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By Mike Monteiro, Solution Consultant

It’s important to know and plan for how IBM FileNet will align with your corporate directives and initiatives. If you don’t, you risk walking down an unproductive and frustrating path. Many organizations have a variety of concerns about making such a significant investment, so developing a strategy as a first step beforehand is a helpful way to make sure you and your teams stay on track.

Over the past few years, I found the driving forces for investing in a FileNet system are:

  • Compliance and regulatory concerns
  • Risk management
  • Security
  • Liability concerns
  • Operational excellence and process automation
  • Market opportunity and pressures
  • Technology obsolescence

Understanding and prioritizing these motivations to meet the needs of your business will help you arrive at an overall strategy easier.

Developing Your IBM FileNet Strategy

Typically, your strategy should address the following:

1. Your Content

How content (documents, emails, videos, pictures) essential to business success are:

a) Acquired
b) Indexed and stored
c) Secured
d) Retained
e) Archived and/or disposed of

2. Your Business Intelligence 

Specifically this refers to the plan to extract business intelligence from your repositories. Can you describe in business terms what this data would be – either in its raw format or aggregated into some business metric?

3. Your KPIS

Are you trying to lift one or more key performance indicators (KPIs) by automating, expediting or refactoring the business process? If so, define them.

4. Your Metrics

Establish what you’re trying to get out of process reporting and metrics.

Technicians struggle to rise above their everyday problems and look at the big picture, but it’s a necessary thing to do. To articulate a purpose and a strategy for IBM FileNet, you must identify how it will align with your business. After all, a company must be committed to the technology for the long run – to own it, staff for it, leverage it, and count on it for business success and competitive advantage.

A strategy is just one of many things to consider when designing a FileNet system. Check out more things to consider in our white paper: Four Things to Consider When Designing a FileNet System.