Last week,
at the annual Digitech Systems ECM Partner Event in Denver, Nucleus
Research announced findings that should put a smile on the faces of service
providers, IT pros, office admins and others trying to push enterprise content management
(ECM) systems up the value chain in their organizations.
Many of us get stumped when trying to lay out a convincing
argument for making a new investment given limited budgets. We ‘pick our
battles’ wisely and fight for things that we believe will truly benefit our
companies. Yet a lot of tech deployments simply don’t lend themselves easily to
measurement but can receive unanimous internal support
regardless. Take for example voice mail,
email or cellphones: how do you measure that ROI? These things may be impossible
to measure but most businesses would never choose to survive without them.
ECM is one of those rare technologies that usually has
little problem justifying itself. Reduced paper filing and storage costs,
reduced real estate space, increased speed at finding what you’re looking for
within seconds as opposed to hours, reduced regulatory compliance costs… translate
to big cost savings. But by how much?, ask the skeptics.
Lucky for us, analyst firms such as Boston-based Nucleus
has done the heavy lifting of figuring out these kinds of metrics. Their latest findings claim that enterprise
content management applications return as much as six times the investment.
Nucleus says ECM apps can realize “an average ROI of $6.12
returned for every dollar spent.” The
firm based its calculation on the analysis of some 37 recent case study audits it
conducted, citing “increased competition and more cost-effective cloud options
driving down software prices and deployment costs.”
Good
news for supporters of cloud computing, a model that was much hyped for the
past two years and showing no signs of abating for 2012.
Says Rebecca Wettemann, vice president of Research
at Nucleus, “With the rise of increasingly economical cloud-based solutions for
electronic content management, both small and large companies can gain benefits
from content management initiatives that would have previously been too
expensive to justify implementing and hosting on premise.”
The
firm found that “second and third-generation content management investments
deliver increasing ROI through more streamlined processes and greater
productivity. With the expected changing dynamics of ECM pricing, usability,
delivery, and business and regulatory requirements, large areas including the
digitization of US healthcare records, government documents, and the continued
growth of ECM in small and medium-sized businesses will continue to incent
companies to invest in content management applications.
“Although
organizations often focus on cost savings as a motivation for investing in ECM,
productivity and other indirect benefits are also common. In the analysis of Nucleus case studies, 62%
of all returns came from direct benefits such as reduced paper or avoidance of
staff or service bureau costs. Another
38% of returns came from indirect benefits, such as productivity.”
The
research, available today
at http://tinyurl.com/7rqs4g8, was announced in Denver at
the Digitech Systems annual reseller event, which equips service providers with
information about ECM trends and business strategies. Digitech is a major player in the ECM
solutions space with SaaS-based and on-premise applications for healthcare,
education and financial services. You can learn more about them by visiting www.digitechsystems.com.