ECM SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND SPECIFICATION
Towards a Framework for Business Process Re-Engineering
Jan vom Brocke, Alexander Simons
Martin Hilti Chair of Information Systems and Business Process Management (IS&BPM)
University of Liechtenstein, Vaduz, Liechtenstein
Anne Cleven
Institute of Information Management, University of St. Gallen, Mueller-Friedberg-Strasse 8, St. Gallen, Switzerland
Keywords: Analysis, Business Processes, Business Process Management (BPM), Business Process Re-Engineering,
Content, Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Framework, Information Systems (IS), Specification.
Abstract: In today’s working life, the management of content represents one of the most critical success factors.
Quick access to required information considerably enhances business process efficiency as well as effec-
tiveness. Enterprise Content Management (ECM)a presently emerging field in Information Systems (IS)
researchaims at providing concepts on how to best administer an organization’s individual content situa-
tion. Nevertheless, due to the novelty of the topic, there is still a lack of methodical support for ECM sys-
tems (ECMS) analysis and specification. A further drawback to a frictionless implementation of ECM re-
sults from the negligence of re-engineering affected business processes. With this paper, we present an inte-
grated framework for ECM adoption and business process re-engineering, reverting to established methods
in the field of Business Process Management (BPM) and IS analysis and specification techniques.
1 INTRODUCTION
In the course of daily business, enterprises create
enormous amounts of digital content. Hence, orga-
nizing, resourcing and directing this information
flood represents a huge business challenge. All em-
ployees need to be provided with the correct content,
at the right time, of good quality, and preferably in a
cost-conscious manner. Enabling and supporting
these tasks with both adequate management con-
cepts and suitable Information Technologies (IT) has
become one major topic in Information Systems (IS)
research.
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) com-
prises means and technologies to efficiently capture,
manage, store, preserve, and deliver content
(www.aiim.org). However, the academic work car-
ried out so far is lacking guidelines on how to realize
the named potentials. Methods for analyzing and
specifying ECM systems (ECMS) can rarely be
found within prevailing ECM literature.
With this paper, we aim to diminish the depicted
grievance by introducing an integrated framework
for ECM adoption. Reverting to the idea of business
process re-engineering (cf. van der Aalst and Hee,
1995), the framework provides methodical support
for embedding ECM reference processes into an
organization’s business process structure. Therefore,
at first, business processes and potential ECMS
functionalities and systems are analyzed and speci-
fied in order to then re-organize the business process
structure in a way that best fulfils the company’s
organizational as well as content-related require-
ments. The realizable optimization potentials are
finally quantified by means of profitability analysis
on the basis of personnel costs.
The remainder of this article is structured as fol-
lows: in the next chapter we examine latest aca-
demic literature on ECM and then introduce an es-
tablished framework for ECM research (section 3).
The framework serves as a theoretical foundation for
our approach that is introduced in the subsequent
section (section 4). In accordance with the design
science research paradigm (Simon, 1996; Hevner et
al., 2004), we then present first results of its applica-
tion within a real life business project (section 5).
345
vom Brocke J., Simons A. and Cleven A. (2008).
ECM SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND SPECIFICATION - Towards a Framework for Business Process Re-Engineering.
In Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - ISAS, pages 345-350
DOI: 10.5220/0001710303450350
Copyright
c
SciTePress
We finally conclude with a short summary and give
an outlook on future research (section 6).
2 RELATED WORK
ECM comprehends “strategies, tools, processes, and
skills an organization needs to manage its informa-
tion assets over their life cycle” (Smith and McKeen,
2003). Adopting ECMS may significantly enhance
both, efficiency (e. g. costs) and effectiveness (e. g.
compliance) of business processes (Reimer, 2002;
O’Callaghan and Smits, 2005). However, despite the
estimated benefits ECM offers (c. f. Rockley et al.,
2003), ECM research still exhibits major deficits
regarding implementation methods (Tyrväinen et al.,
2006). Far too often, the concept is falsely limited to
technological solutions for the management of en-
terprise content (c. f. the ECM definition of the
ECM Association; www.aiim.org) and the necessity
of analyzing and especially re-engineering business
processes according to ECM strategies is neglected.
