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)

research―aims 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

 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 process―an appli-

cation process―two 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

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

element―in 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 process―containing the

ECM reference process―the 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 ECMS―especially with

regard to business processes―has 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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