"When everyone is looking for gold, it's a good time to be in the pick and shovel business." -- Mark Twain

Enterprise Content Management, by definition, is the ability to gather, organize, and distribute corporate information, regardless of its original format. The ECM industry is rapidly becoming the most highly sought after service for ’Corporate America’. Having said that, let’s first understand that ECM has no ‘vertical’ market. Simply stated, this means that there is no one type of business served better than any other. ECM can help a medical facility handle its knowledge base just as quickly and efficiently as it can help an attorney’s office manage their legal documents.

The second thing we need to recognize is that ECM has integrity. Think of it as an electronic library of knowledge. Similar to a library made of brick and mortar, once information is deposited, it becomes the central focal point for getting reliable data. In other words, you can depend on the reliability of the information because there is only one original copy, not five!

It is safe to say that ECM is not all things to all people. To be represented properly, it must be known as having a single focus; to afford a company the ability to reduce frustration in the office environment. How can it do that you say? By being a tool and by being the central repository for anything a computer can understand, staff only has to look in one place to find necessary information. Like a student doing a report, if you take them to a good library, they will find the information they need and the report will reflect it. ECM is that library! Additionally, the ECM library has security, accountability, reporting and audit-trails. Ooooh, if only the old-fashioned libraries had that kind of accountability, they would never loose a book!!

Thirdly, ECM is truly a ‘niche service’ and therefore, it needs a ‘niche market’. The interface that the end-user sees on the screen, in most cases, can be simply modified to fit the perspective niche. For example, you can address the specific needs of a medical concern with a medical ‘interface’. If you choose to modify the initial login screen to contain medical terminology, the users will believe it was created especially for them! I am not advocating deception, just perception, and positive perception at that. Now you have a niche product, addressing the niche medical market.

Lastly, ECM may be initially challenging to sell. It is not for lack of technology, but because of the business culture’s mindset. How so? Because corporate America still does not fully understand and accept a ‘paperless society’ or ‘automation’ in general. This is why we call it a niche. Perhaps ‘it’ is not as much the niche as the prospect you are looking for as a ‘niche’. The ideal candidate for ECM automation is youthful or more aggressive towards technology with a fairly high impetus to move in this direction.

It might be that in the past, they have lost a document that has cost them a tremendous amount of time, money or aggravation. We still must face the facts that even among those who are receptive, ECM represents a significant change in the accepted way of how documents are stored and handled. To offset the anxiety, we must show an apprehensive market how controlled document management is a gold mine, and that ECM is the 21^st Century’s pick and shovel industry.

Introduction recap:

1. ECM has no ‘vertical’ market - making it applicable to all.
2. ECM has integrity. Like a library –you can count on it.
3. It can be adapted to the audience, allowing it to fill a niche.
4. Sales can be challenging due to engrained corporate culture.

Regarding conducting an ECM needs assessment, the last class I taught actually taught me something that I want to share. Turns out there are actually two struggles that impede the success of both the sale and the proper implementation of a document management system.

1. Many [not all] ‘Solution Specialists’ aren’t properly trained and really don’t have the right tools to go onsite and gather the business requirements proficiently.
2. Many [not all] ‘Sales Reps’ don’t know how to ask to get paid for conducting the assessment [ouch].

Lets think these through:

1. SE’s or technicians are thrown into the fire and asked to ‘survey’ what the customer’s business and technical requirements are in regards to imaging. Most of their experience is with the output side (printing) and now they need to fully understand the input side of the workflow. So.. the tools they are likely to use are fabricated from existing output surveys, or worse yet; they quickly make a spreadsheet, guess at the questions, and hope it gathers enough data that when the system is configured it will meet most of the client’s requirements. KEY: Proper training and professional software toolkits can eliminate this dilemma and ensure the solution will fit the need [happy customer, happy vendor].
2. Most sales reps are experienced in ‘transactional’ selling. More frequently called ‘box-selling’ wherein the rep has a brief engagement with the prospect, qualifies, sells and moves on to the next opportunity. Now they are expected to realize this was yesterday’s way of selling, and today it is all about solution selling. In order to do this you must know the business requirements. To do that you must do an assessment. If you send expertly trained, certified staff to conduct the interviews you will have to pay them. The rep has to explain that to the prospect and ask to get paid. This changes the outcome from “your opinion” [done for free] to a professional observation [paid for]. The later will be taken seriously! KEY: Build the rep’s confidence and belief structure and he will see the value and not be afraid to ask to get paid [motivating training is needed].