Eight reasons why you need to replace your legacy ECM

Your organization faces immense challenges – cost pressure, cybersecurity concerns, inflation and more. To top it all off, you see digital transformation demands putting pressure on your outdated content systems. These legacy enterprise content management (ECM) systems and applications simply cannot keep up with today’s digital workplace.?

With more than a decade of experience as a software engineer and a strategic product manager in ECM, I have dealt firsthand with the trouble organizations have when trying to integrate older systems with business-critical apps such as SAP, Microsoft or Salesforce. It is difficult to do, but the cost of doing it badly – or not at all - is huge. Keeping legacy systems that do not effectively integrate with business-critical apps can cause your total cost of ownership (TCO) to skyrocket. You may experience security breaches and slow performance. Usability suffers, as well as productivity.

And that is just the start. Because many ECM vendors do not have a clear strategy in terms of future development, they can leave your organization high and dry when trying to integrate the latest, revenue-enhancing apps and systems.

There must be a better way to streamline the way you work. What is the solution? Finding one platform that supports both content and processes - with a common metadata core, a user-centric front-end and AI-driven automation.?

The top eight things to consider when looking to replace your ECM

1)?? Is it user-centric??

Software should enhance your productivity, not hinder it. Some legacy ECMs have outdated user interfaces, making them difficult to adopt and use. Documentation is not user-friendly, meaning it can be hard to find what you are looking for.

Your ECM should adapt to the way you work, giving you ways to personally design your digital workspace. Ideally, you would have artificial intelligence at the core of the platform, so you can drastically reduce the number of routine tasks your team faces – that way they can work intelligently and focus on priorities.

Web-based, no-code tools simplify the user interface, offering more rapid development, customization, and onboarding of new solutions. This empowers citizen developers to make simple adjustments, integrate third-party systems and create users and user groups with appropriate authorizations. These citizen developers, often on the business side, can create solutions for their own departments that still integrate with the larger IT landscape, avoiding those information silos that often crop up because departments are adopting solutions that don't integrate.?

Overall, no-code tools enable a faster time-to-value, lower operational costs, and reduced IT bottlenecks.?

2)?? Does it have AI-powered document processing and automation?

Most ECM offerings are not AI-enabled, nor do they have AI at their core. An AI-powered platform should be specifically designed to connect, understand and automate content across leading applications such as SAP, Salesforce, and Microsoft. It can break down information silos and provide information in the business context where it is needed.?

Also, with AI at the core, you can unlock crucial information and business context. A modern AI-powered ECM system automatically analyzes and classifies documents, extracts information, adds metadata and puts information into context - from ingestion throughout the document lifecycle.

3)?? Can it ensure zero downtime during migration?

?One of the main concerns for businesses when choosing a new system is business continuity: Will they be able to continue their usual work without any disruption?

Modernization can be labor-intensive, costly and bring a whole host of daunting challenges. Smooth migrations without data loss and disruption require careful planning.

In any migration strategy there are steps that can help, from discussing the objectives and goals of your new solution, to auditing the challenges with your legacy systems. The right ECM should have intelligent migration tools, integrate smoothly with the source system and ensure zero downtime.

4)?? Are integrations seamless?

Legacy ECM can be troublesome, expensive, and hard to integrate with existing software and workflows – compromising your data consistency as well as enterprise communications.

?Any new ECM should have out-of-the-box integrations that seamlessly blend with your existing business ecosystem. Why? Because they reduce those tangled webs of complexity that occur when trying to connect your ECM with other applications. A standardized approach means you can implement a wide variety of solutions with uniform usability and suitable integrations for all your departments and teams.

5)?? Is there a metadata-driven structured approach?

Considering the importance and the business-enriching ways of using metadata, it is alarming that many legacy ECM vendors often provide only a limited number of predefined metadata fields or types in their systems. This can result in incomplete, inconsistent or inaccurate metadata, leading to compliance risks.

In your new ECM, the metadata must be easily accessible, searchable, and understandable – or it will cause some fundamental mistakes in the underlying information architecture. This can often be concealed from the user, but it ends up costing performance and flexibility later.

Your ECM should offer a thorough and structured approach that empowers your organization to be metadata-driven. This will enable efficient, structured content organization and retrieval. Content is not just stored, but can also be used to its full potential for process automation. This is known as Intelligent Content Automation.

Metadata-driven ECMs help to automate AND orchestrate processes across the organization. Orchestration of processes is good because not everything is possible to automate, but everything is possible to orchestrate.

6)?? Is everything under one roof?

Many legacy ECM offerings have been cobbled together over the years via vendor acquisitions. Meaning, their solutions are a patchwork of various products or content repositories that have not been fully integrated. They tend to be slow and fail to meet the demands of a fast-moving customer base.

They are like a machine where none of the cogs fit together properly and cannot connect. Your teams represent the cogs: when they cannot connect, they cannot access information, and collaboration is impossible.?

?What you need to look for is a product with a standardized approach across the business – one that unites your people around information. Everyone has access to the information they need, under one roof, in an instant. Only by using a unified platform – connecting information and processes with people - can you use the information intelligently. Then you can add automation and machine learning to harness the value and information in your existing content.

7)?? Can you keep compliant?

Legacy ECM systems may not be able to work with the massive volumes and variety of data and content today or with the latest standards and formats. Any problems with performance, discoverability, workflows, etc. can be a red flag for regulators.

Modern?ECM systems?are all about compliance, enabling employees from all sites across your entire company to securely capture, manage, process and control information, no matter what source or format. Your compliance system then stores and logs information in line with audit requirements and always makes it instantly available.

Your ECM should be able to perform seamless, audit-proof documentation as part of an internal control system. It must digitize, process and analyze documents for insights – preferably using AI to automate and organize documents in the right context, place, and files.

It must be certified to meet the requirements of compliance standards and regulations across different countries and markets.

8)?? Does it offer exceptional customer support?

IT leaders have to be able to rely on high-quality support from their software vendors. Many legacy ECM vendors, however, struggle to support older platforms and products, and a lack of communication from them can be frustrating.?

Your ECM should give you access to the latest innovations and features, plus extended service and support – with up to 24/7 availability.

Check customer reviews to see what existing customers are saying. Your vendor should be always-available, and preferably offer mentoring services to ensure that you are making the most of your system – and that it’s always running smoothly.

Time to make the switch and replace your ECM?

Updating your ECM to address all these issues can be a complex challenge.

There is only one vendor that can help you to successfully modernize: SER Group with our Doxis Intelligent Content Automation platform.

Doxis is the only AI-enabled ECM that can address all eight issues and achieve the ideal state to make your organization resilient and ready for the future.

It is the first ECM technology designed and developed specifically as a content services platform (CSP), combining content, process and AI services in a standardized, modular platform.

The platform is extremely agile, scalable and secure. It is one platform for everything, saving your organization time, money and reducing compliance risk. An independent study conducted by Forrester Research revealed that by implementing Doxis, global manufacturing company SEW-EURODRIVE experienced benefits of €17.37 million and 90% time savings over three years, adding up to a net present value (NPV) of €13.38 million and an ROI of 336%.

Read how customers such as Raiffeisen Bank International have successfully migrated from legacy systems quickly and smoothly, with continuous access to all documents during the migration process.

Feel free to message me ([email protected]) with any questions you may have about modernizing your legacy enterprise content management system.