ENTERPRISE CONTENT
MANAGEMENT IN PRACTICE
A CASE STUDY IN STATOIL OIL TRADING AND SUPPLY
KRISTIAN KORSVIK
This Master Thesis is carried out as a part of the education at the University of Agder and is
therefore approved as a part of this education. However, this does not imply that the
University answers for the methods that are used or the conclusions that are drawn.
University of Agder, 2010
Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences
Department of Information Systems
Preface
This master thesis presents the results from the final part of the master study in Information
Systems at the University of Agder in Kristiansand, Norway.
The purpose of the master thesis is to acquire skills in connection to carrying out a project in a
public or private company. Through this, the aim is to learn to put to use theoretical
knowledge and scientific methods in an applied research project. The extent of the thesis is 30
study points, representing one semester’s full time work.
This thesis has been carried out as a case study in collaboration with a leading Norwegian
energy company, Statoil, focusing on the emerging topic Enterprise Content Management
(ECM).
Statoil and my contact person there, John Leknes, has been most supportive and I wish to
express my gratitude. Further I would like to thank the enthusiastic respondents at Statoil for
providing rich insight into the case by willingly participating in interviews. I would also like
to express my gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Bjørn Erik Munkvold, for the support,
input and guidance during the compilation of this report.
Kristiansand May 31st, 2010
______________________________
Kristian Korsvik
II
Abstract
Today’s enterprises create an increasing volume of unstructured content that includes
documents, e-mail messages, videos, images, instant messages, Web pages, and other digital
assets. The steadily decreasing costs for storage space and the general availability of large
scale storage systems, enable enterprises to store all their relevant business data. However,
this content often exists in a state of unmanaged chaos with little or no routines regarding
capturing, storing, sharing, retrieving, arching, etc. which prevents an enterprise from
properly using these valuable assets for better collaboration, knowledge sharing, improved
customer and vendor communications, compliance, and increased process efficiency. Hence
enterprises are facing increasing challenges concerning management of their content.
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is an emerging concept in information systems, both
as strategy and technology, that can help companies overcome these challenges, and is
currently being perceived as the state of the art for storing and retrieving unstructured content.
However, whereas ECM offers integrated enterprise-wide management of the entire content
lifecycle from beginning to end, with numerous business benefits, little academic field-based
research concerning ECM has so far been conducted and thus there are several “gaps” in the
existing scarce literature.
Prior research have uncovered that ECM is an integrated approach to managing organizations’
content, but that there is lack of consensus and clarity about the meaning of the ECM
phenomenon. Prior research have also revealed that technology is an important enabler for
ECM, but that ECM is above all an organizational phenomenon which induces several issues
of concern, whereas implementation of ECM requires new strategies for how content is to be
handled, as well as changes in business processes and work practices.
For this thesis, a case study is carried out investigating ECM in practical use in a leading
Norwegian energy company, Statoil. Statoil is a worldwide company where there is an
immense amount of unstructured content and information created and received internally and
externally every day. In 2005 the company engaged in an ECM initiative seeking to take
control over their unstructured content and enhance their information management routines.
Statoil is considered as an early adopter of these kinds of information systems, and thus
Statoil represents an interesting case since only a small number of organizations have yet
started to focus on managing their unstructured content with an enterprise-wide approach.
Drawing on an interpretive case study in one of Statoil’s highly specialized business clusters
that has experienced limitations in Statoil’s standardized ECM solution, I have identified
various issues related to the ECM practice in the case organization.
The findings suggest that there are several content management issues concerning the use of
ECM that the business cluster investigated is struggling with. The large quantities of content
are being shared all over the world, internally and with external parties. In many occasions
content needs to be restricted and given limited or extended access in separate storage spaces
for internal and external players. Management of this is a considerable challenge in the case
organization as there are being created too many separate spaces in order to share content
within specific groups and persons internally and externally. In addition, these separate spaces
are often used incorrectly by users due to several reasons.
III
Further, data analysis suggests that these issues potentially have emerged from a series of
organizational, technological, and compliance issues which tend to be critical to the ECM
practice in the business cluster investigated. These are organizational factors such as metadata
management, organizational knowledge and common understanding, organizational culture,
and training that influence the management of content. Further, there are various
technological limitations that weaken the information management practice in the business
cluster. In addition, the business cluster has to comply with the corporate-wide information
management requirements. These are all findings of key issues concerning the management of
content in the case organization.
An important learning from this study is the importance of a common knowledge and
understanding concerning how content is to be managed within specific units and
departments, where metadata is key. The great importance of one or several persons to
facilitate this within the investigated business cluster also shows to be a key factor in order to
achieve success and progress with content management. The findings also emphasize the
importance of identifying unique business needs and requirements for content management
prior to implementation and/or vendor selection.
The generalization from this study should be seen as rich insights on the ECM phenomenon in
a specialized organizational context derived from an interpretive case study, which may be
valuable for related work/practices in other organizations and contexts, at present time or in
the future. In addition it contributes to the future development of ECM in the case
organization by providing interpretations and discussion on a wide range of issues. This study
also contributes to the scarce academic research that so far has been conducted concerning the
new and emerging ECM concept, suggesting further research within the ECM field that
presumably will continue to grow the following years.
Keywords: Enterprise Systems, Enterprise Content Management, Information Management,
Collaboration, Compliance, Metadata, IT enabled organizational change
IV
Table of Contents
1
INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................... 1
1.1
1.2
1.3
2
OVERVIEW OF ENTERPRISE CONTENT MANAGEMENT ............................................................................ 5
2.1
2.2
2.3
3
BACKGROUND, PURPOSE AND MOTIVATION ....................................................................................................... 1
RESEARCH QUESTIONS .................................................................................................................................... 3
OUTLINE OF THE THESIS .................................................................................................................................. 3
BRIEF HISTORIC OVERVIEW OF ECM ................................................................................................................. 5
WHAT IS ECM? ............................................................................................................................................ 5
DEFINING ECM ............................................................................................................................................. 6
COMPONENTS OF ECM ........................................................................................................................... 9
3.1 ENTERPRISE AND THE ENTERPRISE PROBLEM ....................................................................................................... 9
3.2 CONTENT ................................................................................................................................................... 10
3.2.1
What is Content? ........................................................................................................................... 10
3.2.2
Structured, Unstructured and Weakly/Semi-Structured Content .................................................. 10
3.3 METADATA................................................................................................................................................. 11
3.3.1
Metadata for Reuse, Retrieval and Tracking ................................................................................. 12
3.3.2
Defining Metadata and Metadata Categories .............................................................................. 12
3.3.3
Metadata in Practice ..................................................................................................................... 13
3.4 MANAGEMENT OF CONTENT .......................................................................................................................... 14
4
ADOPTION OF ECM IN ORGANIZATIONS ............................................................................................... 17
4.1 ECM DRIVERS ............................................................................................................................................ 17
4.1.1
Finding Existing Content ................................................................................................................ 18
4.1.2
Reducing content duplication ........................................................................................................ 19
4.1.3
Compliance .................................................................................................................................... 20
4.1.4
Security .......................................................................................................................................... 20
4.1.5
Increased “Networking” / Collaboration ....................................................................................... 21
4.2 ECM OBSTACLES, ISSUES AND CHALLENGES...................................................................................................... 21
4.2.1
Framework of Major ECM Issues ................................................................................................... 22
4.3 FRAMEWORK FOR ECM RESEARCH .................................................................................................................. 23
4.3.1
The Content Perspective ................................................................................................................ 23
4.3.2
The Technology Perspective .......................................................................................................... 23
4.3.3
The Enterprise Perspective ............................................................................................................ 24
4.3.4
The Process Perspective ................................................................................................................ 24
4.4 FRAMEWORK FOR ECM STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT.............................................................................................. 24
4.4.1
Content audit................................................................................................................................. 24
4.4.2
Value Assessment .......................................................................................................................... 25
4.4.3
Cost/Effort Assessment ................................................................................................................. 25
4.4.4
Content Portfolio ........................................................................................................................... 25
4.5 BUSINESS PROCESS PERSPECTIVE ONTO ECM.................................................................................................... 26
4.6 ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS EXPERIENCE CYCLE........................................................................................................... 28
4.7 TECHNOLOGY DRIVEN ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE .............................................................................................. 30
4.8 SUMMARY OF THE FOUR FIRST CHAPTERS .......................................................................................................... 30
5
RESEARCH APPROACH........................................................................................................................... 33
5.1 PHILOSOPHICAL ASSUMPTIONS ....................................................................................................................... 33
5.2 RESEARCH STRATEGY .................................................................................................................................... 34
5.3 RESEARCH DESIGN ....................................................................................................................................... 34
5.3.1
Single Case Study ........................................................................................................................... 34
5.3.2
Case Selection ................................................................................................................................ 35
5.3.3
Time Frame.................................................................................................................................... 35
5.4 METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH ....................................................................................................................... 35
V
5.4.1
Data collection .............................................................................................................................. 36
5.4.2
Literature Search and Review ........................................................................................................ 39
5.4.3
Data Analysis ................................................................................................................................. 39
5.5 QUALITY OF THIS RESEARCH ........................................................................................................................... 41
5.6 LIMITATIONS ............................................................................................................................................... 43
6
THE STATOIL CASE ................................................................................................................................. 44
6.1 INTRODUCTION OF STATOIL............................................................................................................................ 44
6.2 BACKGROUND FOR IMPLEMENTING ECM IN STATOIL .......................................................................................... 44
6.3 ECM SOLUTION IN STATOIL ........................................................................................................................... 45
6.4 INFORMATION MANAGEMENT IN STATOIL ........................................................................................................ 46
6.5 RECORDS AND INFORMATION MANAGER (RIM) ROLE ........................................................................................ 49
6.6 TECHNOLOGICAL ECM INFRASTRUCTURE ......................................................................................................... 50
6.6.1
Team site ....................................................................................................................................... 50
6.6.2
Document Workspace ................................................................................................................... 51
6.6.3
Creation of a team site .................................................................................................................. 52
6.7 THE OIL TRADING AND SUPPLY (OTS) BUSINESS CLUSTER .................................................................................... 53
6.7.1
Information Management in OTS .................................................................................................. 53
6.7.2
Stairway to Compliance................................................................................................................. 55
7
RESULTS ................................................................................................................................................ 59
7.1 MANAGEMENT OF LARGE QUANTITIES OF CONTENT ........................................................................................... 60
7.2 ACCESS CONTROL INTERNALLY AND EXTERNALLY IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT ................................................................. 61
7.2.1
Management of Separate Spaces With Unique Access ................................................................. 61
7.2.2
Incorrect Use of Separate Spaces With Unique Access ................................................................. 62
7.2.3
Get Users Out of Separate Spaces ................................................................................................. 63
7.2.4
Use of E-mail ................................................................................................................................. 64
7.2.5
Example of OTS Business Problem ................................................................................................. 65
7.3 ORGANIZATIONAL ISSUES .............................................................................................................................. 68
7.3.1
Creation and Configuration of New team sites With Adequate Metadata ................................... 69
7.3.2
Organizational Knowledge and Understanding ............................................................................ 71
7.3.3
Training ......................................................................................................................................... 73
7.3.4
Organizational IM Culture ............................................................................................................. 74
7.4 TECHNOLOGY ISSUES .................................................................................................................................... 77
7.4.1
Various Technological Limitations ................................................................................................. 77
7.4.2
Lack of Knowledge About Technological Functionalities ............................................................... 78
7.4.3
Next Generation ............................................................................................................................ 79
7.5 COMPLIANCE .............................................................................................................................................. 79
7.5.1
Cleaning of Content ....................................................................................................................... 79
7.5.2
Compliance Process ....................................................................................................................... 80
7.6 SUMMING UP THE RESULTS OF THE CASE STUDY ANALYSIS .................................................................................. 81
8
DISCUSSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR STATOIL .......................................................................... 82
8.1 FRAMEWORK FOR ECM RESEARCH ................................................................................................................. 82
8.2 THE ENTERPRISE-WIDE ASPECT OF ECM IN OTS ............................................................................................... 83
8.3 ORGANIZATIONAL ASPECTS ............................................................................................................................ 85
8.3.1
Metadata ...................................................................................................................................... 85
8.3.2
Lack of Organizational knowledge and common understanding .................................................. 86
8.3.3
Organizational IM Culture ............................................................................................................. 87
8.3.4
IM Champions ............................................................................................................................... 88
9
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS ....................................................................................................... 89
9.1
9.2
10
LESSONS LEARNED ....................................................................................................................................... 89
IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH AND PRACTICE .................................................................................................... 90
REFERENCES .......................................................................................................................................... 91
VI
List of Figures
Figure 3.1 – Enterprise view of enterprise content (Alsup & Strong, 2004) ........................................................... 9
Figure 3.2 – Component-model of ECM (Kampffmeyer, 2006) ............................................................................ 14
Figure 4.1 – Major ECM issues (Päivärinta & Munkvold, 2005) ............................................................................ 22
Figure 4.2 – A framework for ECM research (Tyrvainen et al., 2006) ................................................................... 23
Figure 4.3 – An example of the Managed Content Portfolio (O’Callaghan & Smits, 2005). ................................. 25
Figure 4.4 – The ECM –blueprinting framework (vom Brocke et al., 2010) .......................................................... 27
Figure 4.5 – Example: business process re-design (vom Brocke el al., 2010) ....................................................... 28
Figure 4.6 – Enterprise systems experience cycle (Markus & Tanis, 2000) .......................................................... 29
Figure 5.1 – Data analysis (Creswell, 2009) .......................................................................................................... 40
Figure 5.2 – Research approach, based on Dube & Robey (1999) ........................................................................ 41
Figure 6.1 – Statoil organizational chart ............................................................................................................... 44
Figure 6.2 – Overview of Statoil’s ECM program (Nordheim & Päivärinta, 2006) ................................................ 46
Figure 6.3 – Overview of top level IM processes in Statoil (Statoil Governing Document, WR1895)................... 48
Figure 6.4 – Example of IM business process in Statoil – Create and receive information (Statoil Governing
Document, WR1895) ............................................................................................................................................. 48
Figure 6.5 – Screen dump of a specific library in a team site ................................................................................ 51
Figure 6.6 – Manufacturing & Marketing business area (M&M) - Organizational chart ...................................... 53
Figure 6.7 – OTS’s process to get compliant - Stairway to Compliance (Internal Document, OTS) ...................... 56
Figure 7.1 – Example of OTS business problem .................................................................................................... 66
List of Tables
Table 5.1 – Overview of interviewed respondents ............................................................................................... 38
Table 5.2 – Statoil documents investigated .......................................................................................................... 38
Table 5.3 – Criteria for evaluating interpretive research (Guba & Lincoln (1989), as cited in Munkvold (1998)) 42
Table 6.1 – Core elements of Statoil’s Technological ECM Infrastructure ............................................................ 50
Table 7.1 – Summary of ECM issues in OTS .......................................................................................................... 60
Table of Appendix
APPENDIX A – INTERVIEW GUIDE – INITIAL ROUND ......................................................................................... A
APPENDIX B – INTERVIEW GUIDE – MAIN ROUND ........................................................................................... C
VII
Introduction
1 Introduction
1.1 Background, Purpose and Motivation
Enterprises today are facing a rapidly increasing amount of digital information and content to
be handled (Aleksy & Schwind, 2006). As this abundance of available data grows, managing
the information becomes more difficult, which can lead to information overload. As early as
in 1970, Alvin Toffler coined the term information overload in his book Future Shock
(Toffler, 1970 cited in vom Brocke et al., 2010). Today’s digital information age is
characterized by steadily decreasing storage space prices and the general availability of large
scale storage systems, enabling enterprises to store all their relevant business data (Aleksy &
Schwind, 2006). In turn this has lead to a tremendously increasing information flood, thus
fulfilling Toffler’s forecasts (vom Brocke et al., 2010).
According to a recent IDC study sponsored by EMC cited in Gantz et al. (2008), the amount
of digital information produced annually worldwide will mount up to nearly 1,800 billion
gigabytes by 2011, which is approximately ten times more than produced in 2006. Enterprises
are also seeing an almost annual doubling of enterprise information size, meaning storage
requirements increase 50% per year (Zykov, 2006). Most organizations today generate
information at such a rate that the challenge is putting this information in a format and in a
place where it can be found again, when needed (O’Callaghan & Smits, 2005). Within
enterprises, unstructured information currently accounts for the majority of a company’s
overall data (Rogalski, 2006). The Gartner Group, cited in O’Callaghan & Smits (2005),
estimates that most of the data captured in organizations today is unstructured (75%-80%) and
not in such a format that it can be found when needed. The quantities of unstructured content
such as documents, images, e-mail, Web content, audio and video are all growing at an
astonishing rate, and Rogalski (2006) states that this explosion of unstructured data is one of
the biggest challenges facing businesses today. At the same time companies are asking their
knowledge workers to do more and more in less and less time (Glick-Smith, 2004).
Lewis (2009) says that information is the most valuable enterprise asset next to people and
argues that one of the best ways for an enterprise to increase its competitive advantage is
through leveraging its information assets. However, he further states that information also can
be the most problematic asset. “Organizations are buried in digital content, leaving people
scrambling to find the right information when they need it.” (Gottlieb, 2005, p. 13). It has
been estimated that information workers spend up to 30% of their working day searching for
data and approximately 15–25% on non-productive, primarily information-related tasks
(Burnett et al. 2006 cited in vom Brocke et al., 2010).
E-mail remains a major contributor to this information overload, as people struggle to keep up
with the rate of incoming messages (Meyer, 2005). As well as filtering out unsolicited
messages (spam), users also have to contend with the growing use of e-mail attachments in
the form of lengthy reports, presentations and media files (ibid). It is not unusual to hear of
people responding to and managing 150 e-mails daily.
Many organizations are also struggling with the increasing amount of functional systems and
applications, with each application creating its own separate location to file and store
information, and where each networked system represents a boundary between pieces of
information (Meyer, 2005). Sometimes information even is stored on local disks (Bandorf et
al., 2004). Hence the consequence is that users are forced to navigate through complex folder
structures to file or retrieve their information (Meyer, 2005), that the data cannot be found at
1
Introduction
all, that data is kept redundantly in several copies, that changes are not managed properly, etc
(Bandorf et al. 2004). Meyer (2005) informs that the situation is even worse for businesses
trying to manage information across work groups or spread over geographic locations, where
the folder structures become more and more complex. This makes it practically impossible to
provide users with uniform access to complete and accurate information in real-time (Meyer,
2005). As stated by Gottlieb (2005): “Information is power, but it is useless when scattered
across employee hard drives and e-mail in-boxes across the enterprise.” (p. 13).
At the same time, within today’s fast paced global competitive business environment,
organizations are striving to achieve the maximum efficiency out of the available resources
(Usman et al., 2009). This has forced organizations to improve the supporting activities for
their core business (ibid). Nowadays, particularly large-scale enterprises are becoming more
and more aware of this information overload and are confronted with the challenge of
efficiently handling it (vom Brocke & Simons, 2008), together with internal and external
government pressures to meet compliance requirements (Blair, 2004).
In order to meet these factors, organizations around the world are moving towards Enterprise
Content Management (ECM) solutions (vom Brocke & Simons, 2008). ECM is regarded as a
new and emerging class of information systems (IS) (Tyrväinen et al., 2006), that integrates
and extends several areas related to Information Management (IM), Knowledge Management
(KM) and Information Technology (Munkvold et al., 2006), and is increasingly being
perceived as the state of the art for storing and retrieving unstructured content and documents
in practice (Aleksy & Schwind, 2006; Dilnutt, 2006). The central ECM business problem is
the management of the entire content lifecycle across the enterprise from beginning to end
(Alsup & Strong, 2004).
Although ECM enjoys wide coverage in the trade press from a practitioner oriented point of
view, academic research in the area is relatively scarce, and a minority of academic fieldbased research has been identified for this thesis. Tyrväinen et al. (2006) also acknowledge
this and state that despite of the practical interest, the concept of ECM has received little
attention within IS research, and that one should look at ECM as a rich research phenomenon
from an academic point of view. There are relatively few contributions that explicitly focus on
ECM (von Brocke et al., 2010), and ECM deserves more attention as it crosses several
separate areas of Information Management (IM) from the viewpoint of the enterprise
(Munkvold et al., 2006). Hence further academic effort on the ECM field is justified.
The bulk of academic research on ECM identified and investigated for this thesis has mainly
focused on the planning and initial start up of ECM, e.g. Munkvold et al. (2006), Nordheim &
Päivärinta (2006), and few studies have focused on ECM in practical use (postimplementation). There is a gap in the literature, and the case presented in this thesis explores
ECM in practical use, contributing to the scarce academic research on ECM from an
organizational point of view.
In the area of ECM, this thesis employs a case study investigating a highly specialized and
diverse business cluster within a major Norwegian energy company, Statoil. In Statoil there is
an enormous growth of information objects every month, over 300,000 excluding e-mail
messages (Nordheim & Päivärinta, 2006). In 2005, Statoil started implementing a corporatewide ECM solution, with the intention to handle (amongst other) the above mentioned
problems that a major enterprise like Statoil meets. The solution also involves standardized
requirements for how information is to be handled, described in Statoil’s governing
2
Introduction
documents and requirements for IM. Statoil has found itself to be in the forefront in adoption
and use of large scale ECM solutions. Hence, I would argue that this strengthens and justifies
Statoil as a well suited research site in the emerging field of ECM.
The cluster studied in this research, the Oil Trading and Supply (OTS) business cluster, is
Statoil’s trading organization and marketer of crude oil, refined products, natural gas liquids,
methanol, electricity and carbon dioxide (CO2). Every day employees in OTS must handle a
variety of unstructured information received from internal and external sources. Enormous
amounts of information is created and received every day, and a single trade worker could
receive as much as 200 e-mails a day. As stated, OTS is regarded a highly specialized
business cluster, with unique demands regarding IM, and is within specific areas considered
to be incompatible with the implemented corporate-wide ECM solution in Statoil. The
employees in OTS are having a hard time to adapt to this program with the standardized work
processes for IM, regarding their specialized work and their busy work day.
1.2 Research Questions
Based on the background, purpose, and motivation for the thesis, the following research
questions were formulated:
 What are the main challenges to efficiently using a standard ECM solution to handle
large volumes of unstructured information in a highly specialized and diverse business
cluster?
 What actions could be executed to meet internal and external compliance regulations
in such environments?
 How are employees adapting to ECM initiatives and to what consequence?
ECM systems have been adopted across organizations, and the adoption of these technologies
will most likely spread further. However, it is not yet known how widely these technologies
have been assimilated in organizations, for example, how extensively they are used within the
organization, how faithfully they are used, and how effectively they are used. This study seeks
to generate knowledge within these issues, through an in-depth analysis of ECM practices in
an early adopter of this technology.
This study also seeks to contribute with new insight for the case organization, potentially
contributing to better e-collaboration, IM practice and improved ECM strategies and
technologies.
1.3 Outline of the Thesis
This thesis is divided into nine chapters.
The “Introduction” chapter presents the background, purpose and motivation of this study,
research questions and this outline.
Chapter two introduces the concept of ECM by giving a brief historic overview of the
phenomenon and discusses different ECM definitions.
The third chapter deals with the different components of ECM such as the enterprise wide
perspective, content and tagging of content with metadata, and management of content.
3
Introduction
In the fourth chapter, adoption of ECM in organizations is discussed, highlighting benefits
and issues concerning ECM.
Chapter five “Research Approach”, describes the scientific method used in the research and a
description of the research process is presented.
The sixth chapter presents the case study and the organizational setting for this research.
In the seventh chapter results and findings from the data analysis are presented.
Chapter eight “Discussion”, is focused on discussing the results compared with prior research
and literature.
The ninth chapter summarizes what conclusions that can be made from the study based on the
research questions.
4
Overview of Enterprise Content Management
2 Overview of Enterprise Content Management
This chapter examines the phenomenon of Enterprise Content Management (ECM). To get a
better understanding of the concept, the next section gives a brief historic overview of ECM,
before defining the concept in more detail.
2.1 Brief Historic Overview of ECM
From the early days of the IS discipline, IM and a variety of concepts for controlling an
organization’s digital information assets has been investigated (vom Brocke et al., 2010).
