ECM Illustrated - Data and Content Management will blend together
Enterprise users need accurate and complete information in a timely manner to do their jobs. The information they need is often located in different content sources and with different degree of structure. To satisfy the information needs of the employees, an enterprise does not only need to integrate content in different content sources to satisfy information needs, but also integrate structured content (data) with unstructured content.
The world of Data Management has until recently been separated from the world of Content Management, with suboptimization as a natural result. The separation of Data Management and Content Management has its roots in that structured content has traditionally been stored in databases and that unstructured content has been contained in documents and files stored in file systems.
Below is a simple way to illustrate the original positions of Data Management and Content Management and how they will eventually blend together.
From a user perspective, it does not make much sense to treat structured and unstructured content as two separate things. What matters to the user is that he/she can find and access all relevant content and that it gives just enough context to efficiently extract all the information that is needed from the content.
From a business perspective, it does not either make much sense to treat structured and unstructured content as two separate things, even though structured and unstructured content needs to be managed in more or less different ways. The primary concern of the business is to fulfill its goals and to do so it needs to enable the employees to carry out the activities needed to fulfill these goals. One important aspect of this is to supply the employees with just the resources they need, such as content resources from which they can extract the information they need. To treat Data Management and Content Management as two separate things would be as dividing a football (soccer) team into a defensive team and an attacking team and let them play independently of each other. It would be an interesting game to watch, but a sure loss for the team(s).
The world of Data Management has until recently been separated from the world of Content Management, with suboptimization as a natural result. The separation of Data Management and Content Management has its roots in that structured content has traditionally been stored in databases and that unstructured content has been contained in documents and files stored in file systems.
Below is a simple way to illustrate the original positions of Data Management and Content Management and how they will eventually blend together.
From a user perspective, it does not make much sense to treat structured and unstructured content as two separate things. What matters to the user is that he/she can find and access all relevant content and that it gives just enough context to efficiently extract all the information that is needed from the content.
From a business perspective, it does not either make much sense to treat structured and unstructured content as two separate things, even though structured and unstructured content needs to be managed in more or less different ways. The primary concern of the business is to fulfill its goals and to do so it needs to enable the employees to carry out the activities needed to fulfill these goals. One important aspect of this is to supply the employees with just the resources they need, such as content resources from which they can extract the information they need. To treat Data Management and Content Management as two separate things would be as dividing a football (soccer) team into a defensive team and an attacking team and let them play independently of each other. It would be an interesting game to watch, but a sure loss for the team(s).