It’s happening. Your CIO has charged you with implementing a proper content lifecycle management system. You’ve gotten approval and done your research to select the best enterprise content management (ECM) system. The pieces of your ECM adoption puzzle are finally falling into place!

However, are you truly prepared for the deep-rooted commitment that ECM adoption entails?

In the wild world of enterprise content management systems, there are a few lesser-known realities to implementing ECM. And for all the benefits EMC technology can offer, there are three things you need to know before implementation to ensure your stakeholders don’t lose sleep over potential project pitfalls.

ECMs are challenging to implement

When thinking about implementing an ECM system, one word comes to mind: challenging (followed perhaps by – oof, ouch, and this is going to take longer than we thought!). 

Implementing an ECM involves multiple steps and requires a thoughtful roadmap and change management strategy. 

Despite the improved efficiency and security, companies can have multiple ECMs or ECM iterations, which can increase complexity and management of your data.

In the end, getting the implementation right is an important part of the battle to make sure the ROI of an ECM is as high as possible.

The user adoption problem 

Now that you’ve launched your new content management solution, the next step is to get your employees to actually use it, which is a major challenge.

Based on known adoption rates, it’s all but certain that you’re not going to have 100% user adoption of a new ECM tool. This is because when you implement a new ECM you fundamentally change the way someone does their job. 

Even with consistent training and resources being invested in supporting employees to use a new ECM system, user adoption typically tops out at 70%-80% at best. 

There are solutions out there to achieve 100% user adoption, but an ECM alone is not going to win over all of your workers or safeguard all of your data.

ECMs don’t secure all of your data

Though they can do a lot, ECMs can’t do everything. Unfortunately, they can’t and don’t store all of your data. This is because there are multiple locations where data is created and stored, and if you don’t know where the data is, your ECM doesn’t know either.

Moving information to a new ECM is also really hard. When you start using an ECM, you’ll want to migrate your existing data into it. These migrations are costly, resource-intensive, and have a relatively high failure rate. 

Your ECM implementation is not going to be perfect. But with these things in mind, you and your team can be better prepared to manage expectations for deployment and relative success. By planning and adjusting your process as challenges come up, you’ll increase the likelihood of achieving and reaching your organizational goals in the end.