Transcript
Page 1: A White Paper on Mobile ECM

Improve workforce collaboration, response and productivity by giving

access to ECM system over their smartphones and tablets…

Author : K.V. Rajesh, ECM Consultant

Page 2: A White Paper on Mobile ECM

Note : This article contains charts, graphics and text from several websites which is available in public domain.

2

Introduction

A large portion of corporate information lies in

paper, images, emails, photographs etc., which

are highly unstructured. Organizations carry the

risk of their managers missing key information,

lying in unstructured content, while taking

business decisions. To bring this unstructured

content into their main stream business processes

and maximize its value, Enterprise Content

Management (ECM) technologies have evolved.

With the increased usage of smartphones and

tablets in business, mobility has become an

enterprise requirement. More and more business

applications are now getting extended to

smartphones and tablets for increasing the

responsiveness and productivity of employees.

ECM vendors have also realized the benefit of

giving secure access of corporate content to

knowledge workers right from their smartphones

and tablets. This space is evolving as customers

have started using mobile applications and many

ECM vendors have already launched their native

mobile ECM applications over iOS, Android,

BlackBerry and other mobile operating systems.

Business going mobile

Today's workers are increasingly mobile and a

majority of organizations are working towards

supporting their growing number of employees

who are using their smartphones and tablets to

do their work at office, home and while travelling.

Gartner predicted that 66% of mobile workers will

own a smartphone in 2016. Tablet purchases by

businesses will reach 13 million in 2012 and triple

to 53 million in 2016 - Gartner.

Smartphones and tablets combined make up 70%

of all devices sold in 2012. The total is expected to

reach 821 million by the end of the year –

Gartner.

Smartphones and tablets won't entirely replace

PCs for most businesses, "but the ubiquity of

smartphones and the increasing popularity of

tablets are changing the way businesses look at

their device strategies," said Carolina Milanesi,

one of Gartner's smart device analysts.

Going mobile, helps business significantly improve

their employee’s productivity and efficiency.

According to Ipsos Reid BlackBerry ROI Study, a

Blackberry business user gains 6 weeks of

productivity in a year.

Email has been the successful application for

enterprise mobility, but new generation of mobile

applications are emerging to allow mobile

workers to do so much more. Mobile applications

are broadening their scope to address the needs

of line-of-business workers in several areas.

Many companies are expanding their

implementation of a wide variety of mobility and

collaboration applications. In a survey

commissioned by Cisco Systems, line-of-business

decision-makers (e.g., from operations, sales,

finance, and corporate management) identified

the organization’s current and planned mobility

and collaboration applications deployment for

smartphones and tablets.

Viewing documents and accessing employee

portals, email, or calendars are widely deployed

applications. Video and photo applications are

gaining momentum.

Page 3: A White Paper on Mobile ECM

Note : This article contains charts, graphics and text from several websites which is available in public domain.

3

Mobile ECM

One of the key benefits of Enterprise Content

Management systems is its ability to give secure

access of content to users across the enterprise

to enable them to make their decision based on

the best available information and facilitate the

business process. Extending the secure access

of enterprise content from smartphones and

tablets will enable knowledge workers to act

faster than ever before.

All leading ECM vendors have realized this

opportunity and extending the access to their

ECM system from smartphones and tablets by

a) mobile optimized browser page, b) vendor’s

native mobile application and c) third party

mobile applications.

Source: AIIM Study on - Primary ECM/DM accessibility

Native Mobile ECM applications are intuitive,

simple and secure. They help knowledge

workers to :

• Search, consume and contribute content

from their smartphones or tablets

• Efficiently discover and collaborate on latest

content

• Seamlessly connect with colleagues and

share content updates

• Mobilize business tasks to smartphones

and tablets to further optimize day to day

business processes

• Substantially improve their productivity and

efficiency

Some of the best use cases of Mobile ECM are :

• Empowering an insurance claim inspector

on field to take photograph of accident

vehicle from an iPad and instantly upload the

photo into the ECM system to initiate the

claim process

• Allow a senior manager in a workflow step to

review the documents, approve / reject the

request, while he is travelling on a business

trip right from his smartphone

As the usage of mobile ECM is expanding, the

ECM vendors are launching their native mobile

applications with support for leading mobile

operating systems from Apple, Google, Blackberry

and Microsoft. Below table provides a quick

comparison of mobile operating system support

for the current mobile applications launched by

some of the leading ECM Vendors.

