Resolve To Increase Profits Through ECM
As always, I made a New Year's resolution this year to eat right and exercise, and I'm already back to a steady diet of frozen pizzas followed by 10 to 12 reps of lying on the couch in front of the television. However, if VARs seek to grow their businesses in 2005, they can do so by targeting new opportunities in ECM (enterprise content management) and sticking to the following ECM resolutions.
Resolution 1: Focus On Compliance
Many industry regulations, such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) for large enterprises and the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) privacy rule for small health plans, went into effect in 2004. But that doesn't mean that the compliance market is last year's news. Many affected businesses are still noncompliant, and the practice of enforcing these acts with lawsuits and penalties will drive a whole new wave of business. Furthermore, many of these regulations have several parts, and new rules will continue to emerge. For example, this year the HIPAA security rule for large companies will take effect, and in 2006 the HIPAA security rule for small companies and SOX for small companies will be enforced. Plus, laws such as Check 21 (The Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act) will continue to provide VARs with check imaging opportunities in finance and retail for the next decade or more.
Organizations will continue to search for the latest technologies to help them comply, and most will need the help of an experienced VAR to implement these solutions. ILM (information lifecycle management) will continue to gain momentum as a data and records management practice, and VARs will need to incorporate e-mail management and storage methodologies to deliver these solutions.
Resolution 2: Consider Becoming An Outsourced Service Provider
Given the struggling state of the U.S. economy over the past few years, organizations are increasingly cost conscious. Businesses will look to outsource noncritical ECM functions, such as backlog scanning and manual data entry, as a way to gain technology benefits without investing in a full-scale, in-house solution. Depending on the size of the organization, it may look to outsource entire ECM processes or certain pieces, such as scanning, data entry, data capture, workflow, and/or storage. An investment in a scanning services division, data capture center, or online storage services could add tremendous value to your content management solutions and provide your customers with the options they seek.
Resolution 3: Be Prepared For More Consolidation
2004 was a huge year for consolidation in the ECM industry, evidenced by the mergers of EMC, Documentum, and LEGATO; Verity, Cardiff, and Dralasoft; and Captaris and IMR (Information Management Research), Inc. Many vendors are entering the race to deliver comprehensive product suites that include all facets of the ECM spectrum -- from front end data capture to document management, workflow, records management, archival, and retrieval. Expect this trend to continue.
While consolidation itself is out of your control, you can be prepared for it. When one of your vendor partners is involved in a merger or acquisition, keep the lines of communication open to determine how the consolidation will affect your business. Will your primary business contacts change or remain the same? Will the vendor's VAR program or sales model change? What new products are available for you to resell under the new structure? By being proactive instead of reactive in getting answers to these questions, you can keep yourself focused and achieve success in the midst of change.