Various concepts for controlling an organization’s digital information assets, such as
Electronic Document Management (EDM) or Records Management first released during the
late 1980’s have been investigated (Kemp, 2007). Later on, the adoption of the Internet in the
1990’s resulted in uncontrolled growth of information assets in Web sites, intranets, and
extranets, which gave rise to development of concepts like Web Content Management
(WCM), as there was a need for managing corporate Web contents (McKeever, 2003). The
Web moved from small informally designed Web sites with just 1,000 Web pages on the Web
in 1992, into large, rapidly changing sites, where the need for strong management tools
became greater (ibid). Towards the end of the 1990’s however, organizations began to
demand EDM products with an integrated approach to managing documents, Web content,
and digital assets that could address more than one business need (Wilkoff et al., 2001), and in
2000/2001 software companies responded to this by starting to produce ECM systems (Kemp,
2007).
According to Päivärinta & Munkvold (2005) the concept of ECM has evolved during the past
20 years, and that ECM originates from the development of WCM (ibid). The scope of this
practice, at its early stages, was just a small fraction of what we know today as ECM (Usman
et al., 2009).
2.2 What is ECM?
The concept of ECM is a new and emerging field in both the IS academia (Tyrväinen et al.,
2006) and practice (Dilnutt, 2006). Today, ECM is being used in organizations and industries,
often where there is strong competition, rapid product innovation and changing consumer
behavior (Kemp, 2007). To maintain a competitive advantage (Porter, 1998) in such an
environment there is a great need for IT and organizations to adapt and innovate. Effective
capturing, managing, storing, preserving and delivering of information, content and
documents can help facilitate this, such as ECM intend to (Kemp, 2007).
However, despite its widespread use, there is very little consensus on the meaning of the term
ECM (Gottlieb, 2005), and there is still a lack of understanding and unified definitions of the
concept (vom Brocke et al., 2010). According to Smith & McKeen (2003) there exists no
single, unified perspective on ECM and there is still a considerable confusion about the
meaning of the concept, where managers, academics, and vendors are all trying to understand
and define it.
There are various closely related and well-researched concepts to ECM such as Electronic
Document Management (EDM), Content Management (CM) and Web Content Management
(WCM) (vom Brocke et al., 2010). Hence Päivärinta & Munkvold (2005) discuss “whether
ECM actually represents anything new compared to the established constructs of IM” (p. 1).
They conclude that ECM differs from the existing solutions in that it aims to combine these
5
Overview of Enterprise Content Management
(amongst others) previously separated ISs, and that ECM goes beyond their individual and
collective scopes. Munkvold et al. (2006) also acknowledge that a majority of issues
associated with ECM initiatives can be traced back to these established research areas when
studied separately, and that the concept of ECM integrates these issues in a new manner.
2.3 Defining ECM
The term ECM has been given various definitions and meanings since its origin in 2000/2001
(Gottlieb, 2005), thus defining the concept is not an easy task.
Smith & McKeen (2003, p. 648) define ECM as: “the strategies, tools, processes and skills an
organization needs to manage all its information assets (regardless of type) over their
lifecycle”.
Blair (2004, p. 65) regards ECM as a concept that covers a wide range of technologies:
”ECM is the technologies, tools, and methods used to capture, manage, store, preserve,
and deliver content across an enterprise … ECM is also concerned with information
that would not normally be classified, retained, and managed as a record. ECM
focuses on unstructured information, that is, the free-form content that exists outside
the confines of databases or systems with fixed routines and pathways, such as e-mail,
word processing documents, digital images and Portable Document Format files.”
Moore cited in Iverson & Burkart (2007, p.407) explains ECM as an umbrella covering
different technologies:
“We use enterprise content management as an overarching term that describes a
number of different technologies that up until recently have been seen as discrete
markets. It includes document management, Web content management, records
management, document imaging and digital asset management, among other
things…ECM encompasses all of the unstructured content in an organization.”
ECM could be the technical solutions to publish and share content like Microsoft SharePoint,
EZ Publish, Joomla or other publication tools. But ECM is much more than technology, and it
seems as the technology perspective of ECM has received less attention in the latest
definitions, whilst strategy and methods have received more consideration. Mescan (2004)
acknowledge this perception by calling ECM “a strategy rather than a solution” (p. 55).
The latest and more recently updated definition by The Association for Information and
Image Management (AIIM) puts equal emphasis on strategies, methods and tools:
“Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the strategies, methods and tools used to
capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to
organizational processes. ECM tools and strategies allow the management of an
organization’s unstructured information, wherever that information exists.” (AIIM,
2008).
Stalters (2007) also gives minor importance to technology, and emphasize ECM as:
6
Overview of Enterprise Content Management
“a management practice that provides for governance of an information management
environment toward the goal of improving compliance, information reuse and sharing,
and operational performance. ECM is a structured approach employing methods,
policies, metrics, management practices and software tools to manage the lifecycle of
information and to continuously optimize an organization’s collections of information
and information management processes.”
Technology is an important enabler for ECM, but ECM is above all organizational (Munkvold
et al. 2006). Tyrväinen et al. (2006) also have a wide perspective on what ECM is, and argue
that technology is only one part of ECM and the challenges inherent. Development of new
content management solutions in organizations requires new strategies for how content is to
be handled and also changes in business processes and work practices (Salminen et al., 2006
cited in Tyrväinen et al., 2006). “Computer science and software engineering may well
produce various technological innovations for content management, but they tend to neglect
the content aspect and the organizational context of ECM” (Tyrväinen et al., 2006, p. 628).
Duhon (2009) argues that technology, including ECM, will not solve any business problem,
and that you got to understand the business first, then apply technology to it. He further states
that “too often, there is confusion between ECM as strategy and ECM as technology. It is
both. But strategy first; technology second” (p. 15). Munkvold et al. (2006) argue that “the
rationale of ECM resides in the global collaboration needs of an organization’s employees,
customers, and partners through digital information content” (p. 95).
The focus of this thesis is how ECM can support unstructured information, like e-mail and
text documents. Such files include a large portion of many enterprises’ total amount of
information, and have a tendency to stay where they are created, e.g. on the individual local
PC, if there are no routines to handle this kind of content (unstructured content will be
addressed more detailed later). Content is often created by authors working in isolation from
other authors within the organization (Rockley, 2003). Walls are created among and within
content areas, which leads to content being created, and recreated, and recreated, often with
changes or differences at each iteration (ibid). Aagre (2008) adds that sharing of information
is a sensitive area, because sharing information means one has to give up on something. That
is why it is important that management clearly expresses the benefits with an ECM project.
For that reason Aagre (2008) argues that ECM deals with corporate/company policy and
management as well as with technology.
ECM is very popular among major corporations, and ECM vendors target large organizations
with complex needs (Iverson & Burkart, 2007). de Carvalho (2007) argues that small and
medium enterprises (SME), education and research institutions, and government bodies have
the same need for unstructured information management, and Alsup & Strong (2004) call to
attention that content management problems exists in every organization, regardless of size,
number of locations or business complexity. However, cost is a significant barrier to ECM
adoption in SMEs and nonprofit organizations (Iverson & Burkart, 2007), and most of the
time, they cannot afford the high acquisition and customization costs (de Carvalho, 2007).
Although it is possible to use smaller content management systems for e.g. intranets and
extranets as well as implement other knowledge management strategies (Iverson & Burkart,
2007). An Open source ECM solution could also be an alternative (de Carvalho, 2007).
Iverson & Burkart (2007) also argue that when there is a scarcity of resources, the decision
making regarding content and knowledge management is even more important.
7
Overview of Enterprise Content Management
Iverson & Burkart (2007) state that any organization considering ECM or a smaller content
management system should carefully consider the impact that the system will have on the
organization. To assist the decision making, Iverson & Burkart (2007) present a model for
evaluating ECM and other similar systems. This content management model provides a
framework for analyzing some of the impact that content management systems such as ECM
may have on the organization. The questions raised by the model give decision makers who
may not be familiar with the technology a way to ask important questions about how the costs
of implementing ECM or other content technology will compare to the advantages in their
particular case.
According to Alsup & Strong (2004), with the advent of electronic documents, records
management (RM) has become a dysfunctional business discipline. Most organizations today
are confused about RM roles and boundaries, but they are clear that they are not managing
electronic records in a way that is compliant with either their internal policies, if they exist, or
the legal requirements that affect their businesses. However, practitioner, specialist and
master designations from different course programs regarding ECM, ERM, etc. are beginning
to be used to differentiate staff in job postings, resumes, and proposals (Duhon, 2009). Duhon
(2009) argues that while companies may not be looking for an “ECM specialist” by name,
they are looking for persons with the skills that such a specialist possesses. He states that IT
professionals need to have a combination of information management, business processes,
and industry experience to understand the user perspective.
According to Andersen (2008) excitement for ECM solutions is extensive and the ECM
market is booming. Rockley (2006) cited in Andersen (2008) informs that the sales of ECM
software in the U.S. are expected to reach $4 billion in 2010, up from $2.1 billion in 2005.
Nordheim and Päivärinta (2006) acknowledge that an ECM system can be regarded as a type
of Enterprise System (ES) due to its coverage and complexity and that it fulfills the
characteristics of ES in general, like Enterprise Recourse Planning (ERP) systems and
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems that have been given significant
attention recent years.
An ECM system usually requires little or no software to be installed on a personal computer,
because ECM software leverages Internet technology to deliver services to people. To access
such software therefore usually requires only a Web browser, a username, and a password
(Jenkins et al., 2006). An ECM solution is often accessed through portals (Mack et al., 2001
cited in Nordheim and Päivärinta, 2006) where information resources from multiple sources
and applications are combined, providing navigational aids to cover the information resources
of the organization (Nordheim & Päivärinta, 2006).
8
Components of ECM
3 Components of ECM
Enterprise Content Management is abbreviated with the acronym ECM or sometimes ECMS
where the S stands for system. In this chapter the words Enterprise, Content, and Management
will be discussed more in detail. Metadata will also be discussed as this underpins the content
aspect in the ECM context.
3.1 Enterprise and the Enterprise Problem
The term enterprise refers to an organization of individuals working together to achieve a
common goal (Ahmed & Umrysh, 2001). Enterprises generally have some common needs,
such as information management, information sharing and processing, asset management and
tracking, resource management, customer or client management, and so on. The term
enterprise software is used to collectively refer to all software involved in supporting these
common elements of an enterprise (Ahmed & Umrysh, 2001).
ECM intends to address the needs of an entire organization rather than just the business
processes of a single department (Alsup & Strong, 2004). The word “enterprise” may bring to
mind large organizations operating in multiple locations with complex business processes and
large numbers of content-generating applications and technologies. But as mentioned above,
content management problems exists in every organization regardless of size, number of
locations or business complexity.
The content management problem is complex at the enterprise level, which is illustrated by
the case study presented later in this report. The following figure by Alsup & Strong (2004)
illustrates the typical enterprise interfaces with contractors and business partners on the left
side, as well as other parties, including governments, customers and vendors on the right side.
In each of these interfaces in today’s modern enterprises, there is a usually a high degree of
content movement and processes that are not organized or managed as well as it needs to be
(Alsup & Strong, 2004).
Figure 3.1 – Enterprise view of enterprise content (Alsup & Strong, 2004)
9
Components of ECM
Alsup & Strong (2004) explain this further:
 “Most large organizations are composed of multiple, integrated processes, many of
which almost entirely depend on documents and forms.
 Documents are created and reviewed internally.
 They are received from contractors, reviewed, and approved or rejected.
 They are delivered to customers and governments based on contractual or regulatory
requirements.
 There are complex document management processes related to the tracking and
control of the documents on a project.
 In addition, the content being exchanged between organizations is in a variety of
media, including paper, e-mail, faxes and electronic documents, which are not
managed in an integrated manner.” (Alsup & Strong, 2004, p. 4).
Alsup & Strong (2004) say that as result of ineffective content management, opportunities for
process improvement, risk reduction and competitive advantage are lost. Usman et al. (2009)
argues that if these complexities and challenges are not addressed in a systemic and planned
manner, there is a great risk of organizational chaos and inability to meet the strategic
business goals and objectives. They also go as far as saying that it threatens organizations to
“seize to exist and ultimately vanishing from the face of the business world” (p. 284).
Clearly, as Alsup & Strong (2004) point out, there exists a potential business case for the
consistent use of ECM technologies across the enterprise to ensure access and protection of
critical information assets.
3.2 Content
Everyone within an enterprise is responsible for producing or consuming some sort of content
(Gottlieb, 2005), and there is as previously stated usually a high degree of content movement
within an enterprise (Alsup & Strong, 2004). The term “content” will be addressed further,
with main focus on unstructured content.
3.2.1 What is Content?
According to Tyrväinen et al. (2006) the word “content” has a number of meanings, but
essentially it always refers to something contained in an entity. When comparing the word
with the terms “data” or “information”, they say that content clearly is associated with a
container. “We talk about the content of a document, content of a Web site, or content of the
Internet, among others. Content is often opposed to some other aspect of the container, for
example, structure or form or representation. In an XML document, for example, we can
separate content, structure, and one or more external presentations.” (Tyrväinen et al., 2006,
p. 628). Kampffmeyer (2004) says that the meaning of content in the ECM scope is not
unambiguous. When looking at the literature two or three types of content frequently appear.
Some authors make a clear cut between structured and unstructured content, where some put
weakly or semi-structured content between these two categories.
3.2.2 Structured, Unstructured and Weakly/Semi-Structured Content
Structured content is information that is standardized in layout and size, e.g. a data set where
each column represents a variable and each row represents a member of the data set. This type
10
Components of ECM
of content is usually stored and managed in databases (Kampffmeyer, 2004). Other structures
as diagram, trees and grids are also usual representations of structured content (Willenborg,
2000). This type of information is often associated with ERP systems, such as financial
information or employee records. The standardized structure of the information brings
possibilities for automatic analysis, classification and re-use of content (ibid), i.e. a computer
can with ease interpret the information because of the standardized layout, and therefore this
type of content is generally easy to manage since its format makes it easy for a system to
structure it, and select relevant parts of it upon a request from the user (Kampffmeyer, 2004).
Structured content is out of the focus for this thesis and will not be getting more attention.
A lot of information in an enterprise is contained in weakly or semi-structured content
documents, such as e-mails, text documents or HTML pages (Aleksy & Schwind, 2006).This
type of content is often the first type of information that comes to mind when thinking about
content. This is mainly word processor files and such content can contain both layout and
metadata but these are not standardized, as is the case with structured content. This can be
thought of in terms of that this type of content is lexically interpretable for a system, i.e.
understand the meaning of the words. But it is relatively hard for the system to understand the
semantic meaning of the information, i.e. understand the meaning of the words in that
particular context. This makes weakly structured content harder to classify and also harder for
the user to retrieve in comparison to structured content.
Within unstructured content resides content that is hard for a software system to even
lexically interpret, and classification is therefore even harder. Examples of this type of content
are images, videos, sound recordings and scanned document (Kampffmeyer, 2004). They are
often stored in different ways and created individually and manually rather than
automatically. Even though difficult for a system to understand, interpret and classify, it is
often very powerful information for users and therefore important for a business to manage.
There is not total consensus about which of these types of content an ECM system should
handle. Weakly/semi-structured and unstructured content are in literature always regarded as
ECM content. But when addressing the structured content some argue, as addressed in some
of the ECM definitions in chapter one, that this is not a part of ECM. As mentioned earlier,
the focus of this thesis is how ECM can support unstructured information, and to simplify the
reading, unstructured content and weakly/semi-structured content will be used under the term
unstructured content further in this thesis. Structured content will not be focused in this study.
3.3 Metadata
When addressing content in the ECM context it is natural to introduce metadata that recently
has emerged as an important concept for those who are developing search and retrieval
strategies for information (Rockley, 2003).
Traditionally, metadata has been defined as “data about data” or as “information about
information” (NISO, 2004). More recent literature expresses a dissatisfaction with definitions
like these, and they really do not tell much about what metadata is, its purpose and for what it
can be used (Chisholm, 2008). Chisholm (2008) defines the term as follows: “metadata is the
data that describes any aspect of an enterprise’s information assets and enables the
organization to use and manage these assets”. NISO (2004) describes metadata as “structured
information that describes, explains, locates, or otherwise makes it easier to retrieve, use, or
manage an information resource”. Others say that the most important applications for
11
Components of ECM
metadata are to describe information and thereby make it searchable, so that it can be
retrieved and combined in meaningful ways for users (McNay, 2002). Rockley (2003) says
that this could be regarded as labeling, cataloguing and describing information, that allows the
content elements to be properly processed and searched by a computer. Near (2010) argues
that metadata is critical to any ECM system, and that metadata is “how you file your content,
how you find your content, it defines the processes that apply to your content, and it is how
you ensure that your content is managed in a compliant way.”
Rockley (2003) also states that metadata can be used to describe the behavior, processes, rules
and structure of the data, not just descriptive information, and that these elements are
important when developing a metadata strategy for content search and retrieval which is part
of ECM, because they determine not only what the content is, but who uses it, how it will be
used, how it will be delivered, and when. The next section explains the usefulness of metadata
to the three activities regarding content stored in a data system.
3.3.1 Metadata for Reuse, Retrieval and Tracking
Rockley (2003) says that metadata for reuse can be particularly useful in a content strategy,
eliminating content redundancies. In this case, metadata is applied to each content element.
Thereafter, authors can search for elements before beginning to write, to see if they already
exist somewhere in another document stored in the ECM system. Metadata for reuse could
include: content type, where the content should appear, creation date, content owner,
keywords and links to where content is already used. Some metadata for reuse is applied
automatically, based upon the document definition, (e.g., type of content), while other
metadata is added by the author (e.g., keywords) (Rockley, 2003).
Metadata for retrieval enables content to be retrieved through searching. Rockley (2003) says
that metadata for retrieval can include much of the same metadata one defines for reuse, but is
usually much more extensive. It can include metadata such as: title, author, date (creation,
completion, modification), keywords, responsible party, security status, and tracking (e.g.,
status). Metadata for retrieval enables users to specifically define which content elements they
want to view (Rockley, 2003).
Further, Rockley (2003) says that metadata for tracking is particularly useful when you are
implementing workflow as part of a content strategy. By assigning status metadata to each
content element, one can determine which elements that are active, control what can be done
to an element, and who can do it. Generally, status changes based on the metadata are
controlled through workflow automation, not by end users (Rockley, 2003). Status metadata
can include: draft (under development by the author), draft for review, reviewed, approved,
final, and submitted.
3.3.2 Defining Metadata and Metadata Categories
Rockley (2003) states that properly defining and categorizing the types of metadata that an
organization wants to capture about the organization’s information is extremely important to
the success of the metadata strategy. “Improperly identified metadata, or missed categories of
metadata, can cause problems ranging from misfiled and therefore inaccessible content, to
more serious problems such as those encountered by the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration’s (NASA’s) 1999 Mars Climate Orbiter mission, in which misidentified
12
Components of ECM
metadata resulted in the loss of the spacecraft, at a cost of $300 million!” (Rockley, 2003, p.
13).
Rockley (2003) points out that first of all, it should be determined if the metadata is being
defined for retrieval, reuse, or tracking. Then one has to understand the end business results
that the business is trying to achieve, in order to build the metadata backwards to achieve that
result (Rockley, 2003). By properly defining metadata that a business needs, Rockley (2003)
states that this helps to make sure that the right information is delivered to the right person,
for the right reason, at the right time.
3.3.3 Metadata in Practice
After nearly a decade of consulting customers in the ECM market, Near (2010) reports that
organizations experience both joy and pain of managing metadata. When large organizations
embark on an ECM project he says that metadata will be the point where the various parts of
the organization begin to reveal how very different they are. And that the reality of an
enterprise is that every stakeholder group has different needs, that they all use content in
different ways, and that they all have some unique piece of information that they absolutely
need to track. This shows that the use of metadata is complex (Near, 2010). This is also
illustrated by the case study presented later in this report.
Enforcing standard metadata classifications gives users a common language to describe and
find content (Wilkoff et al., 2001). However, Wilkoff et al. (2001) say that building a standard
taxonomy that spans all enterprise content is a daunting task. They suggest that firms should
take a practical approach by focusing first on the content that matters most. As a starting
point, content administrators should identify the top-three customer and end user goals and
tag the content that facilitates those scenarios (ibid).
Banerjee (2000) discusses many of the challenges that were encountered during a project
designed to explore “using metadata as well as other tools to reduce the need to manually
create records for electronic resources” (p. 217). The results suggest that metadata must be
entered consistently if they are to be useful. This involves what sort of metadata that belongs
in the various fields. To achieve consistent entry of metadata, Banerjee (2000) states that
people have to agree upon what type of information that belongs in the metadata and what
they hope to accomplish by putting it there. Attaining this agreement is extremely difficult as
a practical matter according to Banerjee (2000). Different user communities have diverse
interests, and metadata typically is defined in terms that reflect the interests of a particular
user community (Vellucci, 1997 cited in Banerjee, 2000). Further Banerjee (2000) reports that
adding consistent metadata requires significant time and effort. Although some metadata such
as date of creation may be generated automatically by the system in use, only humans can
identify many important relationships in data. Some documents are best identified by people
because they cannot be readily derived by software from the structure and content alone (c.f.
unstructured content 3.2.2). Banerjee (2000) also reports that there was a great deal of
variability in how users filled out the submission form with metadata values. Because of this
inconsistent use of metadata, some felt that the value of the fields was questionable. Another
problem that was identified was that people supplied metadata for different reasons. Milstead
(1993) cited in Banerjee (2000) informs that some people may be more interested in achieving
their own financial or emotional objectives than in helping other users to find what they need.
Banerjee (2000) also report that it was difficult to find local expertise who could dedicate time
to support the project, and with the specialized skills necessary to evaluate, implement, and
13
Components of ECM
maintain systems that exploit metadata. Finally, Banerjee (2000) notes that “Metadata is a
tool, not a solution to problems. Just as high tech woodworking and machine tools are
potentially useless (or even harmful) in the hands of unskilled people, people need to
understand what metadata does and develop certain skills to make use of it.”(p. 223).
3.4 Management of content
Once the terms enterprise, content and metadata is addressed, it is time to consider how to
handle this content within the concept of ECM. Based on the ECM definitions provided for in
chapter one, this part is normally divided in five distinctive tasks: capture, manage, store,
preserve, and deliver. Sometimes other terms and activities are included but the meaning is in
essence the same.
Chieu et al. (2008) say that content management essentially deals with human workflow that
involves the lifecycle management and exchange of business documents among organizations
and users. They further explain that in such document exchange workflow, a business
document typically starts from an initial “draft” created by a submitter. It then goes through
numerous rounds of reviews, changes and validation before it gets the approval and signatures
and is sent to its final dealing parties. The dealing parties on the other hand may have to go
through a similar process to review and approve the business document. The number of
intermediate steps during the document lifecycles depends on the complexity of the business
process among the involved parties. Chieu et al. (2008) state that without a content
management system to handle this lifecycle, the various workflow steps are typically carried
via traditional fax or e-mails, thus imposing delays and inefficiencies with the manual
processes.
There are many models of information or content lifecycle management. One model by
Kampffmeyer (2006) is illustrated below. These phases will briefly be addressed next, based
on Kampffmeyer (2006).
Figure 3.2 – Component-model of ECM (Kampffmeyer, 2006)
14
Components of ECM
Capture
This part refers to the process where new content is collected, generated, or created within the
enterprise. This content has to be identified and classified with metadata in some way into the
ECM system that will house and manage it. Content items may be unstructured such as
addressed earlier.
Manage
The Manage components are for the management, processing, and use of information. This
incorporates database for administration and retrieval, and access authorization systems for
protection of information. Kampffmeyer (2006) says that the goal of an ECM system is to
provide these two components just once as services for all “Manage” solutions such as
Document Management, Collaboration, Web Content Management, Records Management
and Workflow / Business Process Management. To link the various “Manage” components,
an ECM system should have standardized interfaces and secure transaction processes.
Store
“Store” components are used for the temporary storage of information which it is not
required or desired to archive.
