In a recent blog posting on Intelligent Enterprise, Ruth Blanco said that a "holistic view" of ECM is the key to a company”s overall strategy.

"One of the toughest parts of enterprise content management is developing an overall strategy," she said. "The strategy must be driven by the business, not left solely to IT."

Blanco added that strategy is a living process, and not a one-time event and must be considered when developing a strategy for content management.

First, a company must assess the level of ECM maturity by examining the business and mission requirements that have been defined as well as the software components of any existing technologies, she said.

AIIM, Doculabs, Microsoft, CM Mitchell and others offer maturity metrics that can be used to help develop the overall vision for what the ECM solutions and services needs to accomplish for the business.

Once that has been done, it is time to design the ECM service. Explore the critical functions that are needed (uncovered during the maturity assessment) and ensure that those map back to the requirements, said Blanco.

After implementing the strategy, it is essential that companies regularly review the ECM strategy and adjusting it to the needs of the business.