarifies his point on view why it is quite unlikely that one will be able to select one content management system that will be deployable for managing your public website and your intranet.
(http://www.econtentmag.com)

Company wide adoption of ECM requires increased simplicity

One of the major points of attention for making an organizational wide deployment of a content management system successful is getting the end-users to work with the system. A golden rule for success is: keep it as simple as possible for them.
(http://www.intelligententerprise.com)

Content management and workflow: contradiction in terminus?

Almost every content management system offers (sometimes very advanced) workflow functionalities. During the software selection phase this usually is a very important criteria. In practice however, we experience that workflow within content management projects has to be looked at very carefully. In the article below, James Robertson reveals a widely known CMS secret: workflow doesn't work.
(http://www.steptwo.com.au)