Preserve
The “Preserve” components of ECM handle the long-term, safe storage and backup
information. In some cases, content such as business records may need to be preserved for
long periods of time in a trustworthy and accurate manner.
Deliver
This involves providing access and presentation of content from the location it is stored or
preserved in a timely and secure manner, to the systems and people who have access to it.
This is supported by the metadata associated with the content.
15
Components of ECM
16
Adoption of ECM in Organizations
4 Adoption of ECM in Organizations
In this chapter relevant characteristics of adoption of ECM in organizations are presented and
discussed.
4.1 ECM Drivers
The benefits ECM holds for organizations seem endless (vom Brocke et al., 2010). A survey
of organizations using ECM conducted by Forrester Research (reported in Gonsalves, 2009)
showed that content search, sharing and compliance will drive much of the spending on ECM
in 2010. Of those organizations planning to increase their ECM use, 61% said that content
sharing is the most important driver, followed by compliance (51%), improved search (45%),
and cost-effective automation (44%).
IDG Research Services (2008) queried 115 CIO Magazine subscribers to investigate the
importance of an enterprise-wide approach to content management. The majority of
respondents indicated that they have a plan to standardize on a single ECM platform
throughout the enterprise. The key findings include different drivers and benefits. The
respondents indicated that increased productivity would be most beneficial to the company
(70 %), followed by improved customer service (65 %), facilitating compliance (58 %), lower
costs (56 %), increased information security (51 %), and improved ability to respond to
market forces/react to competition (47 %). The survey also reveals that ECM is viewed almost
equally as a business priority (56 percent) and an IT priority (59 percent).
Within cost reductions which are the easiest value to quantify, Rogalski (2006) rapports that
Accenture estimated ROI improvements from improved ECM from a survey of typical clients.
They found:





Cost savings from a reduction in the time required to find content, valued at
$2,280,000 per year.
A reduction in document creation costs would save an estimated $2,100,000 per year.
Time saved in report submissions was valued at $82,080 per year.
Other workflow benefits were worth $1,368,000 per year.
Total yearly savings: $5,830,080 - almost $6 million.
Päivärinta & Munkvold (2005) have indentified varying types of organizational objectives
and impacts for implementing ECM while studying 58 different case studies (p. 2):
 “improved internal and external collaboration, involving knowledge creation and
sharing through digital content in and among enterprises with commonly enacted
practices;
 value-added or new customer services and products involving digital content;
 reliability and quality of information content resulting in less errors in products and
services;
 modern and professional image of the enterprise in the eyes of its stakeholders;
 efficiency, effectiveness, and flexibility of knowledge work and business processes,
including reuse of previously created content, metadata, templates, and navigation
aids;
 meaningful knowledge work, involving easier and less tedious human routines for
content management;
17
Adoption of ECM in Organizations
 organizational memory recording the practice, history, and transactions of the
enterprise;
 direct cost savings in information processing operations and facilities;
 satisfying external regulations and standards, directly or indirectly governing the
enterprise’s information management;
 platforms and capabilities to develop and maintain targeted content management
applications quickly for emerging purposes.”
In a few of the cases investigated by Päivärinta & Munkvold (2005), the need for complying
with external regulations and standards alone served to justify ECM. The cases revealed few
or no undesired impacts from ECM implementations, and Päivärinta & Munkvold (2005)
encourage complementing the success stories with in-depth studies on all possible impacts,
including negative ones.
Smith and McKeen (2003) present other benefits for content management: simplified forms
and work processes, improved navigation through organizational records, reduced materials
costs, increased access to information, and improved accuracy and currency of information.
Because organizational knowledge is captured in enterprise content, ECM can further act as
an enabler of sustainable knowledge management, as organizations will be better equipped at
leveraging organizational knowledge to help them gain competitive advantage (Kemp, 2007).
Centralized information repositories can make access to information possible from anywhere,
and in turn help to leverage existing knowledge to employees in various locations (ibid).
Further some of the drivers addressed here will be discussed in more detail.
4.1.1 Finding Existing Content
The main task of a content management system is to centralize content in one repository so it
can be better organized, shared, and tracked throughout an organization (Mescan, 2004). The
ability to find existing content, whether it is a Word document, an e-mail or an Excel
spreadsheet, can have great impact on the productivity of a business (Kemp, 2007). The time
employees take to find content that is already within their organization can be costly, as a
study from Delphi (2004) estimates: “poor classification costs a 10,000 user organization
$10M annually”. The Gartner Group cited in O’Callaghan & Smits (2005) estimates that most
of the data captured in organizations today is unstructured (75%-80%) and not in such a
format that it can be found, when needed. It has been estimated that knowledge workers who
add value by processing existing information to define and solve problems (Drucker, 2000
cited in Kemp, 2007) spend up to 30% of their working day searching for data and
approximately 15–25% on non-productive, primarily information-related tasks (Burnett et al.
2006 cited in vom Brocke et al., 2010). About 70% of that time is spent browsing for
information, reported by Delphi (2004).
However, as Kemp (2007) points out, ECM allows organizations to index all user generated
content including content residing in existing, disparate business critical or legacy
applications, which when coupled with rich search capabilities allows users to find the content
they want and need. Through its tracking and reporting features, a content management
system can also provide a complete history of the various versions of a file or piece of
content: who made changes to it, when it was changed, and what the changes were (Mescan,
2004). Previous versions can even be reinstated if necessary. This is especially important for
18
Adoption of ECM in Organizations
organizations in terms of complying with various government regulations which will be
addressed more in detail later.
Thus despite the often high price of purchasing an ECM system it is possible for organizations
to significantly reduce the costs associated with finding existing content and see a realistic
Return on Investment (ROI) from an ECM implementation (ibid). Kemp (2007) also suggests
that it would make sense for an organization to compare its estimated costs of finding existing
content with the cost-per-seat of the ECM system they have in mind. Kemp (2007) states that
larger organizations are likely to gain a better ROI than smaller ones when implementing a
large commercial ECM system, as the cost will be spread between more users.
4.1.2 Reducing content duplication
Another important area of ECM is the ability to reduce content duplication, i.e. reproducing
content that already exists within an organization. Taylor (1998) cited in Kemp (2007)
highlights that this occurs on a large scale and that knowledge workers spend roughly 25% of
their time recreating existing content. Gantz et al. (2008) present a day in the life of an e-mail
which shows how the digital universe feeds upon itself. This can be seen in the digital
footprint created by a single e-mail sent to a team of four people. The following example is
based on an e-mail infrastructure used by most companies:
“The e-mail itself is small, but with it is a 1MB attachment. The e-mail is sent to four
people, which would mean that there are 5 x 1.1MB involved, the original and four
copies. But there is more to it. To begin with, there is the document itself stored on the
local machine, then the e-mail that contains the document. In this infrastructure,
copies of all e-mails are kept on the central e-mail server, which, in order to keep the
e-mail system up and running, includes a redundant server. Desktop files, where the
original document sits, are backed up daily to a server. The servers are then
periodically backed up to tape and taken offsite. The original 1.1MB e-mail has a
footprint eight times bigger than itself. Now add up the local and backed-up copies of
the e-mail sent to the four colleagues, and that footprint is 30 times larger than the
original e-mail. Then there is all the temporary data created as the e-mails and
backup systems send data back and forth across the local and wide area networks. In
transmission, all manner of communications overhead is introduced: signaling data,
packet addresses and headers, security codes, router caches, and management and
tracking information. The estimate here is admittedly fuzzy, but it is within the order of
magnitude. There are techniques for deduplicating redundant e-mails and multiple
copies of documents, but they aren’t widely spread yet. In the meantime, a simple email can have a very long shadow.” (p. 8).
However, through the use of ECM organizations are able to reduce this significantly. This is
often facilitated by effective indexing and storing of such content with the use of metadata,
which also is one of the key barriers organizations must overcome when implementing an
ECM (c.f. 3.3.3).
With ECM, content is stored in the system once and reused many times, making the editorial
process more efficient (Mescan, 2004). Employees who work from home or a remote office
can access the content, allowing them to complete research or reuse content that was created
previously by someone else in the organization (ibid). Mescan (2004) states that because of
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Adoption of ECM in Organizations
this, content management systems can save an organization thousands of dollars in duplicated
writing efforts, research time, production, and translation costs.
4.1.3 Compliance
For many businesses, one of the main drivers of ECM is the need for compliance (vom
Brocke et al., 2010). Enterprises today are obliged to different informational demands (Aleksy
& Schwind, 2006), which is a pressing concern for executives who are personally responsible
for the accuracy of critical corporate information (Rogalski, 2006).
First, in many large organizations who regularly deal with confidential and sensitive data
there is likely to be a need to ensure compliance with legal and regulatory requirements
regarding storing and using data (such as Sarbanes-Oxley, BSI BIP008 or the Freedom of
Information Action Act) that impose rules on how documents, such as e-mails related to bank
customers accounts, etc. have to be stored (Kemp, 2007). This includes process
documentation, secure storage, and traceability of transactions which is a vital necessity for
any enterprise or administrative office (Kampffmeyer, 2006).
On the other hand, compliance is not just a matter of complying with regulations, but also of
enabling usability of information in own processes (Kampffmeyer, 2006), where information
has to be archived to support internal requirements of the enterprise (vom Brocke et al.,
2010). Content, especially unstructured, will continue its explosive growth, and Kampffmeyer
(2006) says that the improvement of quality and implementation of more efficient processes
are economic factors that should be kept in mind when establishing procedures to comply
with legal requirements, and thus ECM can contribute to making the investment in
compliance profitable. Dilnutt (2006) supports this and says that an ECM solution could
enforce discipline around the creation, storage and generation of documentation required for
compliance purposes. Without ECM solutions the time required to satisfy reporting
requirements can significantly erode the time available for employees to do their jobs
(Dilnutt, 2006).
The need to manage data for regulatory compliance and business advantage becomes more
pressing daily (Rogalski, 2006). Kemp (2007) says that with an ECM system it is possible to
automate such compliance, by for example enforcing workflows and policies on documents
which automate retention, archiving and deletion. In this way any content that is duplicated
will be removed or archived accordingly, thus significantly reducing the possibility of legal
actions resulting. Thus the tools of ECM, properly used, can help reduce the overall cost of
compliance to the business (ibid).
4.1.4 Security
Maintaining security is especially important for global organizations because so many people
are involved in managing content (Mescan, 2004). A good content management system
should allow the organization to control who has access to which files as well as track who
made what changes and when they made them. For most systems, user privileges are assigned
by the system administrator, ensuring that only authorized staff members can access the
content using their unique IDs and passwords (ibid).
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Adoption of ECM in Organizations
4.1.5 Increased “Networking” / Collaboration
Aside from benefits such as finding existing content, reducing content duplication, enforcing
legal compliance on content, ECM can also increase “networking” (in the social and
technological sense of the word) (Kemp, 2007). ECM system allows more than one person
to work on something, which is increasingly important in the competitive world of global
enterprises (Kemp, 2007). Castells (1996), cited in Kemp (2007), characterizes this as
“network enterprises”, a network made either from firms or segments of firms, or from
internal segmentation of firms. In such environments, where sharing of information between
geographically distributed nodes is essential, ECM technologies facilitate the creation of
“virtual teams” (Kemp, 2007), that is a team whose members use networks to communicate,
coordinate and collaborate with each other on tasks and projects, even though they may work
in different geographic locations (Pinsonneault, 2005). Virtual teams are increasingly
becoming of critical importance to many companies, and they tend to undertake the most
global, strategic and complex projects (Caulat, 2006).
The use of ECM in this way can help reap numerous business benefits, such as the ability to
bring together disparate expert users that may not have otherwise communicated. That is,
gathering the best people for a specific task independent of their geographical location
(Caulat, 2006). There are also huge costs with employees travelling around the world for a
meeting lasting just a few hours (ibid). It also encourages employees to utilize the existing
knowledge of their colleagues and it can also help form relationships which may help
knowledge sharing in the future. Thus it encourages employees to work collaboratively, and
learn from each other, and also facilitates the growth of new ideas and innovation (Kemp,
2007). This is in accordance with the already mentioned statement by Munkvold et al. (2006)
that argue that “the rationale of ECM resides in the global collaboration needs of an
organization’s employees, customers, and partners through digital information content”. (p.
95).
4.2 ECM Obstacles, Issues and Challenges
There are numerous obstacles that organizations may face when they adopt ECM. White
(2002), cited in vom Brocke et al. (2010), states that the implementation of content
management solutions is probably the most complex rollout an organization will manage. One
explanation can be found in the awareness that ECM challenges are not only technological,
but above all organizational (Munkvold et al. 2006).
Kemp (2007) argues that the challenge for senior executives in organizations is to evaluate the
extent to which such advantages as addressed above can be acquired and to encourage the use
of such technology whilst removing any barriers that may arise. Furthermore, Kemp (2007)
argues that to ensure that an ECM evolves to meet the ever-changing needs of an
organization, long-term commitment from employees at all levels will be required. In this
way, new business processes, new sources and new types of content will be integrated into the
system for the benefit of the whole organization (ibid).
Companies consist of many separate departments – Accounting and Finance, Legal
Administration, Marketing, Sales, IT, Research and Development, and so on (Jenkins et al.,
2006). Miller (2007) says that a challenge when implementing ECM is that concrete business
needs often differ from department to department. Every departmental application and process
has specific requirements for organizing, processing, storing, retrieving, distributing,
publishing, securing and archiving content (Alsup & Strong, 2004). Alsup & Strong (2004)
21
Adoption of ECM in Organizations
say that the complexities at the application or process level are further magnified at the
enterprise level, which often results in the implementation of what they call
compartmentalized departmental systems that fall short as “enterprise” solutions. Hence they
state that organizations in many occasions are struggling with questions related to the
development of an enterprise wide approach for content management, including the
development of strategies and plans for ECM. Jenkins et al. (2006) say that if these
departmental applications are not enterprise wide in nature they cannot be accessed easily
across departments. Hence the organization will again be fragmented into isolated islands of
information and critical content remains buried. Therefore Jenkins et al. (2006) argue that
these systems should be developed with the same infrastructure and an underlying common
data model, to let people in different departments share information contained in separate
applications.
Miller (2007) also argues that once the ECM system is in place, one still needs to sell end
users its advantages. He further says that “You have to be a taskmaster, a teacher, a facilitator,
and you have to have a whole lot of patience. It makes you wonder how companies ever get to
that end point and successfully implement an ECM system” (p. 48).
IDG Research Services (2008) found in their survey that the key challenges in ECM
implementations were:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Cost of maintaining, administering, training and managing disparate content (58%)
Ability to manage the entire content life cycle from creation to archival (58%)
Maintaining control of content across the enterprise (52%)
Content integration with other business system (59%)
Linking content to business processes (51%).
4.2.1 Framework of Major ECM Issues
Päivärinta & Munkvold (2005) summarizes 58 mainly practice-oriented case narratives from
ECM projects and implementations shared by the AIIM and discuss contemporary issues of
ECM. They identify a framework of major ECM issues (Figure 4.1) that require managerial
attention in organizations. They argue that ECM has to support the organizational goals and
the business model the organization wants to follow. The results will first show up when one
does something to reach the goals (top circle). To implement ECM, a model for content is
needed, with technological infrastructure and administrative resources and procedures that
enable to publish content (mid circle). To ensure that this will work over time and be accepted
by users, change management should be involved.
Figure 4.1 – Major ECM issues (Päivärinta & Munkvold, 2005)
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Adoption of ECM in Organizations
4.3 Framework for ECM research
Tyrväinen et al. (2006) propose a framework for ECM research aimed at stimulating the
academic interest for the field, where they suggest that one should look at ECM as a rich
research phenomenon, from four different relevant research perspectives: content, technology,
enterprise and process. Figure 4.2 portrays these perspectives of the ECM research model.
These four perspectives will be introduced more in detail in the following section.
Figure 4.2 – A framework for ECM research (Tyrvainen et al., 2006)
4.3.1 The Content Perspective
The content perspective is given more attention, as the content perspective is involved in any
piece of ECM research some way (Tyrväinen et al., 2006). Research questions related to the
content perspective address content items, their organization and creation, and use by humans
and other systems. The content perspective can be further broken down into the following
views: the information view, the user view, and the system view. The information view looks
at content semantics, representation, and accessibility to users. This deals with content
organization, metadata, and search. The user view deals with the relationship between users
and content. This view includes issues with content creation, maintenance, and content use.
The system view deals with the system on which content resides, and how content is made
accessible to users. Such systems include among others document management systems, Web
sites and portals.
4.3.2 The Technology Perspective
The technology perspective addresses research into the basic technologies: hardware, software
development and standards used in ECM in an organizational context, while the system view
in the later mentioned content perspective focuses on ECM application accessible to the users.
Tyrväinen et al. (2006) say that “there is a rich body of the literature addressing ECM from
the technology perspective … Typically this literature focuses on one or more generic
technological ideas related to ECM without addressing much the content perspective or the
organizational context of technology utilization” (p. 630). Further they argue that technology
is an important enabler of ECM, however, they conclude that the main focus of ECM research
from the IS perspective must address systems rather than individual technologies, as an ECM
system encloses a number of technologies.
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Adoption of ECM in Organizations
4.3.3 The Enterprise Perspective
The enterprise perspective describes the environment (context) in which content must be
managed. This includes ECM issues relating to the organization, legal, social, and business
aspects. This may include analysis of existing and proposed solutions from the user's
perspective, including personalization of content. It is essential to know how the organization
works before starting on a successful project (Tyrväinen, et al., 2006).
4.3.4 The Process Perspective
Finally, the process perspective involves both the development and deployment of processes
in enterprises. The development involves the processes of developing (methodological),
implementing and maintaining ECM systems correlated with change management. While the
deployment processes include implementation of content life-cycle activities such as: “content
creation and capture, content editing, review, approval, content indexing, classifying and
linking, content distribution, publication and use, update, preservation, format transformation
for long-term archival, and retention” (p. 631).
4.4 Framework for ECM strategy development
O’Callaghan & Smits (2005) state that an ECM strategy aims at reducing the costs of
creating, managing, and distributing content, and ensuring that content effectively supports
organizational needs. They point out that an ECM strategy involves the analysis of content
needs and decisions on which content has to be managed and how it will be managed.
O’Callaghan & Smits (2005) suggest a framework for ECM strategy development and
provide advice for the cost/value assessment of ECM implementations. The framework helps
to select content objects that can be brought under ECM to create business value and guide
the IT investments needed to realize ECM. O’Callaghan & Smits (2005) emphasize that both
value and cost should be evaluated with consideration to the existing situation (which depends
on the existing tools, methods, technology infrastructure and information architecture).
4.4.1 Content audit
The first step in their framework is to analyze the existing needs through a content audit by
including key managers and information specialists in each domain, where the purpose is to
analyze how content is used, reused, and delivered to its various users. By doing so the
organization has an overview of all the content and how it is used. Such analysis reveals key
content objects that are potentially more relevant from the point of view of ECM, and to
investigate further. These will typically be the more frequently used, or those used in
important management decisions or key business processes. The following questions are
relevant to address these issues (O’Callaghan & Smits, 2005, p. 1276):






How much content is available for a given organizational unit? How fast is it growing?
How many types of information content are there?
Who manages which content? Who owns the content? Who uses the content?
How does content get re-used and re-purposed?
What content must be saved, in what form, and for how long?
What solutions / systems / methods are currently being used?
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Adoption of ECM in Organizations
O’Callaghan & Smits (2005) define “five basic ECM features: Find, Distribute, Re-use, Track
and Associate which will be used in the next step.
4.4.2 Value Assessment
The value of putting the identified content object candidates under ECM is being evaluated in
this step. This is done object by object, by analyzing the potential value of each feature
separately, by asking (O’Callaghan & Smits, 2005): what is the value of making a given
object “easy to find”, “easy to distribute”, “re-usable”, “easy to track”, and “associable”? This
value assessment can be done by surveying a number of potential users, or by conducting a
focus group with key informants (typically managers familiar with the information used in the
main business processes), and asking them to rate the perceived value of each feature in a
score on a scale of 0 to 10.
4.4.3 Cost/Effort Assessment
The steps concerning the cost of putting each content object under ECM is being evaluated by
the same five features as above. The cost of making a content object: “findable”,
“distributable”, “re-usable”, “easy to track” and “easy to associate”. This assessment should
be conducted by information management specialists in combination with key informants
from the business units or processes, where they also rate the perceived value of each feature
in a score on a scale of 0 to 10. For the most part, the costs will be related to adding and
managing the metadata that will allow content to be managed in an effective manner
(O’Callaghan & Smits, 2005).
4.4.4 Content Portfolio
The outcome of the value assessment performed by the users and effort assessment carried out
by information specialists is a series of scores for every content object and the five ECM
features for each object. The next step is to plot these scores in to a scatter diagram as shown
in the figure below. The figure illustrates a simple example where 6 content objects have been
identified, whom resulting in 30 data points. The outcome of this step is a managed content
portfolio that enables discussion on what to do with every content object and ECM feature, as
a first step towards an ECM strategy.
Figure 4.3 – An example of the Managed Content Portfolio (O’Callaghan & Smits, 2005).
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Adoption of ECM in Organizations
The position of the dot in the diagram reveals its relative attractiveness. For example, dots that
involve high value and low effort, in the top left quadrant labeled “DO” are clear candidates
for implementation. Those in the bottom right (in the DON’T quadrant) require a lot of effort
and the perceived value is low. These should not be implemented. Dots in the upper right
quadrant (CONSIDER) represent decisions that would involve a lot of effort, but potentially a
high value. These should be carefully analysed as the effort may well be worth it (high risk,
high gain decisions).
Finally O’Callaghan & Smits (2005) state that the focus of this analysis “is not on the
characteristics of the resulting content portfolio (the outcome of the process) but rather on the
assessment of the process itself” (p. 1280).
A departmental strategy should support the corporate strategy (Glick-Smith, 2004). GlickSmith (2004) says that strategic planning at the departmental level needs to be integrated
across departmental boundaries, and that this also applies to the content development process.
She says that to do otherwise fosters a “siloed” environment in which each department is
working independently. All departments in all organizations develop content, although GlickSmith (2004) says that some may have a greater need than others to manage their content.
Hence when departments decide how to manage content, Glick-Smith (2004) argues that it is
important to form a strategic integration team that holds regular meetings to ensure that
departments are communicating with each other, sharing best practices, and discussing
content cohesion in the context of supporting the corporate strategic plan.
4.5 Business Process Perspective onto ECM
It is difficult to effectively select an appropriate content management technology without
understanding the processes and business needs (Rockley, 2004). Rockley (2004) argues that
the organization has to understand the current issues it is dealing with in order to select a tool
that addresses the issues. With such an understanding there could be benefits in reengineering the workflow to gain the maximum benefit from the content management system
(ibid).
vom Brocke et al. (2010) suggest a business process perspective onto the concept of ECM as
both the starting point and the target of ECM implementations, and they document that
process-oriented guidelines are rare in ECM research. Hence they propose to both analyze and
re-design an organization’s business process structure when implementing ECM. They argue
that the analysis of business processes can provide a suitable basis for identifying content, its
users as well as the different systems in which content resides. Further they point out that an
overall ECM concept, likely in most cases, “requires the consideration of change in the
organizational structure, especially with regard to business processes and automated work
flows” (p. 5), as employees are required to get used to new ways of creating, storing and
publishing content.
And so they introduce a process-driven, conceptual ECM-blueprinting framework that
systematizes the major steps of an ECM adoption, illustrated in Figure 4.4 below.
They propose to identify work flows that could have a high potential for improvement with
ECM support by utilizing established approaches from the business process management
(BPM) discipline. “...business processes serve as the foundation for assessing both an
organization’s content as well as required ECM functionalities” (vom Brocke et al., 2010, p.
3). They also argue that an ECM adoption has to fully consider the four perspectives (content,
26
Adoption of ECM in Organizations
technology, enterprise and process) in the framework for ECM research proposed by
Tyrvainen et al. (2006), thus they claim that their ECM-blueprinting framework addresses
each of these perspectives in an integrated manner.
The ECM-blueprinting framework illustrated below distinguishes between different phases
(symbolised by arrows), results (symbolised by rectangles) and methods (being applied within
the phases).
