Managing documents and working together in the digital workplace: Documentum, M-Files, Alfresco, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams and web platforms. Our consultants write about content management, collaboration, integration and the compliance questions that come with them.
In the previous post, I walked through what an end user sees when they open the Business Dashboard pane in M-Files. From this post on, the audience shifts more towards the administrator’s side, looking at what a dashboard definition looks like. Every dashboard is a single JSON document. The Admin tab in M-Files Admin offers a Visual Designer that builds…
In the first post of this series, I introduced the Business Dashboard module I built, over the past few weeks, for M-Files. This second post is for the end user: what does it actually look like, where is it, and what can you do with it once your administrator has configured one or more dashboards for you. No JSON in…
Why user-centric thinking is the missing piece in Enterprise Content Management. Let’s set the record straight, your users don’t hate enterprise content management (ECM). They hate your ECM! That might sound harsh, but have you ever heard complaints like these? … then you’re not dealing with a technology problem. You’re dealing with an implementation problem rooted in ignoring users. This…
Some time ago, a customer asked whether it was possible, in M-Files, to have dashboards with KPIs and a global overview of what was happening in their vault. It was a topic I had in my radar for a few years already, but I never had – or took – the time to really work on it. I jumped on…
Artificial intelligence is currently at the center of every IT discussion, and enterprise content management (ECM) is no exception.Vendors frequently promote the use of “AI-powered analytics,” “intelligent automation,” and “cognitive content services.”However, if you have already implemented ECM solutions, you are aware that there is often a discrepancy between the demonstration and the actual results.Let’s address the fundamental aspects of…
When people think about consultants, they usually focus on expertise. “They bring experience, frameworks, and best practices.”That’s true, of course. However, that is not the most impactful aspect of the role.The real shift happens somewhere less visible: positioning. As an outsider, you don’t just join a team. You become something different. Over time, I’ve come to think of it as…
As I’ve mentioned in some of my previous blog posts, ECM projects don’t fail because of the chosen technology. Most products can meet the necessary requirements. The choice of a solution is driven more by other aspects, such as the effort required for deployment and maintenance, the end-user interface, and the integration capabilities. As I wrote earlier, an ECM implementation…
You know, metadata is the key of a nice Enterprise Content Management system. It is supposed to make work easier, promising order instead of chaos, findability instead of frustration, control instead of clutter. In the world of document management, metadata is often treated as the solution, the moment where unstructured content becomes manageable. In reality, in many organizations, metadata quietly…
This is the fourth and final blog post in the series, that highlights the drawbacks of poor ECM implementation. In almost every enterprise content management (ECM) initiative, the phrase “Let’s get some quick wins” appears early, often with good intentions. Quick wins promise momentum. They reassure sponsors. They demonstrate value quickly.This is an important phase, especially in complex ECM programs.…
It started like any normal Tuesday.No alarms. No warning signs. No urgent emails flooding inboxes before 8 AM.Just a regular working day, until people tried to open documents.At first, it was a single complaint.“Hey, I can’t access the invoice archive.”Then another.“The HR files are taking forever to load.”Then ten more.“Nothing is opening.”And within an hour, the entire ECM system, the…
Last week a wrote about the reasons why ECM projects fails. M-Files is a wonderful tool and probably my favorite ECM, but it won’t solve your problem. Companies that initiate digitalization projects like to convince themselves that investing in an ECM will solve all their problems: no more chaos, data loss, inefficiency, or lack of collaboration. I’m sorry to break…
Today, I would like to take a step back and think about failure, because it’s part of life and sometimes things don’t go as planned. Analyzing failures can help to prevent them from happening again. Firstly, in most cases, your ECM project did not fail because of the tool! That’s the uncomfortable truth It wasn’t because the platform was bad.It…
