Business Systems Interfaces and IDCM Opportunities

Abstract

In this chapter, we conclude the appraisal of the characteristics of IDCM systems that we commenced in Chapter 4. This chapter begins by reviewing IDCM opportunities in the context of their capability to interface with business operational and administrative systems. We relate these to document and Web content management in order to illustrate how IDCM can support other lines of business systems and their applications. We then review some document management applications in business and government enterprises and associate these with Web publishing and content management in order to demonstrate the types of solutions that are feasible. There is a wide range of opportunities for deployment of IDCM within most business and government enterprises, and we will examine some examples of applications in different environments. We emphasize throughout this chapter how IDCM can be deployed to support commercial and government planning initiatives, support regulatory and legal compliance, underpin continuous process improvement initiatives, and provide the foundation for exploiting enterprise knowledge. Our objectives then are as follows: • Discuss how IDCM repository management systems (document and Web content) can interface with core business operational and administrative systems. • Discuss some specific document and content management solutions that may be applied in an integrated manner for managing important business documents and vital records. • Provide an overview of some opportunities for IDCM useful for specific document and content management applications in a range of vertical industry sectors. • Discuss the application of general document management functionality for workgroups and wider enterprise deployment. Within the vertical market applications part of the chapter, we make reference to several case studies relating to different market sectors. These are cases for which there are references given in the general literature. Many more examples of specific case studies are provided by a number of the vendors listed in Appendix 4. The reader is referred to their Web sites for additional examples.