Martin,
First, if you are basing all your file structure on UPRNs, you really do not
need the full power of a generic EDRM or ERM system, as you correctly note.
And even better, your existing system no doubt contains not only the UPRNs,
but also the access controls that you require with them. That conclusion is
relevant for not just for UPRNs, but for many case-based environments.
But, more interesting perhaps, is the thought that an EDRMS is simple.
True, the basic idea is to bung a retention rule on each aggregation, with
logic that acts on the rules. Easy, in principle.
But not in fact.
A lot of the complexity – and hence cost – of EDRM systems comes from
factors such as ease of use, maintainability, resilience, reporting,
performance and scalability. Just a few examples are:
- EASE OF USE: engineering the interfaces and the functionality so that
end-users actually can use them without having to resort to tortuous
sequences of commands;
- MAINTAINABILITY: it’s dead easy to design software that has the basic
retention functionality (ask any programmer), much less easy to design it so
that everything is maintainable without unreasonable degree of effort;
- RESILIENCE: ability to recover gracefully and correctly from error
conditions.
- REPORTING: being able to report on system usage, volumes, audit trails,
and so on.
- PERFORMANCE AND SCALABILITY: ability to perform fast in the face of the
huge volumes that build up if the system is successful, and also in the
face of extensive audit trail requirements.
And there is more – this is just “off the top of my head”.
At least some vendors learn from bitter experience and build these, and
more, into their EDRM offerings – at a cost. If you doubt this, the best
way to confirm it is to get one of your programmers to put together a
“simple” system using his or her favourite programming environment, then
marvel at how well it works – for the first few months.
Marc
Sent: 23 November 2009 22:29
From: The UK Records Management mailing list
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Martin Anderson
I wonder what people think of the following thoughts:
An EDRM system is not a complex piece of software. It is in fact very
similar to Windows Explorer or any other file management system with the
addition of enhanced security and retention capabilities. None of this is
technically difficult and should be a lot cheaper than it currently seems to
be. Such systems will inevitably become much cheaper as usage increases.
Where the real complexity occurs is in the automation file structure
creation (and/or application of metadata) and in the interface between the
systems creating the documents and the EDRMS itself. By these systems I mean
email software, CRM systems, web forms, scanners, etc
I would assume that the basic EDRM being technically fairly straightforward,
the greatest ongoing costs will be in the integration of these other systems
with it. Therefore when choosing an EDRM, one of the most important aspects
will be the ease of integration with other pre-existing or proposed
packages.
For example, we seem to be going down a route where our file structure will
be based on UPRN (Universal Property Reference Number). It seems critical to
me that the EDRMS should therefore be chosen primarily for its ability to
integrate with the software which creates and indexes these UPRN’s. By doing
this there is no need to recreate the file structure as it is already held
indexed and “de-duped” within the Property Gazetteer Module of the System
creating the UPRN’s.
Does this seem to make sense to you? Does anyone have any comments about
things I might be missing?
Thanks,
Martin Anderson
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