(Source: Websites)

(Mobile Operating System Support)

With this space evolving, the ECM vendors are

extending more and more functionalities into

their mobile applications. The features and

functionalities currently provided by leading ECM

vendors in their mobile applications are listed

below.

EMC Documentum Mobile

• Advanced search and

filtering

• Navigate – Repository,

Collections, Watched Items,

Recently Viewed, and

Favorites

• Import content

• View documents protected with Documentum

Information Rights Management (IRM)

• Configurable display properties

• Share via email

• Download content for offline use

• Initiate and participate in threaded discussions

• Review and approve workflows

• Access CenterStage Spaces including collaboration

wikis, blogs, and discussions

• Push notifications

• Ability for a site administrator to globally enable or

disable features

Page 4: A White Paper on Mobile ECM

Note : This article contains charts, graphics and text from several websites which is available in public domain.

4

IBM Content Navigator

• Secured login through

corporate VPN

• Advanced search and

navigation

• Access to saved searches

in the ECM

• Browse folders

• Navigate document lists; view document &

metadata, and edit the metadata

• Add document by taking a photo and apply

metadata

• Collaborate on team spaces

• Participate in workflow

• With its Content Management Interoperability

Services (CMIS), IBM Content Navigator can be

used as a single interface atop virtually all

repositories of content in an organization

OpenText Everywhere

• Browse, search, view,

manage, and email

documents and other

forms of content OpenText

repository

• Includes content viewers capable of rendering

over 200 file formats, such as Microsoft

PowerPoint, on the screens of mobile devices

• Initiate business workflows, attach and view

documents related to a business process

• Approve or reject workflows

• Content-centric collaboration and micro

blogging across communities and workgroups

Alfresco Mobile

• Securely access corporate

content

• View documents,

presentations and media

files

• Download for offline access

• Take photos on your iPhone and upload them

directly to Alfresco

• Edit documents on your iPad and upload them

using WebDAV

• Start Alfresco business processes right from

your tablet using Alfresco folder rules

• Add comments and tags to content

• Search by file name or full text

• Enforce corporate security rules

Shareplus, 3rd

Party

SharePoint Mobile Client

• Support for all SharePoint

Content Types

• Read email files (.MSG and

.EML) stored on libraries

• Add, edit and delete SharePoint Items and Files

• Annotate PDF Files without leaving the app

• Check-In/Check-Out & Approve/Reject

• Download documents for offline access

• Capture Pictures, Video and Audio right into

SharePoint

• Browse, delete and restore past document

versions

• Send documents by mail, linked or fully attached

• HTTPS (SSL) Support and compatible with VPNs

• SharePlus ENTERPRISE features include:

• In-House Deployment

• Branding

• Centralized Configuration

• Enhanced Security

• Enterprise Search

Benefits of Mobile ECM

Mobile ECM brings faster accessibility to content &

business processes and deliver several business

benefits :

• Faster employee responsiveness and decision-

making

• Improved knowledge worker productivity

• Reduced turn around time in business

processes

• Greater collaboration

• Faster internal and customer issue resolution

• Enhanced customer satisfaction

• Reduced mobility cost

• Competitive advantage

• Improved profitability

Conclusion

Mobile ECM is opening up new opportunities for

ECM deployments, by extending the usability of

ECM right from user’s smartphones and tablets.

Realizing its compelling business benefits, more

and more ECM customers are adopting it to

increase their workforce responsiveness and

productivity.


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