ECM: Basic Content Services

Looking for a Content Management System but don’t need all the bells and whistles or the high cost of an EMC Documentum or IBM Filenet?  Maybe what you’re looking for is what’s now being called Basic Content Services (BCS).

Basic Content Services is just that — basic document management functions like check-in/check-out, versioning, search and retrieval that are sold at relatively cheap commodity prices.  This is a market that Microsoft is targeting with their SharePoint 2007 product and Salesforce is going after with their Apex Content.  The cost of entry for a full-blown ECM system can be high.  BCS offers a much lower entry point that can fit into many more company budgets.

For many users, these basic capabilities are good enough for their needs.  Because of their simplicity, BCS applications have streamlined user interfaces that are easy to navigate and interact with, and hence require little or no end user training.  BSC is a perfect candidate for an SaaS deployment.

It sounds good, but is BCS right for you?  That depends.  If you’re considering Content Management to assist with capabilities like Records Management, BCS might not be the answer.  For example, BCS generally can not deal with the requirements of assigning the appropriate metadata needed to track document lifecycles and managing document disposition.  BCS systems also tend to lack or be weak in handling indexing, classification and long-term archival.

BCS can act as a good front end for managing active current documents but providing a way to identify certain documents that are better managed within a more robust, but more complex, ECM solution.  Possibly only a limited number of documents maintained in the BCS are true company records that need to be managed under the tight control of a complete ECM system.  These documents can be identified and offloaded into the ECM.  That’s the thinking behind such products as the EMC SharePoint Backup Server.

So BCS isn’t a cure all, especially when it comes to managing regulatory compliance.  But it is generations ahead of ad hoc file management schemes now used by many companies.  BCS can move files and documents that are scattered across people’s desktops and multiple file servers into a central easily-searchable repository that enables easy access and better control.