Building an End-to-End Content Management Roadmap
Organizations are familiar with following their content management vendor's roadmap. These roadmaps are updated and revealed at annual events to much fanfare. Some customers are even invited to make suggestions that may be considered when management charts the long-term vision. But in the end, the customer is simply along for the ride.
At SeeUnity, we take a different approach to content management roadmaps – specifically, we help our customers plan and execute their own end-to-end content integration strategy. While each customer has different, evolving needs, there are some common trends that worth noting. What's also worth noting is that SeeUnity has based its product development directly on user experience, with the goal of maximizing the control that customers have over their content environments.
Customers often change their long term goals when it comes to their content management investments. The very act of integration may change the timing or even the desired end-state of their strategy. SeeUnity's building-block approach allows customers to change and expand the way their content management products interact with each other, to meet goals and surpass challenges.
SeeUnity's products are flexible and interchangeable, allowing customers can create their own roadmap – the diagram depicts the most commonly adopted steps to expand integration.
Stage 1: Basic Coexistence
SeeUnity products are used to take all of the functionality of a native content management interface, and render them through a SharePoint interface. This allows organizations to standardize on a single UI, while taking advantages of SharePoint's swiftly evolving and powerful features. For more information on integration, visit our Enterprise Integration for SharePoint (EIS) page.
Stage 2: Advanced Integration
After a track record of success with SeeUnity products, customers may begin to see opportunities to go beyond basic coexistence. Using the ECM platform as a data source, SharePoint becomes a tool for controlling how that information can be organized, presented and accessed. It should be noted that this stage is typically achieved through leveraging existing SeeUnity assets, without reinvesting in additional technology. For more information on integration, visit our Enterprise Integration for SharePoint (EIS) page.
Stage 3: Archiving & Distribution
In some cases, archiving and distribution are sought out as the initial solution. While integration makes the user experience more flexible, it has some strict limitations. Content is limit to the features and licensing limitations of its respective repository. Archiving and distribution resolves these challenges by managing where content is actually located, through copying, linking or synchronization. Archiving moves SharePoint content into an external ECM/RM platform, often for compliance or security reasons. Distribution takes content from an ECM silo, and makes it more available placing it in SharePoint. For more information on Archiving and Distribution, visit our Enterprise Archiving & Distribution for SharePoint (EADS) page.
Stage 4: Migration
Customers seek migration for a variety of reasons, including changing vendors, consolidation of content, or perhaps a consolidation of ECM vendors themselves. While it promises lower costs and a more streamlined, efficient architecture, migration is often viewed as large and potentially risky undertaking. Metadata and content settings may not be easily transferrable, and new platforms may not be consistent with business requirements. SeeUnity can help simplify the process with Intelligent Content Migration (ICM). Migration templates are flexible and dynamic, allowing high volume content to be processed correctly and rapidly. Migration is typically the final stage of a long-term integration roadmap; SeeUnity can ensure that process concludes with a reliable and exhaustive transfer of content, metadata and permissions to a repository of choice. For more information on Migration, visit our Intelligent Content Migration (ICM) page.
Putting it all together
While many companies can provide some version of the stages above, SeeUnity is unique in its ability to provide all these stages – and in a way that allows the customer to reach a long-term goal. With SeeUnity's Content Integration Services (CIS) platform installed, each one of these stages can be swiftly assembled using out of the box products. Because of the building block approach, customers can adapt to changes in technology, or even in their own strategy, such as introducing a new line of business application, or managing a new content management system acquired during a merger. This approach shortens the implementation process and reduces the cost of ownership, as new products are extensions that build off of the existing CIS architecture.