Enterprise systems today create a plethora of information in many different formats from many different business platforms. When a truly enterprise-wide set of business intelligence is stored, managed, and available at a common location, your employees are empowered to make faster and better business decisions. Smart Enterprise Systems incorporate a highly informative set of metadata in real time—allowing internal and external users to view critical data from every vantage point in a process, a value that is uncommon in today’s evolving world of information.

It may feel overwhelming to try to get your arms around all the information within your company, and so…you procrastinate. Don’t. You need to take action today if you want to keep your business competitive, innovative and moving forward.

Here is a three-step plan to get you started:

  1. Send an email to 5 colleagues in business and 5 colleagues in IT requesting that they search for the specifications on one of your company’s top products. Ask them to note how long it took them to find that information, as well as any difficulties they encountered.
  2. Compile the results into a brief report and invite these same 10 colleagues to meet and discuss the implications of their “research” (FYI, if it took more than 10 minutes, it took too long.)
  3. Create a truly collaborative business case by leveraging the report and what was learned in the subsequent discussion. You now have the information to articulate the case-for-change in context to product information.

A business case is the first step to implementing an enterprise content management project. It only gets simpler from here.