Enterprise content is the currency that moves businesses. And logically, its management is often the key to a business’s success or failure. The very purpose of ECM is managing enterprise content in a way that it stimulates insights and decisions that drive corporate activities.

ECM Modernization Avoidance

Employees want to be productive anytime, anywhere, from any device or application. Enterprises want to find and share business documents just as easily as they can browse and buy a book online. It’s all about content management technologies that support remote and collaborative working styles.

The problem is that enterprises fear modern ECM. In fact, most enterprises fear IT modernization in general. The reasons for this are understandable.

Enterprises are afraid of high costs, loss of content through migration, and rejection by users of the new technology. All these fears are real.

The real reason for failure is the idea that the team would leave one well-known system and replace it with a completely new one that comes with a steep learning curve.

You don’t have to do all of this. In fact, you don’t have to do any of this.

You can take another path, another approach.

Modularity: The New Paradigm of ECM Modernization

Integration can avoid the pitfalls of modernizing front-end ECM.

Instead of risky migration, high costs, and confused employees, you can just integrate a modern front-end ECM to your existing back-end ECM software.

Interesting, right?

This approach is getting very popular in the last few years. Large companies that don’t want to risk the safety of their content and money, but do want to upgrade their legacy ECM software, very often employ this solution.

Changing the approach and going with the integration of a new front-end ECM to your legacy back-end ECM can be beneficial in many ways. Not only in terms of security and money, but this approach will solve all of your ‘outdated ECM problems’.

According to a Forrester survey, only 7% of the organizations surveyed have migrated all their content to a new ECM system. The majority of surveyed organizations retain some or most content in their old systems.

This survey indicates that almost 90% of organizations that modernized their ECM adopted this modular approach.

Of course, modernizing your outdated ECM system has to be more than just an abstract goal. It needs to result in improved business outcomes.

Updating your infrastructure to take advantage of the benefits of a more modern cloud-based structure requires a content integration platform – and one that is flexible enough to evolve over time.

We’ve had a lot of positive experiences in doing such a modular ECM Modernization strategy with ArkCase.

Transforming Legacy ECM With ArkCase as Front-End ECM

ArkCase offers an adaptive case management platform that is dynamic to support your business solutions. At the convergence of CRM, ECM, and BPM, ArkCase can help your enterprise reduce the complexity and unpredictability of your organization.

The ArkCase front-end ECM will replace your outdated ECM interface with a customizable interface that is easy to work with and organize. The modern features this solution offers can make all the difference for large businesses.

The ArkCase front-end ECM can easily integrate with almost any back-end ECM system on the market including:

• Documentum
• calvaDriv,
• eX,
• dotCMS
• OpenText,
• Fabasoft
• Alfresco
• Apache Chemistry
• CEYONIQ
• IBM
• FileNet
• IBM SmartCloud
• LogicalDOC
• Magnolia
• SharePoint
• NemakiWare
• Nuxeo
• O3Spaces
• OpenCMS
• OpenKM
• OpenWGA
• Oracle
• SAP
• Ptc
• StarStorage
• Laserfiche.

This unique capability makes ArkCase an excellent frontend ECM solution for your existing ECM backend system. It also provides:

• Fast searchability of documents
• Metadata strategies included
• Customization of workflows
• Document clustering
• Data extraction, etc.

With ArkCase integration, you will get all the benefits of modern front-end ECM software without the need for full-fledged data migration, making the ECM modernization process much cheaper, safer, and faster.

“ArkCase software, which helps companies do more with less really appeals to our business units,” says Ian Rushton, Senior Vice President of Sharecare.

“Companies want to manage cases, search across their enterprise, and keep their existing systems, but don’t want to use or integrate 10 different tools.” 

If you want to achieve the same, ArkCase is the right front-end ECM solution for you.

To Sum Up

Those 90% enterprises who took the survey already know that modernization helps in becoming faster and smarter in day-to-day operations, decision making, and delivery. Companies that fail to modernize risk falling behind their market competitors.

While some early adopters spent a lot of resources on ECM modernization, the more cautious majority can benefit from all the lessons learned and move on with modular ECM modernization. This way, they benefit from a more established set of procedures and experiences, adding up to a safer, faster, cheaper modernization process.

Integrate your existing backend ECM system with ArkCase modern front-end ECM and you will enjoy the benefits of a modern ECM system. No security risks. No migration. Just an integration. In fact, almost 90% of organizations that modernized their ECM did exactly that.

And for ArkCase and the benefits this platform brings, I wrote an article on this subject: Traditional Ecm: The Limitations And Risks Of Relying On Outdated ECM Systems.

They both elaborate on ECM modernization, back-end and front-end integration, and all of the benefits that a platform like ArkCase can bring to your organization.

If you want to find out more about this subject, please feel free to take a look at them.

And if you have any questions or thoughts, do not hesitate to contact us.