Thursday, June 16, 2005
Baseline article - content management vendor comparison (EMC, Interwoven, Stellent, OpenText), and what kind of clients they have
May 4, 2005
Four years ago BioMérieux, a French manufacturer of medical diagnostic products, had millions of documents, in both paper and digital form, scattered across offices in 130 countries. And almost none of it was easy to access.
For example, R&D documentation was stored in three "huge file rooms, and it was all on paper," says Ted Walsh, an information-technology project manager at the BioMérieux North American division in Durham, N.C. "People couldn't get to the information quickly enough."
Even information in digital form was hard to access: Documents were in any of a dozen different places, including Lotus Notes databases, Windows file servers or on someone's desktop computer hard drive. "The business ran a whole lot slower," Walsh says.
In 2002, Walsh led a team that implemented a document management system from Open Text that now holds 200,000 documents in North America and 300,000 in Europe. The electronic documents filed in the system range from technical product specifications to packaging labels.
Now the company is phasing out its gargantuan file rooms. And, Walsh says, BioMérieux runs more quickly. For example, before the Open Text system went live, the company received, on paper, monthly results from a major clinical trial involving several hundred patients at three hospitals; teams of clerks then keyed the information into databases twice (to ensure accuracy). The process took 45 minutes per patient. By reading and storing the data from the paper documents in the Open Text system, BioMérieux cut that to 5 minutes. "We can get products out the door faster now," Walsh says.
Enterprise content management systems promise to provide a single repository to handle every type of "unstructured data"—information not organized in a dedicated database—that a company wants to throw at it. The point? Rather than maintain separate, disconnected systems for records, documents, images, Web pages or archived e-mail messages, companies can use an enterprise content management system to provide centralized services and make mountains of data more manageable. Such communal functions include controlling who's able to access or modify particular documents, tracking revisions to files and providing the ability to search for information using keywords.
Historically, however, content management products have been geared to specific tasks, such as handling access to digitized images of legal documents. In practice, most companies use a specific subset of the entire range of capabilities in enterprise content management suites to optimize certain business processes; for example, to publish documents on corporate Web sites (see "Streamlining the Team," p. 69).
Vendors such as EMC, FileNet, Interwoven, Open Text and Stellent have taken different paths to get to their current enterprise content management offerings, mainly by buying other software companies. Storage systems powerhouse EMC, for example, in 2003 bought Documentum, a document management specialist. These players are pushing the concept of managing multiple types of content under one umbrella system—no surprise, since they stand to fatten their wallets by broadening their reach into customers' networks.
But it's not entirely vendor hype. Customers say there are real benefits to storing everything in one big bucket.
Winthrop & Weinstine, a commercial law firm in Minneapolis, has found effective uses for its enterprise content management system. In 2000, Craig Wilson, the firm's manager of information systems, rolled out Web-based content management software from iManage (since acquired by Interwoven), primarily to share documents securely with clients over the Internet.
Last fall, Wilson expanded the system to file e-mail messages associated with individual cases. Previously, attorneys would print out an e-mail and hand the sheets to an assistant, who would lock them away in a cabinet; tracking it down later could take up to two weeks. "Now, every document and e-mail is available to the whole firm," he says. "It allows our practice groups to be more organized with the volume of e-mail everyone receives."
Plus, Wilson says, if the firm's lawyers choose to, they can easily share e-mails with clients via the Interwoven system's Web publishing capabilities.
Those who have deployed content management systems say it's critical to first establish a workable set of meta-data—information about documents, such as date of creation—to let employees find information more easily. That also means keeping that information as simple as possible, says Gary Williamson, director of information technology at Georgia System Operations, a utility in Tucker, Ga.
When the company first deployed Stellent's content management software, employees were forced to fill out 25 fields when checking documents into the system. "People were starting to resist it because it was cumbersome," Williamson explains. His team added a "check in similar" option to the system that automatically enters most of the meta-data information, which has greatly increased usage.
Meanwhile, many organizations aren't looking for the holy grail of content management—they just desperately need a better way of getting a handle on paper documents.
The Virginia Department of Taxation was "drowning in paper" in 2001, says CIO Farley Beaton. The state agency, which generated $11.5 billion in tax revenue last year, receives more than 2 million individual tax returns on paper annually.
In 2002, Beaton and his team installed a FileNet document management system that converts tax returns into electronic images. That alone let the agency reduce its peak-period staffing needs by 30%—to 150 additional employees per year—as well as nearly halve the warehouse space needed to store physical documents, from 48,000 square feet to 25,000. And it speeded up Virginia's turnaround on processing returns: According to Beaton, the state issued 95% of refunds within 12 days last year, compared with less than 85% in 2000.
