I agree with the points raised by the author and by AIIM, which has consistently been a great source of practical knowledge about everything related to content management. In this article, they took input from an anonymous contributor and made sure that everyone could see it. It doesn’t matter what type of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) tool you have. Doing some of the things listed in this article will definitely kill any implementation.

I’ve been doing implementations for over 12 years, from department to enterprise-wide level, and each of the eight points mentioned in the article has been a source of frustration at one time or another.

I’ve worked with several Energy companies over the years, from Generation, to Transmission, to Water, to offshoots. When it comes to the Energy industry, there are additional ways to kill an ECM implementation:

9 – Inability to Navigate in the Political Environment - Enterprise environments are tough enough, but not knowing how the strings are being pulled, which projects have the right of way, and who can help adaption in the environment can stall, delay, or even kill the best planned projects.

10 — Not Having Top Down Support – If there isn’t executive sponsorship from the board down, the enterprise business units can and will throw up roadblocks. Money is tight, priorities are based on anticipated needs, and the direction of the board.  Having organizational buy-in from top to bottom with everyone knowing the benefits they specifically can achieve by having an ECM is tremendous. The amount of time and effort people put into a project they know will make their lives easier is drastically different from scenarios where they are unaware of the benefits.

11 — Overdoing the Implementation – An ECM implementation should be considered a growing opportunity. Each day, new benefits and ways of doing business processes better can be found. Don’t think that you have to plan for every contingency in the first go round. Modeling what works now, with an eye to the future, is a great way to begin. Not only are you moving away from your old process, but you are adding new and different technologies. Trying to get your head wrapped around all of this in the first implementation will drive anyone crazy. Plan to use the system for a while. Budget a review cycle to fix errors, improve processes,  and add functionality that wasn’t utilized in the first pass.