ECM systems

Financial services organizations can strategically benefit by consolidating their ECM systems through document migration. Craig Smith, Vice President of Xenos Group Inc., explains how.

FST: Given a rapidly changing ECM vendor landscape, how are financial services organizations adapting their content management strategies to meet evolving business requirements?
CS. Challenged to streamline operations, reduce costs, improve information access, meet legal and regulatory requirements, and provide innovative and personalized solutions for their customers, financial services organizations are rethinking their enterprise content management (ECM) strategy. ECM strategies today are evolving in an environment heavily influenced by corporate mergers, acquisitions and reorganization, ECM systems vendor consolidation, mainframe “modernization”, requirements for pervasive information access and regulatory compliance, and the business demand for Document Enabled Vertical Applications. Older legacy archiving, COLD and IDARS solutions no longer provide the rich feature sets and emerging architectural profiles required. ECM is moving from the back office to the front office. Financial services organizations reaping the benefits of Integrated Document Solutions that provide personalized transactional content to their customers, view ECM as critical to enabling differentiated business applications.

FST: What challenges should a contemporary ECM solution address?
CS. Efficiency, agility and accountability. To improve efficiency organizations must consolidate incompatible document archives, significantly reduce ongoing maintenance costs, support scalable growth in the volume and variety of document formats handled, minimize the number of vendors and reduce the proprietary educational requirements of staff.

To improve agility, integration with business applications and processes is key. Documents must be available through online self-service channels in appropriate electronic formats. Rapid and pervasive information discovery requires extending index/metadata identification schemas. Advanced analytics and straight-through processing initiatives require the repurposing of existing content previously locked in static legacy document formats. Finally, multiplatform capability and support for integration within SOA architectures must be available.

Accountability for regulatory compliance cannot be overlooked. ECM solutions and strategies must take into account the legal and financial risk of not meeting regulatory compliance requirements or deadlines. Organizations must enable simplified regulatory compliance by providing rapid access to documents in regulated formats for viewing and reprint. ECM solutions must ensure long-term document preservation where required, and in standardized formats such as PDF/A.

FST: What solutions are available for companies looking to consolidate ECM assets?
CS. Federation or migration. Federation works well when the organization is looking to consolidate two modern ECM solutions that already provide the features demanded. However, to reduce the TCO of owning multiple disparate legacy archives, the only appropriate solution is document migration. It enables business documents, metadata and the informational IP locked in legacy ECM systems to be repurposed within the new corporate standard ECM system.

Document migration is no longer mired with challenges far outweighing the benefits. Documents can now be migrated quickly and efficiently, realizing additional value from their document content during the process. This includes providing new channels for document access, extracting actionable information previously locked away in static document formats, and enriching the customer experience through personalized communication, providing the opportunity for competitive differentiation and increased customer retention.

FST: What should a financial services organization look for when choosing an ECM migration vendor?
CS. An organization should look for proven field experience with disparate proprietary ECM, IDARS and COLD systems. Also, a methodology that includes Discovery, Extraction, Transformation, Audit, Indexing and Loading phases. And appropriate technology and commitment to work with internal technical and business stakeholders to lower risk, pain and time to ROI.

FST: Are ECM consolidation initiatives purely a tactical solution?
CS. No. Document migration is strategic for three reasons: To leverage critical business information historically locked away in legacy systems, to provide a contemporary ECM solution that offers the features and performance demanded by today’s businesses, and to support document-enabled vertical applications. Organizations like Xenos that have an extensive background in document formats, content transformation, and legacy archive integration can turn an otherwise onerous requirement into a highly strategic opportunity.

About Craig Smith
Craig Smith is Vice President, Xenos Group Inc., responsible for customer strategy and sales. Prior to Xenos he consulted with technology companies, drawing on many years experience as an executive with a major Canadian financial services firm, where he held leadership positions in both IT and business development.

ECM tips

• Consolidate your ECM systems through document migration to realize three strategic benefits – efficiency, agility and accountability
• Integrated Document Solutions and ECM systems that provide personalized transactional content to customers enable differentiated business applications
• Successful ECM migration requires a vendor with proven experience, methodology and technology

www.xenos.com/fst_ecm