Towards a business process-oriented approach to enterprise content management: the ECM-blueprinting framework

In today’s digital information age, companies are struggling with an immense overload of mainly unstructured data. Reducing search times, fulfilling compliance requirements and maintaining information quality represent only three of the challenges that organisations from all industry sectors are faced with. Enterprise content management (ECM) has emerged as a promising approach addressing these challenges. Yet, there are still numerous obstacles to the implementation of ECM technologies, particularly fostered by the fact that the key challenges of ECM adaptation processes are rather organisational than technological. In the present article we claim that the consideration of an organisation’s business process structure is particularly crucial for ECM success. In response to this, we introduce a process-oriented conceptual framework that systematises the key steps of an ECM adoption. The paper suggests that ECM and business process management are two strongly related fields of research. This article is an extension and revision of ideas originally presented at the 16th european conference on information systems (ECIS 2008) in Galway, Ireland (vom Brocke et al. 2008). J. vom Brocke (&) A. Simons Martin Hilti Chair of Business Process Management, Institute of Information Systems, University of Liechtenstein, Fuerst-Franz-Josef-Strasse 21, 9490 Vaduz, Principality of Liechtenstein e-mail: [email protected] URL: www.hochschule.li/iwi A. Simons e-mail: [email protected] URL: www.hochschule.li/iwi A. Cleven Institute of Information Management, University of St.Gallen, Mueller-Friedberg-Strasse 8, 9000 St.Gallen, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] URL: www.iwi.unisg.ch 123 Inf Syst E-Bus Manage (2011) 9:475–496 DOI 10.1007/s10257-009-0124-6