Towards a Business Process-Oriented Approach to Enterprise Content Management: The ECM-Blueprinting Framework

vom Brocke J; Simons A; Cleven A

Abstract
In today's digital information age, companies are struggling with an immense overload of mainly unstructured data. Reducing search times, fulfilling compliance requirements and maintaining information quality represent only three of the challenges that organisations from all industry sectors are faced with. Enterprise content management (ECM) has emerged as a promising approach addressing these challenges. Yet, there are still numerous obstacles to the implementation of ECM technologies, particularly fostered by the fact that the key challenges of ECM adaptation processes are rather organisational than technological. In the present article we claim that the consideration of an organisation's business process structure is particularly crucial for ECM success. In response to this, we introduce a process-oriented conceptual framework that systematises the key steps of an ECM adoption. The paper suggests that ECM and business process management are two strongly related fields of research.

Keywords
Business process management; Content; Document management; Enterprise content management