Why document management is suddenly sexy again

Everywhere I turn lately I see good, old-fashioned document management getting showered with attention [1]. Why this sudden burst of love for dowdy old DM? It seems folks are figuring out that an umbrella term like "Enterprise Content Management" is actually confusing. Instead of helping people understand what content management means, it's trying to lump many distinct jobs together. After all these years, apparently we are all just figuring this out. Pulling out Document Management and other content management terms into separate categories is suddenly desirable.

To sort things out, I decided to take a look at some different forms of content management this week:

Document management

If you think about it, what we call content management has its roots in paper records management. Back in the day, we would gather our files in file cabinets. After a time, we moved them into boxes, recorded the box number and contents in a paper ledger and put the box in a warehouse. It was simple and it worked. These days, the successors of these old record keepers still exist. I saw plenty of them at ARMA [2] last Fall in Orlando. Today many of these people have to worry about putting digital information in virtual boxes, although a surprising number still worry about paper too.

Records tend to be a specific type of information you have to save and maintain on a document lifecycle. These could be W-4 forms, medical records, insurance claims, grades, even email or instant messaging conversations. What you consider records probably has a lot to do with what business you're in and what regulatory requirements you have to adhere to.

Web content management

Web content management specifically deals with creating and maintaining information on web sites. This is a distinctly different function from managing records/documents and other forms of enterprise content (which I discuss below). Web content management today is heavily geared toward marketing folks, but there are two distinct audiences involved in any web project. First, there are the designers who design the look and feel of the site along with the back-end systems to keep it running and feed it fresh content.

Then there are the front-end, content editing and creation tools where the folks who create the content do their job. If the first group designed the site correctly, the content creators only have to enter their information, select the graphical elements, choose the page to publish to and click a button. These people shouldn't have to worry about look, feel or appearance because the first group set that up, and the CMS manages it for them automatically.

Business content management

This is a new term I just made up (at least I think it's original). It's the area most people consider "enterprise content" today. It's any type of content created in the enterprise that's not a record and doesn't get published on the website. This involves business documents like Word documents, training materials, documentation or PowerPoint presentations. It could also include content generated in Enterprise 2.0 social media tools.

Content Management at this level provides a way for employees to save and access existing material. It helps prevent reinventing the wheel and aids employees in finding knowledge wherever it exists in the enterprise. It gives people access, based on their security clearance, to a range of existing material. If material has good tags and a good search engine associated with it, employees should be able to access and use this content as needed.

I suppose I could also have broken out XML content management as a fourth type. This is where you create chunks of information, such as for a user manual, then use XML coding to pull the chunks together into a coherent documentation set, with shared content, and a common look and feel. You may even share the content with internal or external systems and streamline complex processes such as translation.

Perhaps by trying to simplify content management over the years with a single term, we have actually caused more befuddlement than clarity. Maybe it's time to get back to the basics by helping enterprise buyers better understand what they are buying through more accurate labeling. That could be why we are seeing more calls for a return to a document management category, and it could explain why document management is suddenly the new black. - Ron [3]