Figure 4.4 – The ECM –blueprinting framework (vom Brocke et al., 2010)
Vom Brocke et al. (2010) provide a simple example that shows that an ECM can reduce the
process’ average lead time notably, illustrated in Figure 4.5 below. “Based on these time
savings and the frequency of each activity, personnel cost reductions can be calculated.
Finally, summing up these cost reductions for all re-designed processes provides a foundation
for the estimation of the total benefits resulting from the ECM adoption.” (p. 16).
In conclusion, vom Brocke et al. (2010) point out that the intention with the suggested
approach is to systematize the major steps of an ECM adoption, rather than to provide
detailed instructions for implementation.
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Adoption of ECM in Organizations
Figure 4.5 – Example: business process re-design (vom Brocke el al., 2010)
4.6 Enterprise systems experience cycle
As noted by Nordheim and Päivärinta (2006), ECM could be regarded as an Enterprise
System (ES) due to its coverage and complexity. It is s never an easy task moving an ES from
conception to implementation, and ECM is certainly no exception (Miller, 2007). An
enterprise system implementation comprises a sequence of iterative stages (Markus & Tanis,
2000). Hence I have looked at the ES literature regarding life cycle stages in order to be able
to place ECM implementation projects in such phases.
Markus & Tanis (2000) propose a framework which they have named “The enterprise system
experience cycle” that provides a life-cycle oriented model for conceptualizing ES
implementation projects. This is a well known life-cycle model and often cited in the ES
literature. Figure 4.6 by Markus & Tanis (2000) summarizes the four “ideal” phases of the
enterprise system experience cycle. Markus & Tanis (2000) note that organizations recycle
through the phases when they undertake major upgrades and/or replacements of their ES.
Their framework consists of the following four phases which are briefly described in the
following section:




The project chartering phase
The project phase
Shakedown phase
Onward and upward Phase
Key activities of the chartering phase include building a business case for ES, identifying a
project manager, and adopting a budget and schedule. Selecting a software package and
vendors may also be part of this phase, or it may be deferred until the project phase. In this
phase, a large number of errors or problems can arise, e.g. that the business case for investing
an ES can be incomplete or faulty, that the organization may underestimate the need for
business and organizational change, or that the business does not allocate sufficient resources
for change management and training. Key activities of the project phase include software
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Adoption of ECM in Organizations
configuration, system integration, testing, data conversion, training, and rollout. Again, a
large number of errors and problems can occur. It could be that the project teams may be
staffed with inadequate representation with lack of knowledge and skills, teams may embark
on extensive, unnecessary modifications, or that data cleanup, testing, or training may be
insufficient. The shakedown phase refers to the period from go-live until when “normal
operations” have been achieved. Key activities of this phase include bug-fixing and rework,
system performance tuning, retraining, and staffing up to handle temporary inefficiencies.
Ross (1998) divides this phase in two phases – implementation (“the dive”) to the stabilizing
phase (“resurfacing”), where there is a so-called productivity dip. To a large extent, the
shakedown phase is the phase in which the errors of prior phases are felt, in the form of
reduced productivity or business disruption, but new errors can arise in this phase too. Markus
& Tanis (2000) mention that operational personnel may adopt workarounds to cope with
earlier problems and then fail to abandon them when the problems are resolved. They also
state that “the organization may come to rely excessively on knowledgeable project team
members rather than building the enterprise system knowledge and skills in all relevant
operational personnel” (p. 195).
Figure 4.6 – Enterprise systems experience cycle (Markus & Tanis, 2000)
The onward and upward phase continues from normal operation until the system is replaced
with an upgrade or a different system. This phase is central for this study and focuses on
achieving results, maintaining the system, supporting the users, upgrading technology,
continuous business improvement and additional user skill building. It is during this phase
that the organization is finally able to ascertain the benefits (if any) of its investment. Markus
& Tanis (2000) say that a common problem of the onward and upward phase is the loss of
knowledgeable personnel who understand the rationales for prior configuration choices and
how to improve the business processes through the use of the system. Further they state that
the organization may be unwilling to undertake further improvements or upgrades as a
consequence of this. Finally, the organization may decide that its experience has been a
success, or the organization may decide that its investment has been unsuccessful in meeting
goals or business needs. If the first, the organization’s competitive position may or may not
have been improved as a result of its use of enterprise systems (Markus & Tanis, 2000.
Within these four phases, the implementation of an ES can be regarded as an on-going
process of organizational learning and change (Markus & Tanis, 2000).
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Adoption of ECM in Organizations
4.7 Technology Driven Organizational Change
When organizations adopt new information technologies it is important to notice that this
often involves more than the technology itself. Markus (2004) says that there is a potential for
significant transformations in people’s work, in organizational business processes, and in
organizational performance outcomes when organizations adopt new IT. Using IT in ways
that can trigger major organizational changes creates high-risk and potentially high-reward
situations and Markus (2004) calls those situations Technochange (technology-driven
organizational change). According to Markus (2004) as many as 75% of organizational
change efforts involving technology fail (even when the technology performs acceptably), and
that this is due to people’s negative reactions to changes in their work, organizational business
processes, and the technology they use. Other major risks in technochange are the risks that
users will not use the technology, that they will misuse it (that is, use it in ways project
sponsors did not expect), or that they will use the technology without capturing the expected
benefits.
Markus (2004) further states that by using IT strategically to drive organizational performance
improvements are fundamentally different from both IT projects and organizational change
programs, and that managing technochange successfully requires a different approach than if
they were pure IT projects. “Unlike IT projects, which focus on improving technical
performance, technochange involves great potential impacts on “the users” (people, processes,
and organizational performance).” (Markus, 2004, p. 4).
Markus (2004) says that by treating technochange situations as if they were pure IT projects,
organizations risk being blindsided by implementation problems and unintended
consequences. In addition, they might miss significant opportunities to benefit from ITenabled organizational performance improvements. “Technochange situations call for big
improvements in organizational performance. These improvements cannot happen unless
tasks, jobs, and organizational processes all change along with IT.” (p. 7).
4.8 Summary of the four first chapters
Based on an extensive review of the practitioner and research literature I have described and
discussed the ECM phenomenon. The ECM phenomenon has strong conceptual links with
just about every major area within information management research (Päivärinta &
Munkvold, 2005). In addition, the phenomenon suggests the potential value of entirely new
research directions such as an enterprise-wide approach of content management, business
process management (BPM) perspective onto the concept of ECM, etc., which still remain
scarce.
In summary, my review of the academic and non-academic literature shows that the growing
demand for ECM applications has several reasons. Major business drivers behind ECM
implementations are: need to insure compliance, finding existing content, reducing content
duplication, security, and enhanced internal and external collaboration. ECM not just helps
organizations to manage content but also “records; knowledge generation, codification, and
distribution; collaboration; and business processes across an enterprise.” (Andersen 2008, p.
62).
However, whereas ECM offers major business benefits, there are numerous obstacles that
organizations may face when they adopt ECM. At first, ECM challenges could seem to be
technological in nature, but the literature review shows that ECM challenges are above all
30
Adoption of ECM in Organizations
organizational including issues such as new strategies for how content is to be handled,
changes in business processes and work practices.
Finally, Jenkins et al. (2006) say that Internet software will evolve, where ECM will lead the
evolution. They say that ECM solutions will be easier to use, “without users needing to know
anything more about the Web than how to click on a hyperlink.” (p. 1).
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Adoption of ECM in Organizations
32
Research Approach
5 Research Approach
For this thesis a qualitative in-depth case study has been carried out with an interpretive
philosophical perspective. The philosophical assumptions regarding the underlying nature of
the phenomena being investigated for this thesis, the appropriate research strategy and design
to be used, the methodological approach, the nature of valid evidence, and limitations with the
study are being discussed in this chapter.
5.1 Philosophical Assumptions
The social phenomena studied within the IS field is complex, and there exists a number of
different philosophical perspectives that may be effective in helping a researcher to study a
phenomenon (Orlikowski, & Baroudi, 1991). As Crotty (1998, p. 66) states: “Different ways
of viewing the world shape different ways of researching the world”.
The underlying epistemology is concerned with the nature of knowledge claims (Walsham,
1995) which guides the research, and could be classified as positivist, interpretive, and critical
studies (Chua, 1986 cited in Orlikowski, & Baroudi, 1991).This study employs an interpretive
perspective, as I believe that “people create and associate their own subjective and
intersubjective meanings as they interact with the world around them” (Orlikowski, &
Baroudi, 1991, p. 5). The interpretive philosophy is premised on the epistemological belief
that “Social process is not captured in hypothetical deductions, covariances, and degrees of
freedom. Instead, understanding social process involves getting inside the world of those
generating it” (Rosen, 1991 cited in Orlikowski, & Baroudi, 1991). Interpretive researchers
thus attempt to understand phenomena through accessing the meanings that participants
assign to them (Orlikowski, & Baroudi, 1991).
Generalization from the setting studied in this project to a population is not sought, and the
intent is rather to understand the deeper structure of the ECM phenomenon, which it is
believed can be used to inform other settings (Orlikowski, & Baroudi, 1991). However,
Walsham (1995) states this should not be taken to imply that interpretive work is not
generalizable. Walsham (1995) postulates four types of generalization from interpretive case
studies: the development of concepts, development of theory, the drawing of specific
implications, and the contribution of rich insights. This study seeks to provide rich insight into
the ECM concept offering a broader approach to generalization. The intent of this research is
thus to increase understanding of the ECM phenomenon within a specific use context. ECM,
the phenomenon of interest, has been examined in its natural setting and from the perspective
of the participants, where I as the researcher, did not impose my understanding on the
situation.
Ontology is concerned with the nature of reality (Walsham, 1995). Ontologically, the
interpretive perspective is based on the assumption that organizational culture is socially
constructed by human actors, that the social world is produced and reinforced by humans
through their action and interaction, and that organizations, groups, and social systems “do
not exist apart from humans, and hence cannot be apprehended, characterized, and measured
in some objective or universal way” (Orlikowski & Baroudi, 1991, p. 14). Hence interpretive
research is open to various interpretations both by actors and by researchers (ibid), and
“human interpretations concerning computer-based information systems are of central
importance to the practice of IS” (Walsham, 1995, p. 80). The attempt is to “understand how
and why individuals, through their socialization into, interaction with, and participation in, a
33
Research Approach
social world, give it a certain status and meaning” (Orlikowski & Baroudi, 1991, p. 13). I
believe that reality and the individual who observes it cannot be separated, whilst a positivist
researcher believes that reality is separate from the individual who observes it (ibid).
I argue that the epistemological and ontological approach chosen for this research is
compatible with the complex nature of the problem and the research question I sought to
address.
5.2 Research Strategy
Based on the ontological and epistemological assumptions for this thesis, the research strategy
chosen in this context was an interpretive case study.
Case study is the most adopted qualitative method within the IS field (Orlikowski & Baroudi,
1991), and allows an understanding of complex phenomena in their natural settings (Dube &
Robey, 1999). Several definitions exist of what a case study includes and Yin (2003, p.59) has
the following definition: “A case study is an empirical inquiry that:
 investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, especially when
 the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident”.
Yin (2003) has a view that case studies are the preferred research strategy to answer “how?”
and “why?” questions, and that a case study gives the opportunity to investigate holistic and
meaningful characteristics of real-life events. This is in agreement with the aim of my study
and clearly justifies a case study strategy as my interest is the use of ECM in practical use and
ECM can only be implemented in real-life contexts, where the boundaries between ECM and
their contexts of use are quite difficult to draw. Myers (2008) notes that case study research is
particularly well-suited to IS research, seeing that the object of the IS discipline is the study of
information systems within organizations, and that “interest has shifted to managerial and
organizational issues rather than technical issues” (Benbasat et al. 1987 cited in Myers, 2008).
5.3
Research Design
5.3.1 Single Case Study
Further the decision whether to employ a single or multiple case study design (Yin, 2003) has
to be argued for.
To conduct a multiple case study that allows the researcher to compare and contrast the same
phenomenon in different contexts and settings (Munkvold, 2009) could have been desirable,
but due to resource and time constraints this is not feasible within this research project.
Case studies, and certainly single-case design, score low on generalization of findings.
However, as stated earlier, this is not the intent of an interpretive study. An interpretive
argument for employing a single case study design is that this enables in-depth understanding
of the context of the IS phenomenon and the process through which this phenomenon and the
context influence each other (Walsham, 1993), ensuring a greater richness of data. This is
similar to my case where the opportunity to investigate the ECM phenomenon in-depth in one
organization was pronounced for this thesis.
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Research Approach
5.3.2 Case Selection
Statoil and OTS were chosen as the case study site because it offered extensive access, and
because it had been using an ECM solution substantially for a few years after implementation.
The OTS business cluster is considered as a unique and specialized business, with special
requirements regarding IM and thus an interesting area to generate new knowledge. Hence
this study could also be regarded as a revelatory case (Yin, 2003). The opportunity to carry
out the study was mainly due to my supervisor’s contact persons within Statoil, and his prior
research efforts in the organization. Hence, the opportunity to further academic research in
Statoil, an organization that could be regarded as an early adopter of these kinds of ECM
solutions, was pronounced. A more detailed description of the case organization is provided
for later in this thesis.
5.3.3 Time Frame
This research has been conducted throughout one full semester running from January to May
2010, although initial preparations started the previous semester to decide on scope and extent
of the research. This includes a video meeting with my contact person in Statoil, and a
research proposal was written in order to get this research approved. The main data collection
was conducted via interviews during two visits at the case organization in January and
February 2010.
5.4 Methodological Approach
It has already been indicated that this study employs a qualitative approach for collecting
evidence. However, a case study design may also partly be of a quantitative nature, hence the
choice of methodological approach has to be argued for.
Whilst quantitative methods use numbers usually in the form of counts, measurements or
survey methods to attempt to give precision to a set of observations (Remenyi et al., 1998),
qualitative methods use words to describe situations, individuals, or circumstances
surrounding a phenomenon, and is often used when the phenomenon being studied is complex
and not clear (ibid). Such a method is often used to explore and clarify underlying issues
behind a phenomenon, and is often used in connection with interpretive studies. Miles and
Huberman (1994) as cited in Munkvold (1998) provide a list of strengths of qualitative
methods:
 local groundedness, through collection of data on a specific situation, embedded in its
context
 generating data characterized by richness and holism, usually conducted over a
sustained period
 flexibility in methods and design, enabling the possibility for following new leads and
making adjustments based on experiences during the research.
In my initial plans for this research, I wanted to conduct a qualitative study with elements of a
smaller quantitative part to complement the main data, which could be characterized as a
mixed method. This is what Creswell (2009) calls a concurrent triangulation strategy where
“the researcher collects both qualitative and quantitative data and then compares the two
databases to determine if there is convergence, differences, or some combination
(confirmation)… This model uses quantitative and qualitative methods as a means to offset
the weaknesses inherent within one method with the strengths of the other” (Creswell, 2009,
35
Research Approach
p. 213). However, as I started to collect qualitative data I realized that it was a complex case,
and I decided to give full priority to the qualitative part due to time limitations and as I wished
to get a detailed and in-depth understanding of the phenomenon and its context.
“Qualitative research methods are designed to help researchers understand people and the
social and cultural contexts within which they live” (Myers, 2008). It is a matter of
understanding a phenomenon and why it takes place as it does from the point of view of the
participants and the particular social and institutional context they are in. In this study,
Statoil’s ECM solution has been investigated in practical use in the OTS business cluster by
going out in the field and interviewing key personnel and employees using and adapting to
this solution. Multiple organizational units and participants within different hierarchical levels
in OTS have been investigated and compared, looking for similarities and dissimilarities with
the aid of techniques one finds in qualitative research. The following characteristics by
Creswell (2009) apply for this qualitative research:









Happens under natural settings.
The researcher is the only one who actually gathers the data.
Multiple sources of gathering data.
The data analysis is inductive.
It is based on the participants’ meanings.
The research design is emergent where the process might change or shift on the way.
It involves that the researcher goes deep in the theory.
The researcher makes an interpretation of what s/he sees, hears and understands.
It is holistic where the researcher tries to develop a complex picture of the problem or
issue that’s being studied.
5.4.1 Data collection
A research method is the technique or procedure used to gather and analyze data related to
some research question or hypothesis (Crotty, 1998). Data collection for this study has been
conducted via the following qualitative research methods:
 Interviews (semi-structured and open),
 corporate documents and presentations regarding IM,
 and supplementary informal discussions and conversation with the informants during
my visit at the case organization.
Background information was also collected via previous research studies conducted in Statoil.
In addition, there have been some follow-up questions over e-mail after the principal data
collection was over.
Interviews
As an outside observer with an interpretive case study design, it can be argued that interviews
are the primary data source for this study. As Walsham (1995, p. 78) states: “It is through this
method that the researcher can best access the interpretations that participants have regarding
the actions and events which have or are taking place, and the views and aspirations of
themselves and other participants”.
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Research Approach
I have conducted interviews with 8 persons spanning OTS’s hierarchic levels from the
ordinary employee, to department vice president. The effort of contacting and gathering
potential respondents was conducted by my contact person in OTS. This person has good
knowledge and insight in the organization, where he tried to ensure a variety of respondents.
In addition he scheduled a suitable interview time for all of the respondents within their
normally very busy working day. The ECM initiative in Statoil was of major importance to
seven of the people interviewed, and their interest was high. The last respondent’s working
day was of a special character and he considered the supporting ECM systems in Statoil to be
of minimal aid, and did not see any particular need to the system.
An initial video meeting was conducted with the contact person from Statoil, where my
supervisor also was present. This allowed me to get an initial understanding and overview of
the case, and we discussed potential research questions, limitations, scope, etc. For the main
data collection two initial interviews were conducted in January 2010 to get a deeper
understanding of the case and the organization, providing a basis for the main interview round
conducted over two days in February 2010. All interviews were conducted at Statoil’s
headquarters in Stavanger. Table 5.1 lists the details of these interviews, which typically
lasted from 30 minutes to 1.5 hours.
There are different types of interviews used in qualitative research (Yin, 2003). In this study I
have used a combination of open-ended and semi-structured interview approaches. I spent the
first minute to introduce myself, talked a little about my education within IS, and informed
about the purpose of this study in order to show my respect towards the respondent and help
the respondent to relax, making the quality of the rest of the interview likely to be much
higher, in terms of e.g. honesty, as stated by Walsham (2006).
During the interview I let the conversation be as open as possible in the beginning and let the
informants speak freely regarding issues and challenges with IM in their daily work, thus
preserving “a considerable degree of openness to the field data”, as recommended by
Walsham (1995, p. 76). I then followed up with questions in a semi-structured fashion when I
felt there was a need for more concrete answers regarding a specific theme. The semistructured approach is the most used interview form (Myers & Newman, 2007), where one
has a set of questions, but the sequence in which they are being addressed is flexible. I talked
with the informants about current questions, but also willingly talked about other subjects
during the interviews. As long as the theme does not slip and there is time for it, this is fully
possible in this kind of interviews (Myers & Newman, 2007).
The focus was to maintain a balance between excessive passivity and over-direction, in such a
way that the informants expressed their own views without asking too direct questions, thus
ensuring a greater richness of interpretation (Walsham, 1995). Few notes were taken during
the interviews because I wanted to be as present as possible in order to concentrate and ask
good follow up questions. However, all interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed. The
advantage is a more complete record of what was said, enabling you to return to the transcript
for later alternative forms of analysis, such as picking out direct quotes when writing up the
case narrative (Walsham, 2006). One disadvantage of tape-recording is the time that needs to
be spent in transcribing the tape recording. But I consider that this enables greater analytical
leverage in order to extract useful data from it.
A challenge could have been to hold the thread throughout each of the interviews, but I think I
managed this quite well. Group interviews could also have been an alternative, where two or
37
Research Approach
more persons are being interviewed at the same time (Myers & Newman, 2007). One has
more informants, and it could have been a good point to see the discussion amongst the
informants. However, this was not a practical solution during this study as I was the only
researcher conducting the interviews, where it could have been a bigger challenge to control
the interviews with multiple informants simultaneously.
The interviews focused on the following areas:
1. Existing practices regarding IM and issues and challenges related to these practices.
2. Future expectations regarding ECM and IM in OTS.
In addition, I developed and used an interview guide so that it was easier to maintain the same
structure and themes within the interviews. Different interview guides were created based on
the informants’ different positions (see Appendix A and B for more detailed interview
guides). I would note that some of the questions where included as a general part of the
interview guides and where left out from some of the interviews.
Table 5.1 – Overview of interviewed respondents
Title
Principal Consultant
Department Leader
Department vice president
Senior Analyst
Senior Consultant
Senior Trader
Administrative Coordinator
OTS BC RIM
IM role in OTS
team site administrator
team site owner
team site owner
team site administrator
team site administrator
user
local RIM
BC RIM
Documentation
In this research interviews were supplemented by documents such as different organizational
charts, corporate documents and requirements for IM, e-mails, and different Power Point
presentations. These documents were used as background materials and were also used to
confirm impressions gained from the interviews. The use of confirming evidence was not an
attempt to validate the accuracy of the interviews, but rather to aid in their understanding and
context. Table 5.2 summarizes the documents from the case organization investigated for this
study.
Table 5.2 – Statoil documents investigated
Document title
The Statoil Book
WR1895 Information Management and
Information Security
FR15 Information Management and
Information Technology
Managers’ guide to becoming
compliant
Short presentation of IM
OTS Business School
Management team site - standard
Media
PDF
PDF
Content
Statoil governing document
Statoil governing document
PDF
Statoil governing document
MS Office
Stairway to Compliance
Presentation
Presentation
MS Office
Presentation of IM
Presentation of OTS
Standardization of management team
38
Research Approach
Written Submission OTS MC V1.1
Written submission for OTS MC
Status C@S in OTS pr. 15/5-08
Team site request review and
guidelines
Guide_UK_Manage metadata
Process owner guidelines HR (Eng)
Metadata template OTS CC LDN BD.
MS Office
Presentation
MS Office
site structure in OTS
Information management in OTS
Status C@S in OTS pr. 15/5-08
Guidelines for how to order a team site
PDF
Presentation
Excel
Guide to mange metadata
Process owner guidelines - HR process
Metadata template
During my two visits at Statoil’s headquarters in Stavanger, when the interviews were
conducted, I used time between interviews to prepare the next interviews, have lunch there,
read corporate documents, and talk with some of the employees in a more informal matter.
This allowed me to get an insight into how people worked, the many abbreviations and
acronyms used, the local meanings of particular words, and also to experience firsthand some
of the issues mentioned during interviews.
5.4.2 Literature Search and Review
Webster & Watson (2002) say that a literature analysis should identify the most important
literature within the area one is researching. Theory provides a valuable initial guide which
takes account of previous knowledge to inform the topics and approach of the early empirical
work (Walsham, 1995).
I have searched the sources available for students at the University of Agder, which is ISI
Web of science, Ebscohost, IEEE, ACM, and also the university library. In addition I have
used Google Scholar extensively, which provides a search of scholarly literature across many
disciplines and sources. This was thought to give a good insight and a general picture of the
existing literature regarding ECM. Some academic literature was identified, however a large
portion of the literature identified is more of a practitioner oriented nature. This is probably
due to the youth of the ECM concept, as it has received more attention amongst practitioners
than academics in its infant stage.
I have been studying relevant literature within the areas of ECM in order to build an
understanding of the phenomenon and its context. Findings from the case have also guided
further literature search due to identification of new issues, thus preserving a considerable
degree of openness to the field (Walsham, 1995), resulting in an iterative process.
I have tried to present a structured literature review in the four first chapters, providing
interesting aspects of the ECM phenomenon. I have also argued for why this study is needed
to complement the excising academic literature.
5.4.3 Data Analysis
As this research takes an interpretive stance, rather than reporting objective facts, the focus is
interpretations and experiences of other people’s interpretations (Walsham, 1995). Seeing that
an interpretive study also includes the researcher’s own interpretations, I would point out that
my role as a researcher is not value-free (Dube & Robey, 1999). In order to establish
credibility to the readers (Walsham, 1995), this sub-section describes in some detail how I
have arrived at my results. Figure 5.1 illustrates the steps in my data analysis based on
39
Research Approach
Creswell (2009). The figure illustrates a linear, hierarchical approach building from the
bottom to the top, but Creswell (2009) sees it to be more iterative in practice, and I think that
fits well with my approach. He points out that the various stages are interrelated and not
always visited in the order presented.