As the CIO puts it: "The real driver for us is that everyone has instant access to the image of a tax return."
An enterprise content management system can function as a universal repository for every piece of data a company produces or receives—from product specifications and invoices to Web pages and e-mail. Today, though, most businesses use only individual slices of the content management pie.
Group Dynamics
Category: Enterprise content management
What It Is: Software that acts as an electronic library for storing and retrieving a company's digital documents, including those published to intranets or public Web sites. Such applications can also control access to documents and route them through business process workflows.
Key Players: EMC, FileNet, Hummingbird, Interwoven, IBM, Microsoft, Open Text, Stellent, Vignette, Xerox
Market Size: $2.93B worldwide, 2003 (IDC)
What's Happening: Vendors are integrating tools that were once dedicated to specific tasks (such as managing Web content) into unified systems that can apply consistent policies about accessing and storing all document types.
Expertise Online: CMSWatch.com provides news, opinion, reports and quizzes on content management software, as well as links to other resources.
Companies in italicized orange type are featured in dossiers this month.
May 4, 2005
Global Leader, Client Technology Services
Mercer Human Resource Consulting
New York, N.Y.
www.mercerhr.com
MANAGER'S PROFILE: In charge of the information-technology practice for the 13,000-employee consulting firm, a subsidiary of insurance brokerage Marsh & McLennan Cos.
WEB WAIT: Three years ago, Mercer produced its public Web sites by hand. Everything from approving content to formatting pages was handled manually by individual Webmasters in different departments. It could take up to a week to get a single document posted. "The bigger we grew, the more those inefficiencies became a cost strain," Buttacavoli says.
HIS PROJECT: Mercer rolled out Interwoven's TeamSite content management system in 2002. Today, about 250 "content producers" across the company use the software to publish roughly 6,000 documents per year—instantaneously, if they choose to. Total cost: $800,000, half of which was for the software, a quarter for consulting services and the rest for servers and other items.
SITES UNSTAFFED: Buttacavoli guesses that Mercer cut its content management costs by 65% by moving to the new system. The biggest savings: Fewer staffers to run its Web sites. "If we had 20 people in 20 locations managing sites, say they're all getting $100,000 a year—it adds up pretty quickly," he says. Mercer now has three developers creating new features for TeamSite and the equivalent of 1 1/2 full-time staffers handling server maintenance. "We don't need Webmasters anymore," Buttacavoli points out.
May 4, 2005
Documentum, founded in 1990, built an early lead in the document management market. In December 2003, the company became part of EMC, one of the biggest and most aggressive vendors in the data storage systems market—and some of EMC's hard-charging culture appears to have rubbed off.
David Beyers, manager of training technologies at Alteon, Boeing's flight and maintenance training subsidiary, says he notices the difference in the Documentum sales team now that they work for EMC. "The sales guys were low-key before," he says. "Now they want more commitments up front. They're a little more aggressive."
Beyers adds, though, that EMC has also brought more depth to Documentum's technical support staff. "They've been really good about putting us in touch with engineers at no charge," he says. "Before, I just don't think [Documentum] had the staff. It costs money to provide those kinds of people."
While Documentum used to have a reputation for being expensive—at one time costing more than twice as much as competitors—its pricing is now in line with the rest of the market, according to customers. However, getting the code customized can still be pricey, says Brian Madden, director of information technologies at Boston Capital, a real estate financing firm.
Documentum developers can command hourly rates of $175 or more, whereas standard Web developers run $130 per hour, according to Madden. "It can add up very quickly if you need to make customizations," he says.
Still, Documentum's system stands apart in providing a soup-to-nuts ability to handle multiple types of content, says Steve Servais, director of human resources information systems at The Manitowoc Co., a manufacturer of ships and cranes. "We really looked for a vendor that could meet our document management, Web content management and collaboration needs," he says. "We felt Documentum delivered that."
And many customers like that Documentum is large and well established, particularly now that it's under EMC's wing. Darrell Delahoussaye, manager of information systems in Bechtel's oil, gas and chemicals division, has worked with Documentum since the early 1990s. As Documentum expanded it has incorporated more sophisticated features into its system. "They've maintained their relationship with customers they've had for a long time," Delahoussaye says, "and as part of EMC they have even more resources."
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EMC operating results*
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*Fiscal year ends Dec. 31; YTD reflects first three months
Source: company reports
Other Financials**Total assets - $15.80B
Stockholders'equity - $11.72B
Cash and equivalents - $1.68B
Short-term investments - $1.38B
Long-term debt - $128.08M
Shares outstanding - 2.44B
Market value, 4/25 - $31.96B
**As of March 31, 2005, except as noted
May 4, 2005
Interwoven's content management software works just fine—but trying to upgrade it can be a waking nightmare, say some customers.