An effective ECMS adoption requires an in-depth
assessment of an organization’s individual business
process structure including a rigorous examination
of managerial requirements on an organizational and
technological level (vom Brocke, Simons, Cleven,
2008). Nevertheless, methods on how to in fact ana-
lyze and specify ECMS can rarely be found within
the latest academic reports (cf. Figure 1 in the fol-
lowing).
Figure 1: ECM literature review results.
Nordheim and Päivärinta (2004) present a case
study on ECMS customization and thereon identify
common issues for its implementation (1). In their
later work (2006), they include a process-based
view, but solely focus on ERP systems (2). Me-
thodical support is only provided to a small degree.
Päivärinta and Munkvold (2005) introduce a content
model for ECM implementation (3). The approach
primarily focuses on the content structure and life
cycles but neglects the relevance of the business
process perspective.
Concentrating on technological aspects of ECM
solutions, Reimer (2002) primarily describes the
functions and structure of ECM systems (4). The
business process perspective is solely referred to in
order to estimate the impact of an ECM implementa-
tion on business process efficiency. Smith and
McKeen (2003) focus on defining related terms and
concepts (5). Methods for ECMS analysis and speci-
fication are not presented. Rockley et al. (2003) pro-
vide an overall guideline for ECMS adoption, but
mainly address aspects of collaboration and strategy
development, whilst also neglecting a business proc-
ess perspective (6). O’Callaghan and Smits (2005)
introduce ECM strategies, but do not consider busi-
ness processes as well (7).
In summary, a lack of methodical guidelines for
ECMS analysis and specification in the present
ECM literature can be constituted. Especially the
business process perspective (symbolized by the
shaded field in Figure 1) is widely neglected. Hence,
our aim is to provide methodical support by present-
ing an integrated framework for ECM adoption and
business process re-engineering. Firstly however, an
established framework for ECM research needs to be
introduced to serve as a theoretical base.
3 THEORETICAL FOUNDATION
In accordance with the results of our literature re-
view, Tyrväinen et al. (2006) state that ECM has
received far too little attention within the IS research
community until now. Thus, they introduce a
framework systemizing four different perspectives
on ECM research: content, technology, processes
and enterprise (cf. Figure 2 and Tyrväinen et al.,
2006 in the following).
Enterprise
Development
Deployment
Processes
Users
Information
Systems
Content
Hardware
Software
Standards
Technology
ECM Research
Figure 2: ECM research framework.
The content perspective comprehends an infor-
mation view (primarily structure information), a user
view (users and user-content-relations) and a system
view (content storage and access). The technology
ICEIS 2008 - International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
346
perspective comprises software and hardware as-
pects as well as respective standards. It shows the
necessity for an intense consideration of different
ECM systems and functionalities within ECM re-
search (subsumed under the term technology). The
process perspective, which gains special attention in
this paper, contains the conceptual development of
processes as well as their deployment within the
organizational infrastructure. Finally, the enterprise
perspective connects and determines all of the other
perspectives and is therefore arranged in the centre
of Figure 2.
We are of the opinion that a successful imple-
mentation of ECMS requires the integral considera-
tion of all the four research perspectives. Hence, our
framework integrates all of them into a holistic
framework for ECMS adoption. Making use of es-
tablished Business Process Management (BPM) me-
thods, the framework offers methodical support for a
circumspect process-driven ECM implementation.
4 A FRAMEWORK FOR ECM
ADOPTION
Our framework for ECM adoption is displayed in
the following Figure 3. It consists of five consecu-
tive phases (visualized by the light-colored fields),
results (visualized by the dark-colored fields), and
methods (being applied within the different phases).
Business
Process
Specification
and Analysis
(I)
Business
Processes
(II)
Content
Type
Classification
Content
Types
ECMS
Analysis
(III)
ECMS Services
(IV)
ECMS
Specification
ECM
Reference
Processes
ECMS
Support
Business
Process
Re-Engineering
(V)
Re-Engineered
Business
Processes
Figure 3: A framework for ECM adoption.