No special analytical tools or software programs were used to aid the analysis. Such software
is also considered by some as very time consuming. The software does not remove the need
for thought, as the choice of themes remains the responsibility of the researcher (Walsham,
2006). Walsham (2006) also argues that the best tool for analysis is the researcher’s own
mind.
Interpreting the Meaning of
Themes/Description
Interrelating Themes/Descriptions
Themes
Validating the
Accuracy of the
Information
Description
Coding the Data
Reading through All Data
Organizing and Preparing Data for
Analysis
Raw Data (transcripts, field notes)
Figure 5.1 – Data analysis (Creswell, 2009)
So, the first step was to organize and prepare the data for analysis. I transcribed the interviews
which I spent a considerable amount of time to carry out. Thereafter I read through all of the
interviews trying to get a general sense of the information and reflect over its logical
reasoning and overall meaning, where I added initial analytical comments and also wrote an
annotation of each interview. Further, I conducted a more detailed analysis with a coding
process. All of the gathered interview data was examined and organized into categories of text
before bringing meaning to the information. Jacobsen (2000) states than one should make
categories based on the interview data, i.e. the statements of one or more informants. The
categories should also be related to themes and earlier literature (Jacobsen, 2000). In the next
step I continued with the coding from the previous step to make themes which involves a
40
Research Approach
detailed rendering of relevant events and people occurring in the data. Table 7.1 in the Result
chapter summarizes my findings including comments, events, and direct quotations from
individuals. In the Discussion chapter, which could be regarded as the last part of the analysis,
I give meaning to the data, involving lessons learned, and my personal opinions and
interpretations of the data. Here I use results from the case and compare these with literature.
My approach during the analysis was to search for similarities and disparity in the
interpretations provided by the people interviewed. I would note that, in all steps of the
analysis, I have applied my own interpretations about the degree of similarity and differences
among categories and themes. Thus, although my applied method consists of orderly steps
taken to reduce the raw data to a few main themes, the approach is essentially interpretive.
Figure 5.2 illustrates a summary of my research approach with related research areas, based
on Dube & Robey (1999):
Case Study
Interviews (8)
Categories (12)
Related research areas
- ECM
- ES Lifecycle
- Organizational change
- Metadata
Main Themes (5)
Put data into
Themes
Data analysis
Compare results from the Case Study with literature
Better understanding of IM and ECM challenges in
the OTS cluster in Statoil
Figure 5.2 – Research approach, based on Dube & Robey (1999)
5.5 Quality of this Research
This sub-section discusses the quality of this research. Guba & Lincoln (1989) (cited in
Munkvold, 1998) have developed criteria for evaluating quality of interpretive studies. These
criteria (Table 5.3) are Credibility, Transferability, Dependability, and Confirmability. These
are parallel criteria to the positivist criteria of Construct, Internal, and External validity, and
Reliability. However, these criteria have been developed in the positivist paradigm, and
cannot be expected to apply to interpretive research.
According to the Credibility criterion I have tried to involve and engage the informants such
that the presented findings are in accordance with the reality and how things really are. This
could also be supported with that I initiated the interviews by expressing my interest of the IM
41
Research Approach
field, informed about my agenda, and addressed the question of confidentiality, hence trying
to gain the interviewee’s trust. I have also discussed my findings with some of the
respondents.
I have tried to present a “thick description” of my findings. Most of the interviews are rich on
information in the form of details and variations, which is in relations with the Transferability
criterion of Guba & Lincoln (1989). The question of generalization has already been
discussed before in this chapter, illustrating how external validity will have a different
meaning for interpretive studies.
It cannot be expected that another researcher would develop exactly the same results as I have
done, by conducting the same study over again. Therefore, under the Dependability criterion
which is parallel to reliability, it is important that decisions and interpretations made are
documented, so that they can be traced by outside reviewers. I have tried my best to do this in
this report, by explicitly documenting my research process in a structured manner.
The Confirmability criterion is developed for ensuring that the data, interpretations and results
can be tracked to their sources (Munkvold, 1998). All results in this study can be traced back
to sound recordings and transcriptions and is not the product of the researcher’s imagination.
The process of moving from the initial data, to the final results has also been accounted for in
detail.
Table 5.3 – Criteria for evaluating interpretive research (Guba & Lincoln (1989), as cited in Munkvold (1998))
Criteria
Credibility
Goal
Establishing the match between the
constructed realities of respondents (or
stakeholders) and those realities as
represented by the evaluator and
attributed to various stakeholders
Transferability
Presenting a sufficient detailed account
of the findings as to enable judgment by
the reader of how these findings can be
transferred to other contexts
Ensuring that methodological changes
and the interpretive process are
documented so that the reader can
follow the process and the choices made
by the researcher
Ensuring that the data, interpretations
and results are grounded in the context
and not just a result of the researcher’s
imagination
Dependability
Conformability
42
Tactic
Field work and longitudinal
observation
Discussion of data and
results with external peers
and informants (member
checks)
Thick description
Making the research process
explicit
Making data available
Describing the logic used for
moving from data to the final
results
Research Approach
5.6 Limitations
In this part some limitations of my research approach will be discussed.
A limitation with qualitative research in general is the issue of a restricted number of
informants. One can argue positively for this approach in that one gets richer and more
detailed data. No sampling techniques were used to choose respondents for this study, and as
seen from Table 5.1 most of the respondents have a formal role regarding IM in Statoil. This
could be seen as a possible limitation where issues from other categories of employees might
not have been identified. There are also limitations by conducting an interview alone as a
research partner enables mutual critique of each other’s performance, that might lead to a
better interview (Walsham, 1995).
Employees in contemporary organizations are normally very busy and pressured, and in some
of the interviews the respondents expressed a lack of time for the interview, meaning that the
data gathering in some occasions could have been more complete. However, it is considered
better to finish the interviews and lose some interaction time if the interviewees are clearly
pressured, rather than to irritate them by taking too much of their time, making it easier to
gain access to the case organization in potential later occasions (Walsham, 2006).
In this interpretive study I present data directly from the transcribed interviews, hence
allowing the readers to interpret the data and determine for themselves the adequacy of my
interpretation. With regard to data access in the form of the respondent’s interpretations, I
have picked out a selection of direct quotes from what that is being presented. However,
complete transcriptions are available, but placed under restriction from Statoil.
43
The Statoil Case
6 The Statoil Case
In this chapter the case organization for this study, Statoil, is introduced, including
background for implementing ECM in Statoil and a description of the implemented ECM
solution is provided for. Furthermore, a presentation of the technological portfolio is given,
before presenting the OTS business cluster which is the research setting for this study.
The case description presented in this chapter should be regarded as part of the results from
my study, providing the overview and backdrop for the presentation and discussion of ECM
practices in the following chapters.
6.1 Introduction of Statoil
The following information regarding introduction of Statoil is collected from Statoil’s (2010)
corporate Web-site. Statoil is a major integrated oil and gas company with its headquarters in
Stavanger, Norway. It operates in 40 countries and employs about 29,000 people, almost half
working outside Norway. The company was founded over 30 years ago and it has grown both
organically, and through acquisition since that time. Statoil retails petrol and oil in
Scandinavia, Ireland, Poland, Russia, and the Baltic states. It is one of the major suppliers of
natural gas to the European market, and one of the world’s biggest sellers of crude oil. About
half of Statoil’s exploration activity takes place outside of Norway, and the company is
actively seeking international opportunities to apply its expertise in offshore and deep water
development projects. Statoil is listed on the New York and Oslo stock exchanges, and
consists of six business areas, two staff and support divisions and corporate communication
(Figure 6.1).
Figure 6.1 – Statoil organizational chart
6.2 Background for Implementing ECM in Statoil
In 2001, Statoil embarked on a project to establish new and improved solutions for ecollaboration and document handling within the organization. The company had to deal with
various information management challenges, such as an enormous growth of information
objects every month, over 300,000 in 2005 excluding e-mail messages (Nordheim &
Päivärinta, 2006). Statoil’s Lotus Notes infrastructure had grown out of control (Hjelle &
Jarulaitis, 2008), and in total the system consisted of more than 5500 different, dispersed
44
The Statoil Case
databases for document storage (Munkvold et al., 2006). According to Hjelle & Jarulaitis
(2008) the old Lotus Notes-based system appears to have had a large degree of freedom,
where users would simply create a new database fitting their requirements, if a given piece of
information did not fit into the existing databases. But there was no central indexing
functionality, meaning that it was impossible to retrieve a document by searching if you did
not know which database to search (Hjelle & Jarulaitis, 2008). Users also stored documents
and e-mails on their personal and departmental storage areas, making search and retrieval
efforts by fellow colleagues even more incomplete. Statoil’s IT architecture had also, as
typical for many decentralized corporations, evolved into a portfolio of technologies with
partly overlapping functionality and applications, scattered over a number of different storage
media and applications (Nordheim & Päivärinta, 2006). Common ways to use the tools did
not exist, and the users were left to themselves to figure out what to use the tools for, and how
they might change and improve their collaboration processes (Weiseth et al., 2006).
Organizational challenges included lack of attention and commitment from management, lack
of incentives, and unclear governance roles and responsibilities (Nordheim & Päivärinta,
2006).
This solution was not satisfactory to the management of Statoil, and was regarded as
inefficient, both with regard to workers having to do the same work again as they could not
find documentation of others having already done it, and with regard to storage utilization as
the same information could be stored more than once (Hjelle & Jarulaitis, 2008).
The company also recognized that there was a critical requirement for it to be able to supply
detailed audit information to satisfy both financial and accounting disclosure needs, and to
ensure compliance with legal and statutory requirements such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act
(SOX) of 2002. All these issues “created major challenges related to information retrieval,
version control and information quality across the enterprise” (Munkvold et al., 2006, p. 73).
6.3 ECM Solution in Statoil
Through the years, the e-collaboration project in Statoil has gone through different phases and
names (Figure 6.2). The new e-collaboration and IM solution, named Collaboration@Statoil
(C@S), was implemented in 2004 with go-live in 2005, covering all of Statoil’s locations and
employees. C@S implied to improve the issues described above and to meet present and
future business needs by launching a corporate-wide ECM program (C@S) targeting the
following issues:
 provide global access to information,
 better collaboration,
 supported and improved work processes among work groups and teams supported by
new IT-tools,
 better information sharing between the company and their customers, employees and
business partners,
 proper handling of e-mail,
 improve tracking of documents and in this way make it easier to retrieve information
and ensure sharing and reuse of information,
 established traceability as well as easy, correct and secure access of information
through the information life cycle and with regard to legal requirements,
45
The Statoil Case
 limited duplication of data by classifying information with metadata, enabling the new
search engine to find all relevant information regarding a project, process, discipline,
organization, etc.
The ECM solution was framed as the core of the company’s holistic e-collaboration strategy,
covering the management of all forms of internal and external information throughout the
entire content life cycle (Munkvold et al., 2006). The program involved going from a Lotus
Notes dominated collaboration infrastructure to a mainly Microsoft SharePoint based solution.
The company acknowledged that the introduction of the new information system was just a
minor part of the strategy, and that the new infrastructure was an enabler for organizational
change and a change to make work practices more efficient (Hjelle & Jarulaitis, 2008).
Hjelle & Jarulaitis (2008) report that the company emphasized this by claiming that the new
strategy would be “80% change - 20% IT”. In addition the cost savings were not regarded as
the main reason to initiate the ECM program in Statoil, “and even some skepticism against
plain financial justifications was expressed” (Päivärinta & Munkvold, 2005, p. 3).
The project was conceptualized as phases, which to some extent fit with the ideas of the
enterprise system experience cycle (Figure 4.6) by Markus & Tanis (2000), although
Nordheim & Päivärinta state that the ES life-cycle does not fully fit the Statoil case due to the
number of packages involved in the solution.
Figure 6.2 – Overview of Statoil’s ECM program (Nordheim & Päivärinta, 2006)
I would argue that Statoil has carried out the three first phases of the Markus & Tanis (2000)
framework, as has been well documented and investigated through prior studies, e.g.
Munkvold et al. (2006), Nordheim & Päivärinta (2006), Weiseth et al. (2006), Nordheim
(2008). Currently, I would define Statoil to be within the last phase of the Markus & Tanis
(2000) framework, the Onward and Upward phase.
Statoil has developed best practice directives and guidelines for the use of the new solution,
seeking to create a consistent usage of the tools throughout the organization (Hjelle &
Jurulaitis, 2008). Further, this and Statoil’s IM policy will be addressed mainly based on
Statoil’s governing documents regarding IM.
6.4 Information Management in Statoil
Innovation and utilization of new and emerging technologies has traditionally been viewed as
a central competitive feature within Statoil, and it was appointed the Cutting Edge Company
2008 by Microsoft. Statoil has acknowledged current and future issues regarding management
of content, and has found itself to be in the forefront in adoption and use of large scale ECM
solutions to handle these issues. However, there is still a long way to go. As one interviewee
recalled:
46
The Statoil Case
“If we don’t take action to structure the information, and get professional in how we
manage it, then we won’t function… We have to have a policy and a plan for how to
handle and structure the information. And I absolutely feel that Statoil is on the right
path, but there is some maturing left. There is a lot of work to do, because it’s a long
run, and we don’t get there in a short time.” (Respondent 1).
ECM is not an abbreviation that the ordinary employee in Statoil has knowledge about, and is
a more familiar and used term amongst people working specifically in the IM area, and by
people on a higher level in the organization. However there is a requirement that all
employees should be familiar with IM and act in accordance with Statoil’s IM policy which is
mounted in Statoil’s governing documents. ECM is part of Statoil’s IM policy which is
described as a:
“field of management responsible for providing secure, efficient and systematic
handling of information objects during the entire information lifecycle, including
metadata management and processes for capturing and maintaining information
objects.” (Statoil Governing Document, FR15).
The requirements for how this information is to be handled in compliance with Statoil
regulations are described in Statoil’s governing documents and requirements for IM. Statoil
governing document, “WR1895 Information Management and Information Security”,
describes requirements to ensure that unstructured information in Statoil is managed securely
and according to authority and compliance regulations.
“Information shall be managed to ensure information integrity, authenticity,
consistency, confidentiality and availability. Access to, recreation and reuse of
information objects must be assured, independent of time, organisation and technical
solutions. Business relevant information shall at all time be accessible for the transfer
of experience, decision making and as legal evidence and documentation, in
compliance with external and internal regulations.” (Statoil Governing Document,
FR15).
The target group for this document is all personnel in Statoil. In Statoil, “Compliance is either
a state of being in accordance with established guidelines, specifications, or legislation or the
process of becoming so.” (Statoil Governing Document, WR1885).
WR1895 describes the requirements for Statoil’s IM processes which consist of two
processes: “Manage information throughout life cycle” and “Manage information support”.
Figure 6.3 displays an overview of the top level processes of these two processes.
47
The Statoil Case
Figure 6.3 – Overview of top level IM processes in Statoil (Statoil Governing Document, WR1895)
Furthermore, all the top level processes are broken down into more detailed process flow
charts like in Figure 6.4 illustrated below. The figure illustrates the process “Create and
receive information”, which describes how information is dealt with from the point of origin.
The process includes quality control, and it comprises both information objects created and
received by the organization.
Figure 6.4 – Example of IM business process in Statoil – Create and receive information (Statoil Governing
Document, WR1895)
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The Statoil Case
Statoil’s corporate policy regarding IM is described in The Statoil Book, which every
employee should be familiar with (2010, p. 70):
“Our approach
We manage our information so that it is accurate, appropriate, handled in accordance with
its sensitivity, and readily available.
 We are committed to managing information:
 In a way that will cause no harm to our group, our people and our partners
 Through one primary source to ensure information integrity
 To ensure business continuity
 To improve integrated work processes and increase our work efficiency
 To ensure we meet our future corporate requirements, and comply with internal and
external requirements
How we work
 We know and fulfil our individual responsibility for managing information
 We make our information available, and understand that it is an important group asset
 We use our information and IT systems in accordance with individual authorisations
 We protect information according to its sensitivity, irrespective of origin
 We identify information which is critical for business continuity and ensure it is
available to the appropriate users
 We use the tools and standards provided for easy retrieval of information, and to
ensure continuous learning and sharing of knowledge across our group
 We use our information systems to work together across professional, geographical
and organisational boundaries
 We retain information selectively in accordance with operational needs and legal
requirements”
6.5 Records and Information Manager (RIM) Role
In Statoil, various roles have been introduced in relation with the C@S solution. A central
role is the Records and Information Manager (RIM) role, which also is central for this study.
The RIM role was introduced shortly after C@S where the meaning of the role was to ensure
that Statoil requirements for IM were being carried out, and to help users with problems and
give them advice in relation with C@S. The establishment of this role was necessary because
there did not exist any good strategy for how the new systems should be used.
There are different levels of RIMs: There is a corporate RIM responsible for developing,
communicating and monitoring corporate IM policies and practices. Furthermore there is a
business area (BA) RIM in each business area in Statoil which is a coordinating, advisory and
guiding role towards Local RIMs working with local IM activities in accordance with the BA
RIMs instructions out in the different business clusters and departments in Statoil.
The RIMs have networks across the different business areas and business clusters in Statoil,
discussing problems related to C@S. They also settle different IM demands that the clusters
should reach. The RIM role will be further addressed later in this report.
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The Statoil Case
6.6 Technological ECM Infrastructure
The ECM solution in Statoil includes a portfolio of different integrated systems. The core
elements of the new solution are Microsoft SharePoint together with the use of metadata,
integrated with Meridio for archiving content, and a system from FAST for searching of
content (Table 6.1). Central for MS SharePoint is team sites which will be discussed in detail
next. The solution is also integrated with Statoil’s e-mail system. In addition, Microsoft
Outlook, LiveMeeting, Live Messenger, and Microsoft Office are part of Statoil’s new ecollaboration and IM solution.
Table 6.1 – Core elements of Statoil’s Technological ECM Infrastructure
System
MS SharePoint with
team sites
Meridio
FAST
Area of use
A collaboration room used for the following tasks:
 Upload, create, and develop documents
 Divide and follow up tasks
 Keep overview of meetings and meeting documents
 Manage access to information
 Collaborate internally, and with external partners
 Archive the information into the integrated Meridio archive.
 Sort and classify content with the aid of metadata and views.
Statoil’s corporate archive, integrated with MS SharePoint
Search of content in Statoil’s archive through Statoil’s portal, Entry.
6.6.1 Team site
A team site is a virtual collaboration workspace, with a Web-based user interface, shared by
people working on the same project or task, in the same department, within the same
discipline, across geographical boundaries, etc. A team site could be regarded as a repository
for storing and retrieving documents enabled by metadata, with functionality for checking-in
and checking-out documents and version tracking. In Statoil all documents should be created
from a team site, and not directly from Office programmes. Team sites can also be created on
Statoil’s extranet in order to collaborate with external collaboration partners such as
customers and vendors.
There are three security classifications in Statoil: Open, Internal and Confidential. Further
there is a unique classification used for team sites only called Internal, Restricted Distribution,
which invokes special requirements for distribution, transmission and storage. This was
created to enable users to restrict access. E.g. with classification Internal, all permanent
employees in Statoil will have access to the team site. Using a team site with classification
Internal, Restricted Distribution, will make it possible to create unique access lists. The team
sites in Statoil support the corporate principles for security classification.
A team site is oriented around a specific task; for instance drilling of a given well or
management of shipping contracts with external parties. All documents related to these
projects or tasks are gathered within team sites. The average user in Statoil will typically be a
member of a handful different team sites to conduct their knowledge work and collaboration.
Typically, team sites have a limited lifetime that is determined by the work or projects they
support. This is due to that teams, tasks and the organization changes, and it is therefore
required that new team sites are created to match the new requirements.
50
The Statoil Case
Documents residing on a team site are stored in different libraries: document library, mail
library and picture library. In order to sort documents in the libraries efficiently there is a
View function allowing users to retrieve documents in an effective way enabled by the
metadata. In Statoil, the ultimate goal with the use of metadata is to make content searchable
and thereby retrievable. This also applies after the content has been archived into Statoil’s
corporate archive, Meridio. Figure 6.5 displays a screen dump of a specific document library
in a team site (All names have been removed).
Figure 6.5 – Screen dump of a specific library in a team site
6.6.2 Document Workspace
All permanent employees have access to all team sites classified Internal. If there is some
information that is more restricted on such a team site, which everybody should not
necessarily have access to, one could create a restricted document workspace with limited
access. In the opposite case, within team site classified Internal, Restricted Distribution there
is sometimes a need to share information with other people or units from outside the team site.
Then one has the opportunity to create an internal document workspace, and thus expand
access to others.
Hence document workspaces are separate areas with unique permissions and specific
information, used in order to limit access and to extend access. This is used internally and
towards external parties in order to limit or expand access for named individuals or specific
groups, such as organizational entities, projects, external partners, or a combination of these.
A team site could be regarded as a house, where document workspaces could be regarded as a
closed room within the house. A document workspace has its own libraries, and could have its
own metadata.
One of the main benefits with a document workspace is that instead of sending important files
as attachments with e-mail, one has the opportunity to give internal or external parties access
to a document workspace. Then one can upload documents, and all the parties are able to read
them, without sending large attachments over e-mail. Instead, the members of the workspace
receive an e-mail with an alert that a new document has been added to the workspace. In
Statoil, the use of e-mail with important files attached is regarded as a major security risk, and
is considered as an unsafe medium to transfer files, due to if people use a wrong e-mail
51
The Statoil Case
address or the information get “snatched”. The main functions and reasons to use a document
workspace is thus to maintain security, integrity, traceability, and the opportunity to give
unique permissions/limited access regarding sharing of content.
6.6.3 Creation of a team site
The process concerning the creation of a team site is complex. The optimal/current best
practice process for creating a team site will be addressed next.
When a new project or specific function is initiated, the information owner which is
responsible for the information being produced in their department (usually a line manager),
will typically request to have a team site created. When requesting to have a team site created
one has to fill in a range of choices, such as the business area, business cluster, main business
process and sub process one is working within, disposal date, classification level, etc. In
Statoil, metadata are supposed to be defined according to business processes. A business
process describes how people work and by capturing values based upon these processes it is
(in theory) possible to create relevant lists of metadata. Guidelines or recommendations for
setting up team sites, with regards to predefined metadata values, views and structure are
created in advance by the process owner within each business process based upon the process.
However, this has not been done within specific business areas, including the process OTS
works within, which creates problems that will be addressed later in the result chapter. In any
case, based upon the choices made when ordering the team site, a set of pre-defined metadata
elements (category and activity) with default values are added to the new team site.
When creating a team site, the information owner usually appoints one or two team site
administrators. Leaders are often too busy to manage a team site by their own. Together they
have to pick out applicable metadata values concerning category and activity by choosing any
of the pre-defined values for the process the team site is to support. Activities and categories
that are considered as irrelevant or not suitable to the particular process or task the team site is
to support, may be left out from the selected set.
In addition it is possible to supplement the pre-defined metadata elements with a set of
coverage metadata elements if it is considered significant for information accessibility and
retrieval. These are defined by the team site administrator, and could be coverage metadata
elements like e.g. Discipline, Project, Business partner, Location, Region, Country, Keyword,
etc. It is recommended to use three to five coverage elements, as too many fields could be a
challenge for the users with regards to how they should utilize all fields in a good manner.
After choosing coverage metadata elements that are needed for the specific team site one can
choose to have one or multiple values for each element so that the users are able to tag
documents with these values. If one value is chosen, all documents in the team site will be
classified with this value. If more than one value is chosen, a drop down list of the selected
predefined values will be available when saving the document. This has to be adjusted
according to every unit’s needs as this will vary from every office location and unit. All
requested team sites have to be approved by RIM.
Every information owner is responsible to provide adequate metadata to their team sites, with
sufficient metadata elements and values, so that when creating or uploading documents to a
team site later, the members of the team site would have to assign metadata tags from the
selected set to the documents using drop-down boxes, to classify the documents for easier
retrieval, before they could be uploaded or stored.
