When Fragmentation is Good
August 13th, 2010 by clmmatrix
We recently had a chance to re-read the Gartner Publication — Enterprise Contract Management Solutions for Vendor Guide, 2010.
One of the intriguing revelations was how fragmented the market is. It’s reasonable to conclude that Enterprise Contract Management (ECM) solutions would follow the path of other technology life cycles — few vendors with highly differentiated solutions, trial and error, adjustments and adaptations, mature solutions, then emergent leaders consolidating the vendor base.
This hasn’t really happened for ECM solutions and the reasons are varied and intertwined. Contracts are interesting in that they stretch across so many departments within an organization. This makes it more challenging for someone or some department to “own” the process. Is it IT? Is it Legal? Is it Sales? Is it Accounting and Finance? Is the CFO/COO/CMO/CIO? Is it Procurement? Well of course, the answer is YES.
In a recent survey by AIIM (State of the ECM Industry 2010) they reported that 36% of organizations surveyed have no ownership at senior executive level of document and records management. In most organizations, it’s the CIOs who have or have taken “ownership” but what they are owning is the technology, not the information or the content contained within.
But, we are seeing changes here. More and more of our sales inquiries are initiated by the legal and compliance departments vs. IT. This makes sense when you stop to consider that contract management is more about managing obligations than anything else. Those departments who have the most to gain or lose in that process are the ones reaching out for help.
And the help they need requires solutions with specific features that align with specific and individual processes. An organization may have many different types of contracts that involve many different departments — and they all want integration with other applications. That’s not an easy thing to develop or manage.
ECM Vendors who can pull this off will market solutions that are highly configurable and flexible. From our point of view, solution providers who leverage Enterprise Content Management solutions like Microsoft SharePoint have the greatest opportunity to manage contracts and their related obligations across the enterprise.
If you’d like to see what you and your company have to gain from such a solution, then don’t miss out on our monthly webinar demonstration. Click here to reserve your spot. There is no cost or obligation to you. We just want you to Harness the Power!
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