Cloud computing, mobile technologies and social media. Tablets, phones and laptops. Most people think of business information as the structured data stored in a company's enterprise systems and databases, but developments in these areas are introducing a significant amount of unstructured, nontraditional data into the data mix. While they are helping businesses evolve at the speed of light and delivering capabilities that business users could only dream about a few years ago, they are also creating a potential nightmare for many information technology leaders charged with delivering reliable, timely information to the business for decision making. The plot thickens when you combine these emerging challenges with traditional documents such as file shares, portals, records, forms, reports and quantitative data. That's where Enterprise Content Management (ECM) can help.

Capus experience with ECM solutions spans from helping companies in their efforts to develop content strategies, flexible taxonomies and workflow processes; to documenting processes, conducting assessments, developing strategic ECM road maps and implementing the ECM solutions throughout the full life cycle. Just as importantly, what we do is within the context of the client's overarching business goals and strategies.

While ECM solutions are already widely adopted in the business community, that doesn't mean organizations are prepared to handle the data fallout from technology and information explosions like those mentioned above. The proliferation of unstructured data, created and contained in a growing number of formats and delivered through a growing number of media, can translate into increased costs, decreased productivity and unnecessary business and legal risk. Companies lose control over corporate content and keep it beyond its useful life. Employees waste countless hours searching for information and either don't share or can't share what they know, while intellectual property and corporate knowledge becomes diluted.

Today's content management solutions have nearly all the capabilities an organization needs to rein in structured and unstructured data. But getting the full value from those capabilities requires an approach that directly maps to the day-to-day reality of the business and addresses technology, process and governance. Without a firm handle on business goals and processes, you can't expect ECM solutions to deliver the right results.