52
The Statoil Case
The team site administrator who works on behalf of the information owner is responsible to
look after that the users use correct metadata, use views, clean their documents regularly,
archive regularly, manage access lists, etc. This is usually a person that has good knowledge
with team site, works within the team site, and has a feeling of ownership to the team site. The
information owner and RIM are responsible for promoting more use of group mailboxes, and
lesser use of personal e-mail, storage of documents in personal storage, and business storage
areas. The team site administrator also supports this work.
“Taken together, the team sites, corporate-wide integrated storage and search engines provide
a powerful information environment, to be accessed through a corporate portal. The
installation differs considerably from standard, and the case is therefore a complex ES
solution, based on a combination of technologies. ” (Nordheim, 2008, p. 5). The task of
representing thousands of users, including internal employees and external clients and
vendors, etc., creating and sharing enormous amounts of information, dispersed all over the
world, is a considerable challenge in Statoil (ibid). This study explores this challenge in a
local perspective in one of Statoil’s business clusters which will be introduced next.
6.7 The Oil Trading and Supply (OTS) business cluster
The OTS business cluster which is the subject of research in this study is one of three business
clusters underlying the Manufacturing & Marketing business area in Statoil (Figure 6.6), with
approximately 300 employees dispersed all over the world, but mainly located in Statoil’s
headquarters in Stavanger.
Figure 6.6 – Manufacturing & Marketing business area (M&M) - Organizational chart
OTS is responsible for Statoil’s main trading and marketing activities for crude oil, refined
products, natural gas liquids (ethane, propane, butane and naphtha), electricity and carbon
dioxide (CO2). Trading is carried out at the OTS offices in Stavanger, Oslo, London,
Stamford (USA), Riga, and Singapore. The main business process that OTS works within is
named Marketing and Supply, oil and products (M&S O&P).
6.7.1 Information Management in OTS
Every day the employees in OTS, located all over the work, must handle a variety of
unstructured content received from internal and external sources. Enormous amounts of
information is created, received, shared, and distributed every day, and a single trade worker
could receive as much as 200 e-mails per day. OTS is regarded a highly specialized business
cluster in Statoil, with unique demands regarding IM. “One size does not fit all”, and specific
53
The Statoil Case
areas within OTS is at times considered as incompatible with the implemented corporate-wide
ECM solution in Statoil. Due to that OTS is regarded as special and unique in Statoil,
guidelines for setting up team sites, with regards to metadata values, views and structure have
not been created by the process owner. However, the majority of the C@S solution is
compatible with OTS requirements, but there are some notable exceptions. The employees in
OTS, with their specialized work and their busy work day, are having a hard time to adapt to
this program, especially the units considered as incompatible, regarding the requirements for
how the information is to be handled in compliance with Statoil’s standardized IM work
processes.
Unique for the Manufacturing & Marketing business area is an extra RIM role in each of the
three business clusters (Figure 6.6) due to their complexity and size, including OTS. This role
is named business cluster (BC) RIM. The current BC RIM in OTS, employed for the role in
2008, has a background and education within the field of knowledge management (KM)
which is tightly related to ECM (Munkvold et al., 2006), and hence he has a good
understanding of the IM practice. While the Local RIM in the OTS office in Stavanger,
formerly acting as the BC RIM in OTS, has a long background as a secretary in Statoil, and
hence less insight within the IM practice.
When the RIM role was introduced shortly after C@S, few people in OTS had a clear
understanding of the RIM role, including the management and the RIM’s itself. The objective
of this role was not defined, and some regarded it as an archivist role, and thus making it
harder for a person inexperienced regarding IM to carry out the RIM role. This is expressed
by the current Local RIM in the following quote:
“I did not know what the objective of this role was, and the people that appointed me
to the role also did not have a good awareness of the role. They looked at it more as a
document management job, and not as an information managment job, at least here
locally. So it has been bad communication on all levels.” (Respondent 7)
As time passed, one found out that the role was more comprehensive than first assumed. We
shall soon see that the employment of a BC RIM with an understanding and knowledge of IM
has been important for OTS’s IM progress. The new BC RIM in OTS is responsible for IM in
all of OTS, while the Local RIM has a more supporting role towards the BC RIM. I would
note that each of OTS’s offices over the world has a Local RIM, but the Stavanger office is
the largest where there are many users (300) to support, in contrast to e.g. the Singapore office
where 20 people work.
The Local and BC RIM in OTS’s Stavanger office, where data collection for this study has
been carried out, work under a Business Process department where they are located close to
the business and its processes. This is considered as important by the BC RIM:
“We have to work closely with the users and the business processes in order to
understand how people work and their needs… To be hands on, out in the business is
a good solution. And we try to use time on being practical and not theoretical. When
we work out in the business it is important to use a language that the employees
understand, we try to keep it down to the point and keep it simple” (Respondent 1).
The BC RIM further talks about working with IM as a wide area:
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The Statoil Case
“The ones working with IT is very focused on IT systems. We who work with IM, we
try to have a wider focus towards the users and user adoption. You need many “hats”,
and that’s why this job is much more demanding that many believe. But that also
makes it very interesting, because you attend in many different areas.” (Respondent 1)
The BC RIM in OTS explains compliance regarding the use of team sites and IM in OTS as
follows:
“That the employees live up to the company’s demands regarding IM in the way they
manage content on the team sites, that they use document workspaces in a correct
way, that they for example use Views, and metadata in an appropriate way.”
(Respondent 1)
However, as will be addressed and discussed in more detail in the next chapter, this is not
easy for the employees in OTS, and it is evident that the use of team sites, document
workspaces and metadata is part of various problems, and that the benefits of this way of
working are not necessarily obvious to the average user.
6.7.2 Stairway to Compliance
In OTS there are 185 different team sites (per March 2010). Currently OTS is working
towards making all team sites in OTS compliant with Statoil’s requirements for IM. The goal
is that 85 % of all the team sites is compliant towards the end of 2010.
In order to achieve this in OTS, a process initiated by the BC RIM has been executed (Figure
6.7). This is a recommended course of action to become compliant with IM requirements in
Statoil. The process is according to the BC RIM based on best practices and experiences
gained from working closely with the RIM Network. It is an iterative process that consists of
several phases, and is meant as a guide to assist leaders with this process.
The different team sites within all the departments in OTS are on different levels in this
process. Some of the team sites have accomplished compliance by going through this process
while others have not yet started on the process. The time estimate for the process is indicated
to be between one and twelve months, depending on each unit’s available time, resources and
current level of compliance. It is up to each leader to decide when his/her unit is ready to
perform a compliance review, but this should be completed within the end of 2010 (Internal
Document, OTS).
Next, each of these phases is described in more detail based on Internal Document, OTS, and
from interview the with the BC RIM.
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The Statoil Case
Figure 6.7 – OTS’s process to get compliant - Stairway to Compliance (Internal Document, OTS)
Phase 1 – Take ownership of Information Management and perform IM GAP Analysis
In the first phase the RIMs in OTS have a meeting with the leaders in the unit that is
about to engage in the process. Here the RIMs inform the leaders about how to take
ownership of IM and evaluate the unit’s current information handling routines in order
to establish which actions that should be taken in order to become compliant with IM
requirements in Statoil.
Further they have to appoint administrators that are responsible to follow-up the
management of information in each of the team sites and group mailboxes.
Next, the team site administrators must complete a team site administrator e-learning
course. Further training is provided for by RIMs on demand/request.
Phase 2 - Ensure basic required competence and a common understanding of IM
This phase is divided in three steps:
1. Focus on IM in department meetings
When the leader is familiar with the requirements for IM in Statoil they should ensure
that everyone in the unit has a clear understanding of these requirements and
understand why they must comply with them in their day-to-day work. This can be
done by putting focus on IM in department meetings and:
 inform about employee responsibilities
 inform about how to work
 discuss information security and practices
2. Collaboration tool skills
It is also important that everyone in the unit have the skills that are needed to use the
collaboration tools correctly. This can be achieved by taking the e-learning courses.
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The Statoil Case
3. Training sessions
If there is a need for clarifications or to arrange training sessions related to the
collaboration solution the employees should contact the local RIM for further
guidance.
Phase 3 – Perform workshop in unit with RIM and clean up unstructured data
This phase is further divided in two steps:
1. IM workshop
When the leader has ensured that the unit has acquired a clear understanding of IM
requirements in Statoil and are familiar with the C@S solution he/she should contact
the local RIM in order to schedule an IM workshop.
The aim of the workshop is to prepare and organize the unit’s team site(s) and create a
common collaboration room. Together they have to come to an agreement on what
kind of information management structure the unit needs. The team site(s) will be
structured according to the unit’s business process models in order to ensure that work
routines are based upon process and best practice.
Together with the leaders, the administrators go through suggestions for metadata and
set up the team sites.
Further, the RIMs in OTS have a workshop with all the employees in the unit, where
they go through functionality, how a team site functions, and what is expected from
each employee. In addition it is focused on increased use of group mailboxes, less use
of personal e-mail, less storage of documents in personal storage, and business storage
areas. The RIMs offer more information and hands on training for those that desire
that.
2. Team site and unstructured data clean up
When the unit’s team sites have been correctly structured according to process and all
employees have become familiar with IM routines it is necessary to clean up
unstructured data that belongs to the unit. This applies to documents kept in personal
mail boxes and documents without appropriate metadata tags already uploaded to the
team sites.
This is a responsibility for everyone that has created documents in team sites and
keeps documents in their personal mailboxes. Unstructured data kept in the local
drives should be addressed after finishing the cleanup process in team sites and
personal mail boxes.
Phase 4 – Establish new working routines
In the time after the workshop has been performed a reconsolidation period should be
planned where all employees establish the new routines as part of their everyday work.
It is important with focus on this process in department meetings in this period.
If there is a need for clarifications or to arrange training sessions related to the
collaboration solution the employees should contact the local RIM
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The Statoil Case
Phase 5 – Perform compliance review
When all employees have become familiar with IM requirements, an IM compliancy
review will be held. The RIMs conduct this review where they have a chat with the
leaders and the administrators. They ask a few questions based on a check list.
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Results
7 Results
This chapter presents the results and findings from the data analysis process of the eight
interviews conducted in OTS, described in Chapter 5.4.3. The interpretations provide a rich
reading of OTS’s ECM practice, I have also included a number of direct quotes from the
interviews which corroborate with the main themes and the suggested sub-categories. All the
respondents except the BC (Respondent 1) and Local RIM (Respondent 7) have been given
anonymity to protect the interview objects to the extent possible. In some cases the IM role
or/and title is mentioned without revealing their exact position. In addition I have translated
the direct quotes from Norwegian to English in order to ensure a certain language
homogeneity through this thesis.
Despite Statoil’s initiative to develop a standardized IM work practice, the findings suggest
that the ECM approach in the OTS business cluster has been problematic within several areas.
The core of the content management problems in OTS is not surprisingly the quantity of
content. Without these enormous amounts of content objects created and received every day,
content management in OTS would not have been a distinctive problem. Further, these
amounts of content objects need to be managed between internal organizational stakeholders,
and external stakeholders such as customers, vendors, business partners, etc, which shows to
be a challenge in parts of OTS. In addition, one has to manage access control as a large
portion of content objects often needs to be given limited or extended access in some way for
the internal and external players that share documents. The fact that OTS has offices and
external stakeholders dispersed globally makes the content sharing and collaboration even
more demanding.
Tied around these issues is the technology that is to support and aid the management of
content through its lifecycle, across the entire enterprise. In OTS the users have experienced
various limitations and problems with the technology that affects the management of content.
Further, it has been said that ECM is about people and organization, and not technology, as
discussed in chapter 2. This study also acknowledges this as several organizational issues
related to metadata, organizational knowledge and understanding, organizational culture and
training show to be key factors related to the content management issues in OTS. Statoil’s
internal and external compliance regulations also prove to be a challenge for OTS to oblige
with within several areas and hence the employees have to undertake extensive cleaning jobs
of their content. Table 7.1 summarizes the main themes and sub-categories of issues identified
during the data analysis. Next, each of these issues is discussed in more detail, based on the
findings from the case analysis.
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Results
Table 7.1 – Summary of ECM issues in OTS
Major themes
Sub categories / issues
Quantity of content
 Management of large quantities of content
Access control
for internal and
external players in a
global context




Management of separate spaces with unique access
Incorrect use of separate spaces with unique access
Get users out of separate spaces
Use of links for sharing documents




Creation of team sites with adequate metadata
Organizational knowledge and understanding
Organizational culture
Training
Organization
Technology
 Various technological limitations
Compliance
 Cleaning of content
 Compliance process
7.1 Management of Large Quantities of Content
The main reasons for implementing ECM in Statoil were to manage the large amounts of
content being created and revived, to utilize the content through its lifecycle in an effective
and good manner, to enable better e-collaboration, and maybe the most important, to enhance
IM work processes. However, there still seem to be issues concerning this in OTS, and a large
portion of this is due to the quantity of content and a range of other issues related around this
which will be addressed in this chapter. However, there is a consciousness of this in Statoil
and OTS where IM routines have been established, IM roles such as RIMs and team site
administrators have been created, and there is a growing awareness among the employees that
the content has to be managed in some way. The BC RIM expressed the importance of
working with IM through the following quote:
“Working with IM will be an award in itself, by the very fact that one will have an
easier workday. It is easier to manage the information, you take control over the
information instead of that the information takes control over you…We are within an
explosive development concerning the information front… If we don’t get professional
in how we manage it, then we won’t function. I recall that AIIM wrote that IM without
governance is disaster…The truth is that the more amounts of information you have,
the greater are the demands regarding structure. So you have to put a dedicated
person to administrate group mailboxes and team sites, to regularly conduct tasks
related to management of content.“ (Respondent 1)
Part of Statoil’s new IM and e-collaboration strategy is that no one is permitted to work with
documents from their private disc, in order to share information, insure easier retrieval of
information, avoiding content duplication, etc. For example if people get sick or are absent,
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others will not find the documents, and therefore the documents should be placed in a team
site.
However, most of the respondents brought forward experiences where they stated that
content and information on the team sites often tends to get out of hand after using team site
for a while. Data analysis indicates that the introduction of team sites in OTS has received
varying feedback. The following quotes illustrate this.
“It was no success in our department [in the beginning], with the use of the system.
People started to use team site because it was a place to gather and collect
information, but after a while a need to retrieve the information was prominent, and
then they got a problem. It grew in to a long list of documents, and it became hard to
retrieve anything. It became like page up and page down with lists of documents.”
(Respondent 4)
Another respondent pointed out disorderliness with team sites in a long perspective:
“I would personally say that team site is very good in a one year perspective, but if
you are five to ten people working in a team site over several years, it is not easy to
find one's way in the team site” (Respondent 6)
The same respondent noted that it is not easy for new members of a team site to get an
overview of a team site that has been in use for some time:
“If you are new in a department, with a team site that has been in use for two years,
then there are so many documents residing there, and to start to look for documents in
this long list, that’s not easy” (Respondent 6)
This proves that the enormous amounts of information on the team sites are a problem in
OTS, that also cause other issues which will be discussed further. However, it is also
important to note that the IM practice in the case organization has been extensively improved
compared with the earlier Lotus Notes infrastructure according to most of the respondents.
7.2 Access Control Internally and Externally in a Global Context
The major theme, Access control for internal and external players in a global context, and the
related sub-categories will be discussed in this section.
7.2.1 Management of Separate Spaces with Unique Access
Document workspaces, which could be regarded as closed “rooms” within a team site, are
separate spaces with unique permissions used to store documents with limited or extended
access for named individuals or specific groups. This is due to that employees do not
necessarily need access to all information on a team site, or that one needs to extend access to
people from outside a team site. Such documents could be addressing e.g. important sales,
human resources affairs, change of positions, important projects, trading contracts, etc., which
e.g. a deal-handler or other internal staff, a hired consultant, or a customer or vendor might
not necessarily need to have access to. In Statoil there is always a judgment whether the
information should be closed or open, as expressed by the BC RIM:
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“One of the policies addressed in the Statoil book, is that information should be
available. We should make information available but we have to see to that the
information is protected, so we can’t have it open unless it is necessary. It’s a
consideration when the information should be open and when it should be closed.”
(Respondent 1)
Most of the respondents talked about problems regarding document workspaces, and
informed that it tends to be created too many document workspaces in order to give unique
permissions, and pointed out the time effort and complexity of managing these. This BC RIM
expressed this problem with the following quote:
“If you have 100 people you need to share documents with, and you get new contact
persons constantly. Then you have a problem with managing 100 different document
workspaces, and should you use your valuable time to administrate and manage
restrictions for all these contacts?” (Respondent 1)
One respondent working within an area in OTS that could be regarded as unique and
specialized in Statoil addresses the problem this way:
“It’s an enormous risk area, and it’s important that she or he, or you and me, have a
good overview of our documents. To get people to work with this kind of setup [team
site and document workspace], it does not work… It requires an enormous amount of
work effort, and it’s not very effective.” (Respondent 2)
When documents need to be shared among users, located across different departments, and
within classified team sites, this issue seems to be even more comprehensive:
“All our team sites are restricted. If I need to share documents with for example other
leaders, then I have to move these documents over in a document workspace, in order
to give them [extended] access… If you are leader for one unit, and he is leader for
another, then you shouldn’t be able to see each other’s documents. This is a challenge
when we work in different areas, and hence it becomes many document workspaces”
(Respondent 6)
7.2.2 Incorrect Use of Separate Spaces with Unique Access
Many of the respondents talked about how document workspaces often were used incorrectly
by users to store documents in order to retrieve them easier. The following quote makes an
example of this:
“We have had a tendency to use document workspaces to retrieve information easier.
People used to say: “Now we are working on this. Can’t we just put the documents in
a separate document workspace? Because then it’s so much easier to find them
again.” That’s the argument, and not that they need to use document workspace in
order to give restricted access to the documents, which is the main purpose of
document workspaces. But [that they use it] merely to find the documents easier.”
(Respondent 4)
The respondents gave an expression of that the employees regarded using document
workspaces as a suited and more efficient method to retrieve documents easier, because they
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could not find the documents when they were being kept in the document library. However,
the BC RIM noted that this is no good solution seeing that a document workspace also would
have a long list of documents after a while, and thus the efficiency of working this way
disappears, and one would again need to create a new document workspace.
There are several possible explanations for this incorrect use. First, the above quote may
indicate an organizational culture where the employees are “lazy” and do not bother using
metadata and views. But another explanation could be lack of knowledge or understanding
about functionalities in team site such as the use of metadata and views in order to extract and
sort out documents based on metadata which could be due to e.g. insufficient training. It could
also be that there exists no common knowledge within the members of the team site on how
they should use it with correct metadata, views, etc. The following quote indicates lack of
knowledge and training regarding use of the view function:
“I have just learned that [views], and I think there is much to benefit from that. But I
don’t have enough knowledge and competence on that area” (Respondent 4)
In Statoil, best practice for document storing and retrieval is to store documents in the
document library and then to sort out the documents with views based on the metadata.
However, if the users do not use metadata in a correct manner the use of views is useless.
These are all organizational issues that will be discussed in more detail later.
7.2.3 Get Users Out of Separate Spaces
As addressed above, document workspaces are created to give unique access, so that
everybody should not be able to see everybody’s documents or to extend access to persons
from outside a team site. If a person gets added to a document workspace used in relation with
e.g. a project, several of the respondents pointed out that there is no good way to get them out
from the document workspace again. For example, it could be that an employee is finished
with his/her task in a project and hence should be removed, or that an employee quits or
moves into another position. Several of the respondents expressed a limitation with this, and
said that the solution requires too much to get people off a document workspace. This is
illustrated by the following quote:
“It’s in many ways ok that you are able to give access to a document [through
document workspace], but I’m afraid that people don’t get out again. Because if a
leader quits, that has access to everything, it requires a lot of work effort in order to
pick that leader off every damn document workspace he is member of…This feels like
a meaningless task in order to ensure compliance.” (Respondent 6)
One respondent argued that there should be a function so that people could take themselves
out of a document workspace.
“I have a long list of team sites which I actually should not be a member of. You
actually have to go back to the owner of the team site, and ask the owner of the
teamsite to delete you.” (Respondent 3)
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7.2.4 Use of E-mail
Use of e-mail plays an important role in order to share, distribute, and receive information. In
Statoil there is a focus on less use of personal e-mail and more use of group mailboxes. In
addition, relevant and important e-mail should be uploaded to a team site to share it with
others. In Statoil there is a policy that one should link documents to team sites when sending
e-mail instead of using attachments. If this is a document that should not be accessible to
everybody on the team site it has to be placed in a document workspace with unique
permissions. This is being considered as a time consuming and needless process by most of
the respondents, especially if one has to send an e-mail to a person one seldom has contact
with. One respondent expressed frustration with the following quote:
“If you have to send a document as a link, then you have to create a document
workspace just for that one matter, and that is somewhat silly. You have to go through
that process [create document workspace], and then add the document in the
document workspace, in order to finally send the e-mail with the link. This is certainly
dreadfully bothersome, just for that one document, instead of just sending it as an
attachment. And sometimes you do that, send as attachment, because you don’t bother
going through that process by defining a document workspace for precisely one
document.” (Respondent 3)
This quote illustrates that employees in OTS at times do not commit to Statoil’s compliance
requirements regarding document sharing over e-mail. One respondent provided the same
issue and also noted that this is a more widespread problem when sharing with smaller
groups:
“If you need to send a document to someone, you could of course create a document
workspace. And if you work with standard routine work, with the same people, with
the same access, that’s ok. But if you wish that fewer people should have access
concerning a specific document, then you in practice need a whole lot of document
workspaces, where you put one document, setting up access control, and send the link.
And that’s no problem, it functions, but it is time consuming.” (Respondent 5)
The same respondent provided another problem with linking documents to a document
workspace, i.e. that it often is difficult to link documents in a document workspace due to that
the hyperlink path gets too long.
“I think that if you need to put in a hyperlink in a document it is a limitation on about
256 characters… If the limit is 256 characters then you often use 250 just to define the
path where the document is residing. And if the name on this “secret” room is very
long combined with the filename of the document, then the sum might be 270
characters. And then when you copy and paste the path you only get with you 256.”
(Respondent 5)
A senior trader that used telephone as the main media for information sharing was generally
skeptical to using e-mail for sharing of information because information needs to be as current
as possible in his/her specialized line of doing business.
“Most people working in the department that I do don’t log in to their e-mail accounts
before after lunch. Because it’s more important to trade now, and then rather concern
about the e-mail for later. Then it’s useless to send out e-mail in order to spread out
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urgent information, when you know it won’t be opened until later. And you receive so
much e-mail that you don’t need.” (Respondent 8)
As addressed earlier, e-mails are often shared in team sites as they often contain valuable
information. However, a problem that several of the respondents exhibited is that people often
“dump” their personal e-mail inboxes into team sites due to mailbox limitations in Statoil,
where there is a limit of 250 e-mails. This is illustrated by the following quote:
“The problem is the amount of e-mails received. Some people have created document
workspaces in order to dump their e-mails in it, because the mailbox has a limited
size.” (Respondent 4)
One respondent argued that one potentially could lose much information with great
importance and value for the future if e-mails are deleted due to mailbox limitations.
“If you work in a job for a couple of years, then you have a lot of information in your
mailbox which probably isn’t very relevant information to others than yourself. But
you have access to it, you can use it to track back and get hold of stuff. It is in a way
working documents that might not have an objective value for the company, but could
be of great relevance for you. And when you start to work in another position, you
start by emptying your mailbox and start over again. This information doesn’t have
any value for others, and it’s a lot of messy information that really hasn’t any value
for other than to the brains that participated with that specific case. The consequence
for many is that they in practice delete very much information that they shouldn’t have
done…And then you lose the opportunity to go back and retrieve this information if it
is needed in the future.” (Respondent 5)
7.2.5 Example of OTS Business Problem
To illustrate some of the issues addressed until now, this section presents an example from the
Contracts department which is regarded as a unique department in OTS. I would note that this
example is based on interpretations provided by only one of the respondents working in the
Contracts department, but is a good illustration as the issues are prominent throughout the
whole of OTS. It is important to note that OTS Contracts has not yet started on the stairway to
compliant process (Figure 6.7) executed by the BC RIM in OTS.