The first phase aims at analyzing an organiza-
tion’s existing business process landscape by means
of business process modeling. Examining the pre-
vailing process structure in detail on the one hand
serves the purpose of identifying the relevant content
entities for each business process. On the other hand
it facilitates the detection of those (parts of) proc-
esses that offer a high optimization potential when
re-engineered through ECM adoption (symbolized
by the dark-colored process elements). Methodical
support for the first phase lies in the use of Event-
driven Process Chains (EPC). Within the second
phase, those content entities that require the same
ECMS support are subsequently aggregated to con-
tent types. Content types are specified by content
attributes (relevant for all content entities) and re-
spective attribute values (describing the content cha-
racter). They are represented by the means of mor-
phological boxes.
Phase III serves the analysis of available ECMS
with regard to their support functionalities consider-
ing business processes as well as different content
types. ECMS functionalities, herein combined to
ECMS services, that are required for the rationing of
different content types within a specified organiza-
tional context are arranged in Functional Decompo-
sition Diagrams (FDD). Within the subsequent
phase IV, reference processes for ECM are adapted
with regard to an organization’s individual content
and process situation. These reference processes
serve as guidelines for an ECM realization and are
therewith part of the ECMS specification. Finally, in
the phase of business process re-engineering, the
ECM reference processes are embedded into the
organization’s business process structure. Those
process parts offering a high potential for optimiza-
tion through ECM support (identified within phase I)
are now fostered by the ECMS (symbolized by the
re-engineered process chain that does no longer con-
tain any dark-colored process elements). Realized
benefits are estimated by means of profitability
analysis based on personnel cost reductions.
Subsequently, first results of an application with-
in a real life industry project are presented. Please
note that the documentation has been slightly simpli-
fied to ensure a clear presentation of the framework.
5 APPLICATION OF THE
FRAMEWORK
The application of the framework starts with a con-
ceptual specification of a company’s processes by
means of business process modeling. Specifying
business processes using the EPC technique allows
for the identification of different content assets, con-
tent users, and systems in which content assets re-
ECM SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND SPECIFICATION - Towards a Framework for Business Process Re-Engineering
347
side. Thus, the first phase particularly refers to the
user and to the system view of the research ECM
framework. Moreover it serves as a basis for busi-
ness process analysis.
Below, an exemplary (part of a) process chain is
presented which has been specified (and simplified)
on the basis of the results that had been gained dur-
ing our project work. Within this processan appli-
cation processtwo content assets are captured: an
application document and a contract of employment
(cf. Figure 4 in the following). Exemplary average
lead times for capturing the two content assets are
also specified within the figure (symbolized by the
clock symbols). We will refer to these lead times in
more detail when presenting the re-engineered busi-
ness process by referencing to the capturing of the
contract (as symbolized by the refinement symbol).
Phase I: Business Process Specification and Analysis
10 min.
2 min.
ContentProcess Chain (EPC)
Application
Process is
Finished
Finish
Application
Process
Application
Document is
Captured
Capture
Application
Document
Capture
Contract of
Employment
Contract of
Employment is
Captured
User
Application
Document
Contract of
Employment
Personnel
Administration
Personnel
Administration
Phase III: ECMS Analysis
Functional Decomposition Diagram: Capturing
Capturing
Meta Data Scanning ICR/OCR
Phase II: Content Type Classification
Attribute Attribute Value
Media
Format
Structure
Text Graphics
Low Average High
Retention Period Not relevant 2 Years ...
Attribute Attribute Value
Media
Format
Structure
Text Graphics
Retention Period
Paper Digital
Paper Digital
Application Document
Contract of Employment
Low Average High
Not relevant
... ...
... ...
5 Years
2 Years ...
5 Years
Figure 4: Exemplary application (I).
Within the second phase, those content entities
identified in the first phase are classified. Accord-
ingly, this phase refers to the information view of
the ECM research framework. The second phase
aims at combining the identified content objects to
common content types which require the same
ECMS support.
Firstly, a set of content attributes relevant to all
content entities is developed. Secondly, attribute
values are elaborated characterizing the different
content entities. Finally, those content entities exhib-
iting the same attribute values are combined to uni-
tary content types. This phase points out the neces-
sity of taking the organizational context into account
(e. g. in terms of compliance/archiving times).
