Enterprise Content Mobility: The Marriage of ECM and Mobile Technology

By Andy Wang (@www.twitter.com/laserfiche) Feb 1, 2011

In 2011, mobile computing and smartphones will become more and more popular portals to enterprise knowledge. Finding an ECM solution that combines the flexibility of mobile devices with the security and manageability of centralized control is vital to success.

In today’s mobile world, employees aren’t always sitting in front of their desktop computers, ready to add information to — and access information through — the organization’s enterprise content management (ECM) system. However, granting users secure, real-time access to mission-critical content and allowing them to automate content-related business processes is generally the goal of an ECM implementation, so organizations with large mobile workforces can find themselves in a bind.

Carl Friedrich, President and Founder of Friedrich Wealth Management, a financial planning firm serving the Long Island/New York City area, says,

Our clients have small children, so we needed a way to manage client information where we could be mobile enough to meet our clients within ten minutes of where they work or live.”

At the same time, however, Friedrich wasn’t willing to sacrifice information security for mobility.

It only takes one incident to blow up a practice,” he says. “We needed an ECM system that offered iron-clad security and audit-proof compliance alongside the flexibility portable devices afford.”

Central Control and Mobile Flexibility

Striking the right balance between mobility and central control over content can be a challenge. From an ECM perspective, the advantage of mobile technology obviously lies in its ability to make information more accessible. At the same time however, it’s difficult to control mobile content that rests outside an organization’s IT governance structure.

Of course, agile ECM systems have offered thin client options for years, allowing employees to access and upload information via laptops when they’re travelling or in the field — all while meeting the organization’s overarching content standards and security policies.

For example, the Long Beach Police Department’s ECM system uses browser-based thin clients to give officers secure, real-time access to organizational content directly from their patrol cars. The initiative has strengthened LBPD’s gang injunction program so much, in fact, that gang-related murders in Long Beach decreased by 53.8% in 2010.

Jonathan Stafford, Administrator of LBPD’s Records & Technology Division, explains,

Our ECM system allows us to deliver information to officers in the field in as few clicks as possible. The impact on gang activity has been huge.”

But even thin clients have their limitations. After all, employees in the field don’t always have access to Wi-Fi, or might not be carrying their laptops, but they always have their mobile phones.

Authorized project managers within the Facilities Department at a large university in Virginia for instance, can access building plans and schematics stored in the department’s content repository on their iPhones, saving them from carrying around fragile paper files. In fact, Facilities estimates that it saves US$ 25,000 per project on paper costs alone thanks to the marriage of ECM and mobile technology. With hundreds of renovation projects executed each year, those savings add up quickly.

Smartphone, Meet Central Control

There are few industries that have a greater need for secure and centralized control over organizational content than the financial services industry, which is faced with an ever-increasing flow of rules and regulations. And yet, it’s often financial advisory firms that are ahead of the curve in using well-vetted ECM systems in conjunction with smartphones and other mobile devices.