OTS Contracts handle all contracts that OTS needs as part of its business. This example
addresses the long term contracts in OTS, ranging from 1-20 years. These are contracts
regarding trading, logistics and shipping, supporting activities, and Statoil’s inter-company
contracts. Every year approximately 800 long term contracts are being created and handled in
the Contracts department in OTS. Some of these contracts take several months to compose,
and appurtenant to every contract there are several actions where multiple documents are
being created. These could be Word documents, PDF documents, e-mails, there are different
versions of the documents, faxes, meeting reports, and the list continues. Most of the contracts
created have at least 20 documents tied to it. And 800 contracts times 20 documents result in
16, 000 documents annually.
In addition to the enormous quantity of documents, there are issues regarding access control
to the many documents for internal and external stakeholders sharing documents and
collaborating in a global perspective. This is where the problems start for OTS Contracts. The
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department has tried to use team sites to manage this situation but it tends to be very
challenging within OTS Contracts’ line of doing business. Hence in OTS Contracts, there
exists no formal system to handle these long term contracts, and there is no automatic in how
these contracts are being handled and archived.
“There is no system that manages internal and external documents in a way that we
need it, with the quantity of documents we have. It is the quantity that creates the
problem. If we only had to make one or two contracts every year, we could make two
lovely document workspaces where we manage the documents, and everybody would
be happy.” (Respondent 2)
This situation is illustrated in Figure 7.1 and will be described more in detail further in this
section.
Figure 7.1 – Example of OTS business problem
Quantity of content
If the Contracts department is asked to make a physical term contract by request, the first they
have to do is to use a team site to place the documents they are working with. But after using
team site for a while, more and more contracts and documents tied to the different contracts
will be created or added to the team site, and the Contracts department have experienced that
the content and information on the team site gets out of hand due to the enormous amounts of
information in the team sites.
Management of access control
Management of access control to content is an issue embracing management of content
sharing internally and externally.
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Internal content sharing
Most people working in OTS have relations with one or several of the long term contracts and
the documents tied to each contract handled by the Contracts department. Hence everybody in
OTS have at some time a need to retrieve information from the specific team site where this
information is kept, meaning that approximately everybody in OTS need access to that team
site.
However, some of the documents being composed and kept on a team site might be
addressing e.g. important sales or change of positions and should not be accessible to
everybody. It could be a document e.g. a deal-handler or other internal staff, or a hired
consultant might not necessary need to have access to. This is solved by creating document
workspaces within the team sites with unique permissions in order to give limitation access to
content. As a result of this, at least 800 document workspaces are created annually concerning
sharing of content in relation with long term contracts internally.
External content sharing
Further, if a document regarding a contract between Statoil and e.g. an external customer or
vendor needs to be discussed, neither the customer nor the vendor should be able to access all
the residing content on the team site. Hence a document workspace has to be created for the
specific contract so that the customer or vendor is able to access and revise the documents.
And suddenly there is at least 800 document workspaces created annually in order to share
documents with external parties.
Roughly, this results in at least 1600 document workspaces created every year, in order to
share content internally and externally regarding long term contracts in the Contracts
department. Management of these shows to be a daunting task.
Global environment
The fact that it is people located all over the world, internally and externally, that shares and
manages this content does not make the situation easier. In OTS Contracts the global
perspective also especially addresses Statoil’s intercompany contracts. Statoil is an
international company with activity all over the world, where there is different legal
regulations such as tax legislations. The contract worker explains this in the following quote:
“If we commit to a contract, where we deliver to for example China, then our Asia
office needs access to it. So you need a common area to put the information where
people can go in, search, and find the contract they are looking for. (Respondent 2)
The following quote expresses frustration with the use of team site to manage the situation:
“It’s not one person working on this [contracts], it’s persons from all over the world.
So here you see some of the difficulties with consideration to what we work on. To
insure that it’s not fully open [information], then you need a document workspace. But
that might not work either, because I need to give access to a customer, so that the
customer can revise the documents, or add own documents. Then you have to make a
document workspace for the customer as well. Then you have internal and external,
with twice as many document workspaces. And this doesn’t work. Team site is not
constructed to handle that many documents...A document could start one place, but
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there are so many others that need access to it. We have tried with team sites, but it’s
a complete mess.” (Respondent 2)
Current practice is OTS Contracts
The issues that have been addressed here results in that the Contracts department has an IM
practice that is not in compliance with Statoil requirements.
“We do not have a system to handle this, everything have to be handled manually...
Most people work with 60 contracts at the same time, and they can’t handle this kind
of situation. They use e-mail a lot and they copy and paste documents from a team site
and back... If we have to send it externally, we have to make a copy, and send it out
externally by e-mail. In the mean time, documents on the team site might get revised or
updated.” (Respondent 2)
“Team site is good for meetings and to gather information for a specific project. But
it’s not proper to work out and to compose a contract document, due to the amounts of
documents, confidentiality, sharing of information, security that we need, the internal
and external conditions, and the global perspective…I would argue that team site is
not compliant with the business need.” (Respondent 2)
A large bulk of information disappears because people do not share important e-mails in their
team sites.
“We have no place to put all the incoming information [over e-mail], other than to
make a document workspace. Some do that, but a huge amount of information
disappears due to the enormous amounts of documents that we handle. So we lack a
lot of e-mail, they are often placed in inboxes.” (Respondent 2)
The Contract worker gives rise to concern regarding if people get sick, and if they have not
shared their information.
“People make a system that fits well for them. But if that person falls off a ladder one
day, and ends up at the hospital, then we’re lost.” (Respondent 2)
So far I have presented several identified issues related to management of content in OTS.
Data analysis reveals that these issues potentially have emerged from a series of
organizational, technological, and compliance issues which tend to be critical to the ECM
practice in OTS. These main themes and their sub-categories will be presented in the next
sections.
7.3 Organizational Issues
This main theme reflects organizational issues concerning problems related to metadata,
organizational knowledge and understanding, training, and organizational culture.
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7.3.1 Creation and Configuration of New team sites With Adequate Metadata
As mentioned in the presentation of Statoil and OTS in chapter 6, the use of metadata is a
source of problems and frustration among the users. This was a distinctive issue addressed by
most of the respondents during the interviews.
The main problem with metadata in OTS seems to occur when establishing new team sites.
As addressed earlier, every information owner is responsible to provide adequate metadata to
their team sites when creating it, so that when users create or upload documents they are able
to assign metadata values from the selected set to the documents to classify the documents for
easier retrieval. However, the process owner for Marketing and Supply, oil and products
(M&S O&P), the process most of the units in OTS work within, has not established
guidelines or recommendations for setting up team sites with regards to metadata, views and
structure based on this process.
The BC RIM regarded this as a lack of prioritizing and focus from the process owner within
M&S O&P before the new ECM solution was implemented, and also due to the complexities
and the unique business that is being conducted in OTS. Staff units within OTS do not work
under M&S O&P and thus belong to other processes where these guidelines have been
established by the process owner, making it easier to create a team site with good metadata.
The BC RIM in OTS explains this further:
“…if we look at the Human Resources processes, we see that this exists [guidelines].
All team sites to be created here is relatively straight forward. A job has been done a
here, and it’s relatively simple for the company to make guidelines for all staff units,
where all the processes are relatively equal. Like HR, HSE, Accounting, Controlling,
etc. These are processes that will be 90% equal throughout the company. But when we
talk about OTS: Who else, for example work with crude trading in Statoil?”
(Respondent 1)
In a follow up e-mail the BC RIM explains this further by providing an example from a
unique department in OTS:
“For example: If Ship Operations shall configure a new team site, ideally they should
be able to choose metadata values for activity and category from lists already
composed by the M&S O&P process owner based on Ship Operations business
processes. Due to that process owner’s guidelines have not been composed concerning
M&S O&P we have a challenge as we don’t have a standard. Since Ship Operations is
a unique unit here in Statoil, we [RIMs] try to help the unit by creating metadata that
is relevant and in accordance with the company’s directives… What is important, is
that the users have metadata values that are relevant for them and use them.”
(Respondent 1)
The Local RIM in OTS expressed thoughts concerning this with the following quote:
“A process is supposed to be able to be transferred directly over to a team site, a team
site per process. In such a way that one doesn’t mix several work tasks in a team
site…It should have been defined metadata for each process in advance, but that
hasn’t been done in OTS…If this had been done for every process, it would have been
much easier for us and the users.” (Respondent 7)
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Without having predefined metadata created up front when the new solution was implemented
one respondent (team site administrator) said that they were “forced” to pick out their own
metadata when team site was introduced, without having knowledge and understanding of
metadata, and without knowing the importance of metadata.
“When team site was introduced in Statoil the organization was forced to
behave/conduct itself concerning metadata. The metadata were to help us to
categorize information. To help us, out in the organization, they said: “look at your
work processes, and use metadata from there”. So we tried to look at names in our
work processes, and activities in our work processes, and picked out those as
metadata values, to use as activity and category in the team site. But we still did not
manage to make it function sufficiently. My opinion is that the metadata, even if they
were from our work processes, still were on a too general and generic level.”
(Respondent 4)
As addressed earlier, metadata have not been predefined according to M&S O&P, the process
OTS works within, and hence a team site could only be delivered either with a set of
predefined metadata that are on a very general and standard level, or it could be delivered
with only a few values, and these values might not be suited to the business needs. Several of
the respondents stated that the metadata chosen up-front do not cover all of OTS’s needs. If
none of the metadata provided are suitable to the business needs, then one has the choice to
use some of the metadata that is not fitted, and agree upon within the department which of
those metadata that the department could use for a specific purpose, or one could add own
metadata manually.
Due to that the establishment of process owner’s guidelines was not seen as a must within
M&S O&P before the new solution was implemented, the RIMs in OTS must undertake the
task of helping the different business units to configure the team sites and establish good and
suitable metadata. This is expressed by the BC RIM with the following quote:
“We try to optimize the metadata so that the users recognize them in the way they
work. If you have a category and activity that is totally irrelevant for the people that
work with for example trading, they probably won’t use it [metadata] very effectively
or eagerly. So we sit down and talk with them, tell them which activities and
categories that should be used, and we ask them if they could relate these to their daily
work and the process they are working within... This job has to be conducted, and the
prepacked solution is not very effective before we have configured it.” (Respondent 1)
Some of the informants mentioned that they regarded the predefined metadata within the team
sites to be related to the upstream part of Statoil, and not OTS’s downstream activities.
Therefore they have used the fields that have not been predefined to adjust their own
metadata, but this is obviously not an easy task as illustrated in the following quote:
“It is a threshold to go in and rise above the metadata already residing in the team
site. The metadata might not fit to our department and our way of doing business, but
we could use that one, and that one, to introduce our own metadata. And we do this, in
correspondence with the RIM, regarding what is correct use of metadata and what is
not correct use of metadata.” (Respondent 3)
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One of the respondents also noted that (s)he had an understanding that Statoil was interested
in using specific metadata for company specific needs concerning future retrieval of content,
while (s)he as a user was more interested in other metadata elements and values to achieve
retrieval of information.
The BC RIM expressed thoughts regarding the effort that the employees have to put in, in
order to set up a team site:
“As of today, I think it requires too much from every business unit in OTS to set up
new team sites. If metadata and processes had been described in advance, before the
new team site solution was implemented, we would have had guidelines for how this
should have been done.” (Respondent 1)
One of the respondents argued that there should be more mandatory metadata.
“Some [Metadata] is added automatically, such as date, hour, and title. You are forced
to pick activity, but you are not forced to pick any more of these metadata. So, I
wonder if we maybe should be forced to pick category as well, because by just picking
category, that doesn’t help you very much. It is a matter of sorting documents, and you
need both to work out good views.” (Respondent 4)
However, many of the respondents also acknowledged the importance of metadata, as
expressed by a respondent who has carried through the “stairway to compliance” process:
“It is extremely important to use time on metadata, and it is extremely important to set
up views, to recover information. And we have been using a lot of time on this. ”
(Respondent 3)
The BC RIM further expressed the great importance of metadata with the following quote:
“Well defined metadata is as important for information management as tax
legislations are for those working with tax. Basically, they are the guidelines for how
information is managed, retrieved, and archived” (Respondent 1)
7.3.2 Organizational Knowledge and Understanding
Organizational knowledge and common understanding on how to use team site with correct
metadata, views, and structure, correct use of personal e-mail and group mailboxes, has
clearly been absent within departments in OTS, and most of the respondents acknowledged
this. Many also stated that they have learned and prepared their use of the new solution with
aid from the RIMs. Some of the respondents have also carried through the “stairway to
compliance” process (Figure 6.7) executed by the BC RIM in OTS, while others have not yet
started. This is reflected in the results in that respondents that have carried through the whole
process in general are more positive regarding the current IM practices, while those who have
yet to complete this process are more negative. Issues related to the category “organizational
knowledge and understanding” will be presented next.
The various members of the team sites have to classify their documents when uploading them.
However, if there is no common knowledge and understanding among the users, different
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users might select different values concerning the same documents, especially within team
sites with several heterogeneous users, as noted by the following quote:
“If I work with people, and you work with salaries, then you might think in a different
way regarding metadata than I do… When you have several unequal users, they might
think in different ways, and it is dependent on the mode you are in there and
then…You often forget that others might have a different mindset, and store documents
differently. We think differently…I could choose to tag a document with
“presentation”; you could choose to tag it with “people@Statoil” regarding
metadata. It is quick to define documents differently when there are so many
users…That makes it harder to retrieve information” (Respondent 6)
Other problems with the use of metadata could be that people do not select any metadata
value at all, that they use the metadata value that is defined as default, or that they pick the
wrong metadata value. One source (team site administrator) commented this as follows:
It is not always easy to get a user to use the correct metadata. Because it’s often very
tempting to choose the topmost value on the list, and then save. Or that you choose
other, or that you spend a limited time to save the documents, because you know
where they are stored. That’s why it’s a need for a RIM role, that assists and
encourages, pinches people’s ears, and helps people to follow-up on this. (Respondent
5)
One respondent expressed the difficulties with choosing the right metadata even with the
acknowledgement that metadata is important, and pointed out the importance of dialogue and
common agreement within the department one is working.
“With the acknowledgement that metadata is important, it is still hard to pick out what
metadata I need within a specific area. This is not something you could manage
yourself. It has to be done in dialogue with several people within the area you work, in
discussions.” (Respondent 4)
The same respondent also pointed out that it is a maturing process, and that they did not
understand the importance of a common knowledge before there was a competent RIM to
facilitate this:
“Maturation is time consuming, and to maturate it requires interplay with the ones
you are working with. And that you conduct yourself to the demands that are required
in this area. But sometimes you don’t know when this demand is there, and how to
execute this demand in practice. “What does this mean? How should we succeed in
this?” There is no obvious answer; it is something that you as a person in this
company have to get an agreement on together with the people you work with. Maybe
we have had to little focus on this connection. We haven’t understood that this is
something we need to discuss, we haven’t understood that we need to talk about this,
and we haven’t known how to talk about it. We have been short of a person to
facilitate this, like the new BC RIM” (Respondent 4)
This is supported by the next quote which also emphasizes the importance of such persons:
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“Team site is a tool, but that doesn’t prevent that the users mess it up dreadfully if you
don’t have a structure and people that are responsible to pinch the crowd in their ears
sometimes. The RIMs have in a way conducted adult education out in the different
departments. And now people are more aware of it.” (Respondent 5)
Clearly the use of team site and metadata in OTS is improving. Some users acknowledge the
importance of knowledge and understanding before one can make effective use of the system.
But this is not conducted over night, and some people learn faster than others as the following
quote expresses:
“When you have started to use team site, you will quickly see that metadata is a must,
to make good views and to find back to information on the team site. It’s improving,
but it has taken a lot of time to implement this in the organization.” (Respondent 3)
The same respondent emphasized the importance of planning and structure, and argued that
some departments have underestimated this:
“We understood this quite fast, because we were early adopters. We understood that
here we have to do something to get control. To sit down and use time on planning the
team site, I think that is underestimated. Most people rush it, start to add information,
and after half a year, they can’t find anything. And then they complain that they can’t
make use of it.” (Respondent 3)
One of the respondents (team site administrator) summarized what (s)he needs to do in order
to get better at working with IM with the following quote:
“It is to think that: “now I’m handling information, now I’ve created a document, and
where does that document belong? What task is this tied to?” And usually you know
that when you are working in a team site, and that this is a special team site created
for the area you are working in. But we are not good enough to pick out the correct
metadata when we create and store new documents. So there we need to get better.
And as an administrator, I try to control when people create a new document, that the
document has relevant metadata. If not, I take contact with the person that has added
the document, and we have a discussion on what is the correct category and activity
on that exact document.” (Respondent 4)
The same respondent noted that they are making progress:
“We are starting to get a better structure on our team sites. It’s starting to get easier
to navigate and retrieve information because together with the RIM we have been able
to cope with the structuring of our team sites in a better way. So, this is a matter of
gaining new competence, and to mature your own brain in order to understand how
importance this is, and such maturing takes times.” (Respondent 4)
7.3.3 Training
In Statoil there is a department named Global Business Services (GBS) located under
Corporate Staffs & Services (Figure 6.1) which among other things is responsible for
arranging and delivering services regarding training of personnel with the use of IT systems,
and rollout and implementation of new IT solutions.
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According to the BC RIM, GBS does not manage to deliver hands on services when it comes
to IM supporting processes and systems in OTS such as team site and use of group mailboxes.
The BC RIM argues that one needs to be placed close to the business, and understand the
business needs in order to provide sufficient and adequate training. Hence the RIMs working
in OTS have to arrange such training locally in OTS which is not part of their job. In order to
achieve better services from GBS in the future the BC RIM in OTS suggest as follows:
“We need to have a close relationship [with GBS] so that we could have a
representative from GBS that understands the business in OTS and whom could
organize and prepare hands on training sessions. Maybe we could achieve that in the
future.” (Respondent 1)
One respondent also expressed dissatisfaction regarding training of team site administrators
after the implementation, and also argued that one has to understand the business needs in
order to give adequate training to set up a team site:
“Somebody has to be an administrator of the team site, and establish the predefined
metadata. And I think that the implementation project let this loose too early, because
the training given to the ones administrating a team site was not sufficient enough...I
think that the people that gave the training were too far away from our organization.”
(Respondent 4)
7.3.4 Organizational IM Culture
This category is related to how the respondents expressed their thoughts concerning working
with IM, and also how they perceived their colleagues’ attitude regarding the IM practice in
OTS. Analysis suggests that working with IM is something new and unacquainted for most of
the users, where IM in many occasions is given a lower priority in proportion to the daily
business, and that there has been and still is some skepticism. But some of the respondents
also expressed thoughts indicating that it is improving within several areas:
“Working with information is pretty new to us, and it’s not a knowledge that an
ordinary employee here in Statoil possesses. One doesn’t think about information,
information elements, what kind of information this is? You occupy yourself with the
daily business. And our business, oil trading and supply, is a very operational
business. It means that we have focus on selling oil, and deliver oil and oil products.
You don’t have focus on information, and management of information is in a way an
activity that only happens in the background.” (Respondent 4)
The Local RIM expressed thoughts concerning IM culture with the following quote:
“Many people feel that it is an extra job [IM] instead of a part of the job. They regard
it [IM] as extra work. We [RIMs] try to explain to them that they will benefit from this
extra work, but it’s not easy. We usually and readily show examples and say that “if
you do this in this way, then you can retrieve the information you want… If you look
for documents every day, and uses half an hour every time, we can help you with this”.
We show them how to use views and what they will gain by using metadata”
(Respondent 7)
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Some respondents expressed that their colleagues felt that the system was forced upon them:
“We have many that feel that team site is forced upon them. They don’t feel the
ownership to the system, and use it because it is this system we are to use, but without
knowing it very good” (Respondent 6)
One respondent noted that many employees store information on their personal PCs in order
to retrieve it easier:
I think there is a lot of double storing. People store on their local PC to insure that
they are able to retrieve information” (Respondent 6)
This quote also shows that people create workarounds and store documents on their local PCs
in order to retrieve documents easier.
One of the respondents answered as follows when asked if (s)he thinks that the employees see
the benefits of conducting IM work:
“No not directly, because when we talk about benefits, people regarded it as all about
making money, which is the commercial business we are doing… If you manage to run
the business in an effective, flexible, and smart manner, so that we make money for our
business, that is the benefits. In that picture, information management is a very special
practice… But we are starting to get a consciousness regarding this, management has
gotten focus on it, and they give us time to work with it. But if that time has to compete
with the commercial business, it’s no doubt who is the loser.” (Respondent 4)
The BC RIM provides the following answer when asked if the users see the benefits of
working with IM:
“Yes, but maybe not in the start. Maybe in the long view. Often when we conduct
meetings and workshops they say: “why didn’t we learn this earlier? Everybody
should know this.” We need to have the right focus, and then nearly everyone sees the
value of this work. But first they have to see that the leaders see that this is something
they have to prioritize time and recourses on.” (Respondent 1)
One of the respondents (senior trader) that work within a highly specialized and unique
department with focus outwards argued that the new solution did not offer any benefits. The
respondent informed that information in that special line of doing business was collected from
external sources with current relevance there and then, and that information on a team site
generally is outdated.
“Telephone is the most important information source I have. The day you begin to
trust that the information on a team site is the most updated, then you’re too late. You
have the opportunity to use it, it is probably a great place to put all reports and
analysis in the long view. But I don’t need it, because the oil price is here and now.”
(Respondent 8)
The same respondent doubted that the colleagues would have the time and effort to use team
site.
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“I could agree that to make information publicly available on a team site is a good
thing. But I’m having a hard time to believe that other traders would have the time
and effort in connection with all the other things we have to be concerned about, to go
in to a team site and look if there are things I need or don’t need.” (Respondent 8)
The BC RIM further raised the question of how much time a user should spend on the core
business and information management.
“It is demanding in a very hectic business, where the business is responsible to
manage almost everything itself. And the core business: should it use 90% of its time
one core business? Should it use 80%? Or maybe 75%? Every time the staff units
require new demands to the business regarding new tasks, this pulls on the resources
that we have on e.g. trading. So, what is correct then? How much time should a trader
use on managing e-mail and archiving of documents every day? How much time on
training? However, this work could be weighed against how much the trader uses on
retrieving documents... This is a balancing act.” (Respondent 1)
Over the last years IM has also been put on the agenda regarding training of all new
employees in OTS, regarded by the BC RIM as important progress:
“This is certainly a sign that we are getting more status and room in the organization
which is important. Information, training, continued focus, that is important.”
(Respondent, 1)
Several of the respondents expressed that they have experienced and noticed better IM culture
the last years, and that IM is something that needs continuous focus. One particular quote
illustrated this:
“I have noticed that the attitude regarding information management has changed
over the last two years. There is a greater consciousness, and we are getting better
all the time, but it doesn’t happen by itself. You have to work with this all the time,
and it has to be set aside time and resources to carry us further… After the new [BC]
RIM came along and got information management as his main work area, the RIM
has managed to get focus on this, and has been able to make the management get
focus on this, and commitment from the management is important.” (Respondent 4)
Several of the quotes presented in this chapter clearly express that the new BC RIM has
succeeded in placing information management on the agenda in OTS, and the benefit of
having competent personnel within the organization.
The following quote also underpins that OTS is moving in the right direction:
“This is time consuming. But I think that the focus and direction we are going is
correct. That is my impression.” (Respondent 5)
One respondent considered it to be easier to work with younger people, and that one
explanation could be that they are used to share information on social media like Facebook
etc.
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“I think it’s easier to work with younger and the new employees rather than the people
that have been working here for a while. They are used to personal folders, and are
used to have all the information with themselves, and not sharing information and
their mails… They shield and protect the work they are doing. They won’t give away
what they are working on. They regard it as their baby... The older people look at
information as power, and the more information you have, the more you rule.”
(Respondent 3)
7.4 Technology Issues
This theme expresses the challenges felt by the respondents concerning technology.