Business process models provide a suitable basis
for assessing the organizational requirements of cer-
tain content assets. Referring to our example, there
are two content assets that need to be captured with-
in the business process: the application document
and the contract of employment. Exemplary attrib-
utes and attribute values for both content assets are
arranged in Figure 4 on the basis of morphological
boxes (Knackstedt and Klose, 2005). Whereas the
application document is usually submitted digitally
(e. g. pdf), the contract of employment is signed on
physical paper. Furthermore, the application docu-
ment may contain the applicant’s photo as graphical
elementin contrast to the contract that usually only
contains text elements. Within this context, the
structure of the two content assets also differs. Ap-
plications are usually created by external persons
using different styles and presentations, whereas the
contract is created on the basis of a given template.
Finally, the contract has to be archived for a certain
period of time due to legal restrictions in contrast to
the application document (retention period).
All attribute values of the two considered content
types differ. Hence, an aggregation into one content
type is not possible. The deviant attribute values
indicate the necessity for a diverging content ration-
ing of the two content entities. Consequently, differ-
ent technological support is required. For example,
content assets that have to be archived in the long
run due to legal restrictions, often may not be edited
during that time. Thus, they particularly require ade-
quate ECMS functionalities, for example access pro-
tection or security of storage. Accordingly, in the
next step, ECMS functionalities are analyzed on that
basis.
Phase III of the framework comprises a detailed
analysis of ECMS available and thereby addresses
the technology perspective of the ECM research
framework. A wide variety of different ECM solu-
tions (e. g. OpenText; www.opentext.com
or EMC2;
www.emc.com) and mainly practical-oriented re-
ports (e. g. Browning and Lowndes, 2001;
www.aiim.org) can be found on the market. How-
ever, the challenge is to identify those systems and
functionalities supporting a company’s organiza-
tional situation best, on both the content level and
the process level. In order to arrange the manifold of
ECMS functionalities available and to provide a
systematic overview, ECMS functionalities can be
combined to ECMS services. Within our framework,
we arranged ECMS services on the basis of func-
tional decomposition diagrams. An exemplary func-
tional decomposition diagram referring to our exam-
ple is also displayed in Figure 4.
This diagram refers to the two functions Capture
Application Document and Capture Contract of Em-
ployment of the introduced EPC. According to these
functions, an exemplary ECMS service Capture may
comprise three functionalities: the definition of Meta
ICEIS 2008 - International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
348
Data, Scanning, and Intelligent Character Recogni-
tion (ICR) respectively Optical Character Recogni-
tion (OCR). The definition of Meta Data is an essen-
tial functionality allowing for searching or archiving
nearly all types of content assets and may be applied
automatically or manually. In contrast, the function-
alities Scanning and ICR/OCR are not necessarily
required for the management of all content assets (as
symbolized by their dark color). Referring to our
example, this is determined by the media and the
structure of the two content assets (as organizational
requirements). As the application document is al-
ready submitted digitally (media), it does not need to
be scanned (in contrast to the contract). Furthermore,
ICR/OCR may serve as a means for automatically
defining meta data for the contract (as the contract is
highly structured compared to the application docu-
ment). Concluding, phase III refers to the identifica-
tion of ECMS functionalities (and systems) (not)
being required for managing a company’s organiza-
tional content situation.
Phase IV of the ECM framework refers to the
adaptation of ECM reference processes and there-
with to the specification of ECMS. Within our pro-
ject work, we are currently developing such refer-
ence processes that describe how to capture, manage
or archive content, for example. Therewith, phase IV
corresponds to the process development view of the
ECM research framework. However, as content
management is a highly specific task, the reference
processes have to be customized concerning an or-
ganization’s individual content situation. For that
purpose, design principles of reference modeling, for
example, configuration (Becker et al., 2004), spe-
cialization, instantiation, aggregation, or analogy
may be used (vom Brocke, 2007).
