Overview //
The software industry is littered with lots of buzz words and product categories that come and go over time. Software vendors and industry research firms like Gartner and Forrester put software products into categories to frame the solution and the competitive landscape.
eB offers best-of-breed ECM (enterprise content management) and CM (configuration/change management) with built-in information management best practices. The combination of the two disciplines allows our customers to model/map their information assets to their business processes, establish relationships between information assets such as physical items, locations, people, processes, data, etc., and manage these information assets and configurations through change. The technology, when combined with information management best practices, ensures you can trust the integrity and accuracy of information and deliver it in context to business users when and where they need it.
Is Enterprise Information Management (EIM) a process definition or a product category?
The combination of the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and Configuration/Change Management allows our customers to model/map their information assets to their business processes, establish relationships between information assets such as physical items, locations, people, processes, data, etc., and manage these information assets and configurations through change. The technology, when combined with information management best practices, ensures you can trust the integrity and accuracy of information and deliver it in context to business users when and where they need it.
Gartner research describes Enterprise Information Management (EIM) as fundamentally a process definition and architectural guideline that addresses the management of business critical information enterprise-wide. It is not a solution description, but rather a platform for implementing an EIM strategy.
Source: Gartner
Upon review of the Gartner EIM research we were excited to finally find a definition that adequately described eB’s capabilities, and subsequently began to describe eB as an EIM platform. Gartner defined the term EIM several years ago as:
“Enterprise information management (EIM) is an integrative discipline for structuring, describing and governing information assets, regardless of organizational and technological boundaries, to improve operational efficiency, promote transparency and enable business insight.”
Their definition continues to expand, with further detail added to the definition as follows:
- EIM brings together technology, business and organizational disciplines to exploit information as a strategic asset and to overcome existing information “silos.”
- EIM provides organized, consistent, secure and accessible content to those individuals who are empowered with the authority, accountability and decision rights for the proper control and oversight of enterprise assets.
- EIM spans described (also known as structured) and undescribed (also known as semi-structured or unstructured) content sources, inside and outside the organization
- EIM eliminates redundancy in data and processes, enables the lineage of information assets across the applications portfolio and establishes the common information infrastructure required to support business intelligence and performance management initiatives in using and analyzing information assets and metrics.
Gartner goes on to further define processes like Information Governance and product categories that include Master Data Management, Business Intelligence, Enterprise Content Management and Metadata management.
Under the product category of Master Data Management (MDM), Gartner positions eB as a best-of-breed solution for Asset Data. Gartner described eB for MDM as follows:
“MDM focused on mastering asset-oriented master data for design, construction and operational use cases is centered on the management of asset master data. For example, in Nuclear power plants there is a need to manage structured (master equipment list) and unstructured (design engineering documents, maintenance records, operating knowledge) data to ensure that the plant remains in compliance with Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations.”
Although Gartner remains focused on EIM as a process definition, it appears clear that eB is a platform for implementing an EIM strategy and architecture. We will continue to work with Gartner this year to further define our unique position and facilitate conversation for Gartner with our customers who have deployed eB as an EIM solution. For much more information on the topic of EIM, visit www.gartner.com .
