Enterprise information management

Enterprise Information Management (EIM) is a particular field of interest within information technology area. It specializes in finding solutions for optimal use of information within organizations, for instance to support decision-making processes or day-to-day operations that require the availability of knowledge. It tries to overcome traditional IT-related barriers to managing information on an enterprise level.

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Definition

Enterprise information management combines business intelligence (BI) and enterprise content management (ECM). Enterprise information management takes these two approaches to managing information one step further, in that it approaches information management from an enterprise perspective. Where BI and ECM respectively manage structured and unstructured information, EIM does not make this "technical" distinction. It approaches the management of information from the perspective of enterprise information strategy, based on the needs of information workers. ECM and BI in a sense choose a denominationalised approach, since they only cover part of the information within an organization. This results in a lack of available information during decision-making processes, market analysis or procedure definition.

Solutions

As of 2010 the marketplace demonstrates two distinct approaches to EIM.

  1. The first (and most applied) places a separate disclosure layer over the sub-solutions ECM and BI. The rise of Microsoft Sharepoint 2007 with the information worker paradigm has caused an acceleration of the acceptance of these kinds of solutions. Information workers in their daily activities need access to both data (structured) and content (unstructured), as far as their role and responsibilities give them the appropriate rights. Portal solutions offer possibilities to organize the access to different subsystems, including authorization management. Portal solutions also offer ways to work together on information products in an online environment (collaboration). Processes can be organized and managed (business process management or workflow).
  2. The other approach, found in large-platform vendors, offers integrated solutions for both BI and ECM. The market shows signs of these platform vendors moving in this direction, but although vendors like IBM, Oracle Corporation, Microsoft, SAP AG and EMC are making progress, they still have a long way to go. From their respective backgrounds, they each cover parts of the EIM portfolio, but in specific areas such as security, analytics or process management lack essential components. Gartner is one of the analyst firms paying specific attention to EIM and the progress made by vendors in this field.

Some software companies provide applications for ECMs such as document and image viewers (e.g. LEAD Technologies, MS Technology, and Accusoft) and for workflows (e.g. Office Gemini, SpringCM, and docAssist). There are also several companies that provide plugins for ECMs that can be used to enhance the functions and features of ECMs.

See also

References