"We've run into nothing but problems" with upgrades, says Rick Peltz, chief information officer for commercial real estate investment brokerage Marcus & Millichap. "It's horrible." In July 2002, Peltz deployed the WorkSite collaborative document system (then sold by iManage, which Interwoven acquired in 2003). The idea was to provide a Web-based collaboration tool for the firm's 900 agents to exchange documents with prospective clients.
Since then, Marcus & Millichap has upgraded the software three times. Each time, Peltz says, the upgrade failed to work and the firm had to pay for Interwoven's professional services to complete the installation. "My feeling is they don't have a well-defined [quality assurance program] to test the upgrades," Peltz says. He plans to replace WorkSite with Microsoft's SharePoint document-sharing server.
Interwoven's Web content management system, TeamSite, also has been difficult to upgrade, according to Kevin Mayes, director of global knowledge management for Aon. The insurance brokerage and consulting firm first rolled out TeamSite in 1999. "Every upgrade we've gone through has been a humongous effort," he says. Aon's upgrade two years ago to TeamSite 5.5 took three months; Mayes had thought it would require less than a month. "We got some incremental good stuff, but nothing in comparison with the pain," he says.
Kevin Cochrane, Interwoven's vice president of Web content management, acknowledges some older versions of its software required "a number of days of migration planning," but that recent releases have been easier to upgrade. "We've come a long way," he says.
And to be sure, some Interwoven customers say upgrades have been routine. "There have been little glitches, but we've caught 99% of them during testing," says Robert Buttacavoli, head of Mercer Human Resource Consulting's technology practice.
Another contented content manager: Craig Wilson, manager of information systems at Winthrop & Weinstine, a Minneapolis law firm that uses WorkSite. He says the software is easy to use—letting employees set up sites to share documents with clients in less than 15 minutes—and that his dealings with the company have been trouble-free. As Wilson puts it: "Interwoven's support is superior."
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Interwoven operating results*
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*Fiscal year ends Dec. 31; YTD reflects first three months
Source: company reports
Other Financials**Total assets - $392.56M
Stockholders' equity - $289.81M
Cash and equivalents - $58.65M
Short-term investments - $82.46M
Long-term debt - None
Shares outstanding - 41.14M
Market value, 4/25 - $346.56M
**As of March 31, 2005, except as noted
May 4, 2005
Stellent's customers say it provides a top-flight enterprise content management system that keeps getting better—but that the company sometimes lacks the firepower of bigger rivals.
Sierra Pacific Power uses Stellent's content management system to handle more than 1.3 million documents. The utility first deployed the software in 1998, and the product has improved every year since, says programmer analyst Darlene Huff. "They've grown and learned what the market wanted," she says. "Our wish lists have turned into features in the product." For example, Stellent is adding the ability to convert engineering diagram files into Web-viewable images.
But Stellent offers training only at its Eden Prairie, Minn., headquarters and its San Francisco and London offices. That was a limitation for Larry Hibbs, applications development supervisor for the city of Aurora, Colo. Because of a tight rollout deadline, he and his team couldn't attend training sessions and had to learn how to use Stellent's Web publishing software on their own. "We didn't have the training, so we really had to hack at it," he says. "It would have been nice if they offered training in our area." (Stellent says it offers on-site classes for teams as well as online training on 19 topics.)
Meanwhile, Stellent's alliances with other vendors have faltered at times, according to Michael Abbene, director of application services for Arch Coal, a coal producer in St. Louis. He picked Oracle's portal software in 2002 largely because Stellent said it planned to develop connectors to the Oracle software. Then, when Oracle upgraded its portal, Stellent's connectors didn't work anymore. Abbene says Stellent first told him Arch Coal would have to pay for the additional development before eventually delivering what it promised. "I was pleased they came through," he says. A Stellent spokesman says Oracle remains one of the company's premier technology partners.
Some customers believe Stellent mainly needs to get the word out. Steve Kissinger, director of accounts payable for DHL, says Stellent's enterprise content management system is as comprehensive and full-featured as those offered by EMC's Documentum unit and FileNet, but he feels that the company hasn't been as effective at generating buzz: "I think their marketing department needs to do a better job of promoting the product."
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Stellent operating results*
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*Fiscal year ends March 31; FYTD reflects first nine months
Source: Company Reports
Other Financials**Total assets - $187.23M
Stockholders' equity - $154.23M
Cash and equivalents - $45.76M
Short-term investments - $17.90M
Long-term debt - None
Shares outstanding - 28.28M
Market value, 4/25 - $191.01M
**As of Dec. 31, 2004, except as noted
