Unifying content instead of unifying systems

July 23, 2013

2 minute read

How many repositories do you manage?

Is it overwhelming?

Can you access what you need, when you need it, regardless of where it’s stored?

If you’re like most of our customers you have some “challenges” in this area and are working on rationalizing or unifying your systems.

AIIM’s State of the ECM Industry 2011 said, “… 72% of larger organizations have three or more ECM/Document Management/Records Management systems and 25% have five or more.” That’s why independent software vendors (ISVs) like Adlib take a ubiquitous approach to integration, and are poised to help organizations rationalize their repository complexity.

While it might be ideal to unify repositories or business systems… for political, usability, costs, and myriad other reasons, that’s easier said than done. You simply can’t delete a repository!

An alternative that some forward-thinking customers are exploring though is to unify the content from within those systems vs. the systems themselves – taking a document-centric approach to making information universally available, standardized, viewable, and compliant. 

Adlib provides a variety of options to make integration with business systems/repositories as simple as possible. Moving beyond the basic watched folder approach, organizations can leverage Adlib connectors to work directly with ECM products like SharePoint, FileNet, Documentum, etc.

Moreover both customers and partners have leveraged our web services-based platform to meet more custom requirements. And some OEM partners have gone so far as to integrate Adlib technology directly into their software.

These options give customers flexibility in how they access and share content from their ECM, PLM, or other document management tools. This flexibility in turn helps achieve their end goals around document collaboration, while reducing the need to rationalize the underlying systems.

To help customers understand the myriad options available, Adlib recently hosted a complimentary client webinar discussing this document-centric approach to repository rationalization and walking through the different integration options... from ECM connectors, through web services integrations, professional services support, and OEM partners.
 
If your organization, like many others,  is struggling with disparate and multiple systems, perhaps a document-centric approach to accessing and sharing content is an alternative to the more challenging (impossible!?) goal of system rationalization.  

Could a content-based approach do the trick? View the on demand webinar, see if it sparks some thoughts, and tell us what you think.

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