A reference process applicable for our example
is displayed in Figure 5. It represents a guideline on
how to implement content capturing and corre-
sponds to the ECMS functionalities that have been
specified within phase III: The functionality Scan-
ning refers to the EPC function Scan Content Asset.
In spite of that, the (automatic or manual) definition
of meta data corresponds to the same named func-
tionality and ICR/OCR (as symbolized by the
shaded fields).
The reference process is implicitly adapted by
means of configurative reference modeling (Rose-
mann and van der Aalst, 2003). Attribute values that
have been specified within phase II are used as con-
figuration parameters: Within the example, the at-
tribute Media particularly determines whether or not
functions, referring to the automatic definition of
meta data or scanning of the content assets, are re-
quired for capturing. Accordingly, the shaded areas
within Figure 5 depict that ICR/OCR and scanning
are not necessary for the application document.
Finally, within phase V of the framework, the
reference processes are embedded into an organiza-
tion’s business process structure. Hence, this phase
refers to business process re-engineering and the
process deployment perspective of the ECM re-
search framework. In Figure 5, phase V is demon-
strated in more detail as to the refinement of the
function Capture Contract of Employment.
2 min.
1 min.
Phase V: Business Process Re-EngineeringPhase IV: ECMS Specification
Content
has to be
Captured
Define Meta
Data:
Automatically
Define Meta
Data: Manually
Scan Content
Asset
Content is
Scanned
ECM-Blueprint (EPC): Capture
Content is
Captured
ECMS Functionality
Capturing
Meta Data
Scanning
ICR/OCR
Contract has
to be
Captured
Archive Hard
Copy of
Contract
Scan
Contract
Copy
Contract
Contract is
Copied
Contract is
Captured
Define Meta
Data:
Automatically
Define Meta
Data: Manually
Scan
Contract
Contract is
Scanned
Contract is
Captured
Contract has
to be
Captured
2 min. 7 min.
Original Business Process
0.5 min.
Re-Engineered Business Process
Figure 5: Exemplary application (II).
The support process displayed in the figure
shows that the function Copy Contract takes 1 min-
ute on average, whereas the average lead time of
scanning the contract is 2 minutes. Archiving of the
copy takes a further 7 minutes on average, as it has
to be stored both physically and digitally. Hence,
this function especially shows high optimization
potentials through business process re-engineering.
Within the re-designed processcontaining the
ECM reference processthe personnel administra-
tion no longer has to archive the contract manually,
but only needs to scan it and to manually apply suit-
able meta data (further information may be gained
automatically by ICR/OCR, cf. above). The average
lead time of the re-engineered business process
counts for only 2.5 minutes. Taking into account
these time savings and the average application fre-
quency of each function, personnel cost reductions
can directly be estimated. Summing up the cost re-
ductions for all re-engineered business processes
may serve as a means for comparing the benefits of
ECM adoption and its implementation costs (e. g.
investment or maintenance costs).
6 SUMMARY AND OUTLOOK
With this paper, we introduced a framework for
ECM adoption and business process re-engineering.
ECM SYSTEMS ANALYSIS AND SPECIFICATION - Towards a Framework for Business Process Re-Engineering
349
Therewith, we intend to contribute to a newly
emerging field in IS research. On basis of a literature
review, we pointed out that methodical support for
specifying and analyzing ECMSespecially with
regard to business processeshas received far too
little attention within the related research communi-
ties. Hence, our framework for ECM adoption is
primarily based on ECMS analysis and specification,
by particularly taking business processes into ac-
count. A theoretical background for our approach
was given by presenting an established framework
for ECM research. The four research perspectives of
the framework (content, processes, technology, and
enterprise) implicitly structure our implementation
framework. Finally, we presented first application
results that have been taken from a real life business
project. The exemplary application shows that our
framework may serve as a means for analyzing con-
tent-related as well as organizational requirements in
order to support content management best by mak-
ing use of the most appropriate ECMS.
The framework will be applied to additional in-
dustry projects. Therewith, we intend to further ela-
borate it and to gain a deeper insight into its applica-
bility and profitability. Currently, we are working on
the development of further reference processes for
ECM, a framework for digital content analysis, and
a modeling technique for specifying an organiza-
tion’s individual content situation.
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