ECM is enabled by technology which is to support and aid the IM practice. But a distinctive
issue that tends to show up when presenting results is that there are several limitations in the
technology, as reported by the respondents.
7.4.1 Various Technological Limitations
The various technology issues identified through data analysis are summarized in the list
below:




No function to get users out of team sites and document workspaces
To long hyperlink paths to document workspaces
Search functionalities
Inability to work with specific file types within team sites
The two first issues have already been addressed in this chapter concerning issues related to
document workspaces. The remaining two issues will further be addressed in this section. One
could also discuss whether management of access rights concerning team sites and document
workspaces is partly a technological issue.
Search functionalities
One respondent brought forward an example concerning legal matters. In a legal matter where
there is a dispute between Statoil and a customer, one has to go back and trace the documents
created in the process of creating the contract to solve the dispute, and thus it is important to
be able to retrieve these documents. The following quote explained this:
“After you have delivered a cargo of oil, after some time there might well be a claim
regarding that cargo of oil, because it was not the correct product the customer had
ordered, or that the customer reacts on the way the oil was delivered. That claim will
be managed by our Claims department. And they don’t work in the operative business,
so they don’t know the history regarding a shipment. Then they have to search and try
to find out what happened to that shipment” (Respondent 4)
Further, one respondent clearly expressed views concerning the search functionalities in a
team site and document workspace.
“Then you need the history of all the documents, and it’s almost impossible to secure
ourselves on those kinds of situations. If there are 30 different people working on a
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contract globally, with input from hundreds of persons, internally and externally, it’s
almost impossible to have a good control without a good system. So this creates a lot
of frustration…You can’t have people to start looking after a document in a document
workspace, and the search function in team site is a disaster…You can’t search in
document workspaces; it’s just on top level [document library], so that you won’t find
anything. Team site is not built up around our way of doing business. (Respondent 2)
Work with files within team site
In Statoil users are encouraged to work within team sites. That is to create and open files from
team site, and not conduct work from personal or departmental storage areas. However, one of
the respondents’ reported that team site does not support several file types, and that one is
forced to pull data regarding specific file types off the system and store them locally, and thus
conduct work in the “old” way. The following quote reflects this concern:
“This makes the process of getting this [new] way of working in to people’s spine take
a longer time. You have to do it in the old way, and it becomes a lot of redundant
work. And then it is like: yes OK, why should you use a team site when you in practice
are not able to work from it?” (Respondent 5)
As a result of this limitation, users maintain their folder based structure on their individual
computers, and this could be a potential barrier to learn the new systems and the new
introduced processes regarding IM.
7.4.2 Lack of Knowledge About Technological Functionalities
According to the BC RIM there are many functionalities in the new system that the employees
in OTS are not aware of today, and that it is their job to inform the employees about new
ways to use the system in order to support their daily work.
When talking with one of the respondents regarding unknown functionalities in team site
(s)he noted that it is key to discuss functionality and come upon an agreement together in a
group on how to use technology to support information management in a project or group.
“We have to know about it [Functionality]. We have to know how if functions, and we
have to know have it can support our project. That means that we have to discuss this
within the project group, and agree on how we can use this functionality. It is this
human relation that is distinctive all the way. You don’t conduct information
management alone, it takes place in collaboration with the ones you work with. This
relation is time consuming, and it demands focus.” (Respondent 4)
One of the respondents noted that (s)he does not know the functionalities that are needed well
enough:
“No, don’t well enough. But the drawback is the time, to invest time in a hectic work
day. So often to know something partly is ok, instead of knowing it very good.”
(Respondent 6)
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7.4.3 Next Generation
The technological solution that Statoil uses today is according to the BC RIM quite
extensively customized to Statoil’s needs, and it is a wish that the next generation is a
standard solution, which is more easy and cheaper to upgrade. If the vendor publishes an
update of the system, it would have to be conducted individual updates at Statoil due to the
customization. The BC RIM expressed thoughts regarding the next solution:
“It is important that the next generation solution is quite flexible, that it contains
templates and different ways to set up the system in order to cover several specific
needs. In addition to a new way of managing e-mail, I think we could eliminate some of
the challenges we have today. But no matter how you adjust the technical solution to fit
our needs, it will always be needs that won’t be covered optimally, and hence need to be
covered by specific systems.” (Respondent 1)
7.5 Compliance
Due to that Statoil is listed in the New York Stock exchange it requires the company to follow
the SOX act for traceability of economic transactions and documents. These requirements are
often a burden on the line of business in OTS as already indicated several times in this
chapter. The consequence is that users have to undertake extensive cleaning jobs in their team
sites, and e-mails.
7.5.1 Cleaning of Content
Cleaning of content on the team sites is regarded as a demanding and time consuming task by
many of the respondents. Cleaning was earlier not highly prioritized among the employees,
and typically, the clean-ups of content occurred in the form of annual campaigns (Munkvold
et. al, 2006).
However after using team sites for a while after implementation, some of the respondents
stated that when they were asked to clean their team sites regularly it came as a big surprise,
and that this was not communicated well enough. One respondent presented his/her thoughts
with the following quote concerning this:
This came as a surprise for us. It was the [BC] RIM that told us that it’s natural to
create new team sites because the business, the conditions and the constraints change
over time, and that we are supposed to clean our content over time.” (Respondent 3)
In addition, due to that most of the old team sites had a poor structure with more or less
useless metadata, new team sites have in many occasions been created as part of the
compliance process. The most important information is then transferred from the old team
sites to the new ones, and thus someone has to undertake this task which is perceived as a
daunting task.
“It is extremely time-consuming work to go through a team site [to clean it]. Now, I
am much more critical to what I store in a team site, than I was half a year ago. In the
mailbox you perform clean-ups continuously, now I’m also performing clean-ups in
the team site continuously, but I was not aware of this before. We won’t do that
blunder one more time. But it is demanding, it is very demanding to keep the team site
clean.” (Respondent 3)
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This quote also indicates that (s)he has learned the great importance of regular cleaning of
content. The BC RIM raised the question of who should do the cleaning of these team sites.
If you have 10 000 e-mails in a team site, and you haven’t archived regularly, and
then you are being asked to clean the team site. Who should do that? Who should go
through those 10 000 e-mails? Should you do everything? Who should decide?”
(Respondent 1)
One respondent regarded cleaning as a heavy job:
“It’s hard to make time to clean in a team site, because there is so much residing in it
that just could be thrown away [Delete it]. But you have to be careful so that you don’t
throw the baby out with the bathing water. So you have to go through, not just the
document library, but all the document workspaces in the team site. Then you have to
go through the mail library, because there could be valuable e-mails that should be
archived. It’s a heavy job.” (Respondent 4)
The same respondent further argued that there should be continued focus on cleaning:
“Continuous cleaning, that you have this mindset all the time. “ Now we are finished
with this task, what should be archived?” We have not done this earlier. We have not
focused on cleaning. And that’s how we humans are. Isn’t it like this at home as well?
We throw away stuff in the garage, and then it remains there, until we make an all-out
effort” (Respondent 4)
Employees in OTS receive and have to respond to large quantities of e-mail every day.
“It has to go quickly when working in an operative business like this. Let’s say you
receive 100-200 e-mails every day. How much time should you use on sorting them?
Delete and archiving? Should somebody do it for you? Should you do it yourself?
Here in Statoil, it’s every employee’s responsibility to manage their information… We
wish to standardize and make more efficient use of e-mail and management of e-mail.
With less use of personal e-mail and more effective use of group mailbox, with
effective use of administrators that regularly encourage people to go through their
mailboxes and group mailboxes, make sure that they delete and archive and perhaps
upload to team sites.” (Respondent 1)
7.5.2 Compliance Process
Most of the respondents that until now have participated in the compliance process noted that
they are pleased and satisfied, but there are mixed opinions regarding the length and amount
of time spent on workshops. One respondent expressed that (s)he learned a lot, but that too
little time was spent on it:
“I had many ”aha” experiences. But there is much to learn, and we humans don’t
mange to catch all this information at once. So, a workshop in 1 or 2 hours, you don’t
get very far there. I experienced that I was still dependent on the RIM after the
workshop” (Respondent 4)
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Others didn’t learn much new, but advertised for several rounds, and more practical training:
“I think that process was good, but for me it was nothing new. I think it requires more
than that, to get this [correct use of team site and metadata] in place. You have to use
the system in order to get it under your skin. If you are to use team site effectively, you
need a good ambassador. But you also need regular inputs. I think it requires more
rounds of this process” (Respondent 6)
7.6 Summing Up the Results of the Case Study Analysis
The main themes and sub-categories of issues addressed in this chapter deal with obstacles to
corporate success and difficulties for the employees in OTS concerning ECM. On the surface,
the ECM problems in OTS could appear to be mostly technical in nature. But the results
addressed here also clearly prove that organizational and social issues play a critical role. In
addition, the compliance requirements is a factor that the case organization struggles with.
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Discussion and Recommendations for Statoil
8 Discussion and Recommendations for Statoil
In this chapter the results from the prior chapters are discussed in light of the literature review
presented in the four first chapters. First, I compare my study with the framework for ECM
research by Tyrväinen et al. (2006), thereafter I discuss the enterprise-wide perspective of
ECM in Statoil and OTS, before focusing on the organizational aspects of ECM in the case
organization.
8.1 Framework for ECM Research
This research provides rich insights within several aspects of the ECM phenomenon with
regard to the framework for ECM research (c.f. 4.3) suggested by Tyrväinen et al. (2006).
Within the content perspective which Tyrväinen et al. (2006) argue is involved in any piece of
ECM research, this study includes all the three views. This includes issues concerning content
organization, metadata, and search, related to the information view. It deals with the
relationship between users and content including creation, maintenance, and content use
which apply for the user view. This study also addresses the systems on which content resides,
and how content is made accessible to the users, underlying the system view. In proportion to
the enterprise perspective, this research addresses the environment (context) in which the
content is managed. This includes several organizational aspects and issues within the case
organization. The deployment process perspective is represented by the focus on compliance
and user adaptation to the solution. However the development of processes is given less focus.
The technology perspective is also given minor focus in this study. However, Tyrväinen et al.
(2006) argue that the main focus of ECM research from the IS perspective must address
systems rather than individual technologies. It is difficult to structure the discussion according
to these perspectives because several of the issues identified are related to multiple
perspectives. As Tyrväinen et al. (2006) state: “a piece of research may address ECM from a
number of perspectives.” (p. 631).
In regard of that few academic case studies that have been conducted within focus on the
ECM concept in practical use it is hard to compare and discuss the OTS case against other
studies. Hence I have compared the current situation with the former situation provided for in
the case description. In 2002 Hodne & Stangeland (2002) conducted a study where they
analyzed Statoil’s current IM situation, and recommended further actions for Statoil, and thus
I have also compared the current situation with Hodne & Stangeland’s (2002) results in this
discussion. It is important to note that Hodne & Stangeland (2002) conducted a wider study
including several business areas in Statoil, that did not include OTS and the M&M business
area.
As mentioned several times in the literature review, the amounts of information and
unstructured content created in today’s enterprises are steadily increasing, and become more
difficult to manage. This was also the situation for Statoil (Hodne & Stangeland, 2002), and
was a major problem as stated in the case description. Statoil has acknowledged this and has
the last years engaged in an ECM project seeking to take control over the unstructured
content. An important driver for ECM in Statoil was to stimulate organizational change and
improve work processes.
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Discussion and Recommendations for Statoil
Hence one could say that Statoil has regarded the compliance requirements as an opportunity
to enhance the IM practice. This is in accordance with Stalters (2007), which emphasize ECM
as: “a management practice that provides for governance of an information management
environment toward the goal of improving compliance, information reuse and sharing, and
operational performance.” Statoil’s goal for organizational change and improved work
practices is also similar to Dilnutt (2006), which says that an ECM solution could enforce
discipline around the creation, storage and generation of documentation required for
compliance purposes.
However, management of unstructured content is still (2010) prominent in OTS, and hence
one could wonder whether the company ever would manage to obtain perfect control of its
unstructured content. Identified issues related to this which have been addressed in the Results
chapter will further be discussed.
I would note that OTS is one business cluster underlying a big business area, and there are six
business areas in Statoil. That this case represents the overall big picture of the whole of
Statoil should thus not be expected.
8.2 The Enterprise-Wide Aspect of ECM in OTS
Statoil is a large organization consisting of different business areas, conducting a vast number
of various business tasks, with very different terminology in conducting their daily work all
over the world. The Statoil case provides an example of a strategic, corporate-wide ECM
approach (Munkvold et al., 2006). However, as documented in the previous chapters there are
several areas within OTS that have concrete business needs and specific requirements for
managing their content. The usage of one single and common ECM solution in Statoil is thus
problematic within several areas in the OTS business cluster. This is also a challenge that is
addressed in the literature review (c.f. 4.2).
In OTS this has invoked the development of custom components within some of the
specialized departments, which aim to increase flexibility and supported technological aid for
the end users. However, such compartmentalized departmental systems fall short as enterprise
solutions (Alsup & Strong, 2004), and one could question whether the ECM solution in
Statoil is really corporate wide. This is expressed by the BC RIM with the following quote:
“The challenge is as always when you implement new tools, IT solutions, and
collaboration solutions, that they are to cover the business needs. In Statoil we have
the same challenge as everywhere else, with that you have a system that are to cover
all of the business needs, but then, in every business area and business cluster like
OTS, you have unique demands that the business cluster itself is responsible to cover.
So if you have unique needs that don’t fit with the solution outlined through ECM and
the IM strategy, then it have to be handled locally.” (Respondent 1)
One could also question whether Statoil’s standard solution is designed to manage e.g.
contracts, or to manage information concerning trading of crude oil, because the oil price is
dynamic, and hence today’s information may well become tomorrow’s ignorance.
Maybe the implementation project should have been more conscious about OTS’s specialized
and unique way of working compared to the broader Statoil context. During the project phase
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Discussion and Recommendations for Statoil
in an ES implementation, Markus & Tanis (2000) note that a potential problem could be that
the project teams may be staffed with inadequate representation with lack of knowledge and
skills. The implementation project in Statoil might have been short of knowledge and insight
within OTS.
The technological solution that Statoil uses today is according to the BC RIM quite
extensively customized to Statoil’s needs. In 2004, Nordheim & Päivärinta reported in their
study that Statoil planned to conduct all customization efforts of the new system by Statoil’s
internal IT service. This customization was seen as a tremendous challenge in Statoil, and
Nordheim & Päivärinta (2004) then stated that “the Statoil case was a bit exceptional if
compared to cases in which external consultants and vendors would play a major role in the
organizational implementation” (pp. 4-5). Nordheim & Päivärinta (2004) say that Statoil
considered this as a better approach as the company wanted to develop the internal service
provider’s customization competence rather than having a long term relationship with a
consulting company. An ECM solution is expected to last for many years, with an increasing
functionality evolving over the years. In the long run, the in-house customizations and the
competence gained to do these were in Statoil considered to represent a profitable approach
over time (ibid). However, Markus & Tanis (2000) note that a potential problem when
implementing an ES is that teams may embark on extensive, unnecessary modifications.
Phillip Kurinsky, an experienced ECM consultant, argues in Miller (2007) concerning ECM
implementations that “If you have not implemented a CMS, don’t try to do it on your own.
Seek guidance from a consulting partner who has an established methodology that covers the
full project lifecycle.” (p. 50).
Statoil is planning to upgrade its ECM solution the coming years. The BC RIM indicated in
the results for this study that it is a wish that the next generation is a more standard solution,
which is easier and cheaper to upgrade. If the vendor publishes an update of the current
system, it would have to be conducted individual updates at Statoil due to the customization.
This statement was only mentioned by the BC RIM, and it is not known if this is the case in
the whole of Statoil, but clearly indicates that Statoil’s customization efforts might have been
too extensive, and should possibly have sought advice from external consultants within the
customizations efforts. At least perhaps within unique and specialized business clusters like
OTS. However, on the other side one could argue positively for Statoil’s customization
approach seeing that Statoil’s internal IT service might have built up a solid competence
concerning ECM development in Statoil for the future.
In proportion to Päivärinta & Munkvold’s (2005) Framework of major ECM issues, data
analysis suggests that Statoil’s ECM solution do not fully support OTS’s organizational goals
and business model. In OTS, the business goal is to sell and deliver oil and oil products,
which are downstream activities. Some of the informants mentioned that they regarded the
predefined metadata within the team sites to be related to the upstream part of Statoil, and not
OTS’s downstream activities.
In any case, before deciding on a next generation solution, unique needs in business clusters
like OTS should be identified in a way that these could be covered by technological solutions,
without requiring extensive customization efforts. However, if the next generation solution
does not manage to cover all needs, it is important that alternative departmental systems is
developed with the same infrastructure and data model as the standard solution to let people in
different departments share information contained in separate applications, as suggested by
Jenkins et al. (2006). I would argue that continued analysis of content management processes
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Discussion and Recommendations for Statoil
is critical in successfully utilizing ECM and hence one could identify and be aware of the
areas a standard solution does not fit regarding future updates of the system and
supplementary systems. It is difficult to effectively select an appropriate technology without
understanding the processes and business needs.
Markus & Tanis (2000) say that errors of prior phases are felt in the shakedown phase. One
problem they mention is that operational personnel may adopt workarounds to cope with
earlier problems and then fail to abandon them when the problems are resolved. The results
for this study show that people in OTS are forced to conduct workarounds within several
tasks, e.g. that people have to take specific file types off the system (team site), in order to
work with them.
8.3 Organizational Aspects
The literature review witnesses that ECM is a complex phenomenon with several challenges
that are mostly organizational in nature (Munkvold et al., 2006). The ECM practice
investigated in this study also acknowledges ECM as a challenging concept embracing
various organizational challenges. Statoil’s IM strategy involves new standardized processes
and changes in business processes and work practices for how content are to be handled
across the enterprise, which also are organizational challenges reported in Salminen et al.
(2006) cited in Tyrväinen et al. (2006). Hence the ECM project in Statoil could clearly be
regarded as a technochange project (Markus, 2004) as the new ECM solution has triggered
major organizational changes, which also was Statoil’s intention.
8.3.1 Metadata
In Statoil, metadata should be based and configured according to the business process it is to
support. This is in accordance with AIIM’s newest and recently updated definition of ECM
which says that: “Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the strategies, methods and tools
used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to
organizational processes.” (AIIM, 2008). This also shows that Statoil has taken a business
process perspective to ECM as suggested by vom Brocke et al. (2010). Statoil has worked
through the workflows behind content management throughout the life cycle from top level
processes down to detailed process flow charts.
Seeing that M&S O&P, the process many of the departments in OTS works within, is a
unique process in Statoil context, with activities including e.g. trading, shipping, and contract
management, the metadata should also be unique. This is in accordance with Near’s (2009)
statement that metadata will be the point where the various parts of the organization begin to
reveal how very different they are.
However, as the implementation of ECM in Statoil did not focus on defining good metadata
concerning M&S O&P, the team sites are created with a set of metadata perceived either to be
on a very general and standard level, metadata lacking sufficient metadata values, or metadata
generally unsuited to the business needs. Hence the employees within parts of OTS have had
to tag their content with a set of metadata that have not covered all of OTS’s needs, making
storing, tagging, and retrieval of content harder. This again indicates that the project teams
may have been staffed with inadequate representation with lack of knowledge and skills
within OTS.
85
Discussion and Recommendations for Statoil
Rockley (2003) states that properly defining and categorizing the types of metadata that an
organization wants to capture about the organization’s information is extremely important to
the success of the metadata strategy, and hence I would argue that the use of metadata in OTS
has been unsuccessful within specific departments working under M&S O&P. However, this
is an issue that currently is being handled out in the different departments in OTS in
collaboration with the RIMs, where they try to help the different departments by manually
creating metadata that is relevant and in accordance with the company’s directives. This could
be regarded as a renovation or re-implementation of the solution in OTS where all team sites
are re-configured, this is a daunting task. Too general and insufficient metadata is one
explanation to the content management problems in OTS. However, while digging down into
the case several other challenges concerning metadata were identified.
In resemblance with Banerjee’s (2000) findings, there are several challenges encountered with
the use of metadata in OTS. Banerjee (2000) concludes that social and organizational issues
play a critical role in determining whether a particular metadata initiative is successful. One of
the lessons learned by the project investigated by Banerjee (2000) is that those who wish to
introduce new access mechanisms should collaborate as broadly as possible with individuals
and organizational units. Data analysis reveals that this also applies for this study.
Resemblances between the the two cases are that:




Metadata must be entered consistently if they are to be useful.
Adding consistent metadata requires significant time and effort.
Only humans can identify many important relationships in data.
There was variability in how users filled out the submission form with metadata
values.
 People supplied metadata for different reasons.
 It was difficult to find local expertise who could dedicate time to support the project
8.3.2 Lack of Organizational knowledge and common understanding
The findings from Banerjee (2000) concerning metadata fit well with my observations from
OTS. The findings suggest that organizational knowledge and common understanding have to
be in place before employees manage to enter and use metadata consistently. People have
different mindsets, think differently, and thus tag content differently. If this shared
understanding fails to appear, different users might select different values concerning the
same content, especially within team sites with several heterogeneous users. To achieve
consistent entry of metadata, Banerjee (2000) states that people have to agree upon what type
of information that belongs in the metadata and what they hope to accomplish by putting it
there. Attaining this agreement is extremely difficult as a practical matter according to
Banerjee (2000). In OTS some employees within specific departments have attained this
agreement and understanding, whilst some have not. This is mostly conducted in dialogue and
workshops with several people within the area they work, in discussions aided by the RIMs.
The findings reveal the importance of a competence person like the BC RIM to facilitate.
Several of the respondents noted that they did not understand the importance of this earlier,
and several argued that they had been short of a person with competence to facilitate this. This
is similar to Banerjee’s (2000) findings where it was difficult to find local expertise who
could dedicate time to support the project.
Another problem that was identified was that one of the respondents noted that (s)he had an
understanding that Statoil was interested in using specific metadata for company specific
86
Discussion and Recommendations for Statoil
needs concerning future retrieval of content, while (s)he as a user was more interested in other
metadata elements and values to achieve retrieval of information. This is similar to Banerjee’s
(2000) findings where people supplied metadata for different reasons. In this case one could
wonder if Statoil as a company is more interested in achieving their own traceability of
content than in helping the users to find what they need. However, this issue was not
mentioned by the other informants.
Hodne & Stangeland (2002) found in their study that there was little consciousness
concerning metadata and classification of content. I would argue that this has improved with
the new solution where the employees now definitely see the importance of metadata as the
results suggest, but that there has been a shortage of how to use it consistently.
Overall, my analysis demonstrates the importance of a common understanding of metadata
and team site structure. The findings indicate a tendency where there is starting to be a
structure and common framework amongst the employees. Most of the respondents agreed
that metadata is important in order to make efficient use of the system.
When studying 58 mainly practice-oriented case narratives from ECM projects and
implementations Päivärinta & Munkvold (2005) found that “awareness among content
producers and owners of the importance of metadata for the anticipated contexts of retrieval
and reuse” (p. 4), was important. This is in resemblance with the Statoil case where my data
analysis show that awareness and common agreement among participators on team sites is
important in order to successfully utilize an ECM.
Banerjee (2000) notes that: Metadata is a tool, not a solution to problems. Just as high tech
woodworking and machine tools are potentially useless (or even harmful) in the hands of
unskilled people, people need to understand what metadata does and develop certain skills to
make use of it.”(p. 223). I think this is very similar to the case studied in this research and is a
very interesting statement.
8.3.3 Organizational IM Culture
Content management is something that few in OTS have wanted to address. Typical attitudes
towards it were, “I’m just too busy to deal with it” or “I just save everything in a document
workspace”. With mindsets like those, it is clear that content management can be a challenge
for organizations.
Hodne & Stangeland (2002) found in their study that organizational culture and attitude
concerning sharing of content was poor but that it was enhancing. This still seems to be the
case in OTS among many of the employees. Many of the respondents expressed during the
interviews that their colleagues perceived working with IM as something new and unfamiliar,
and that IM is not knowledge that an ordinary employee in Statoil possesses. Some also
mentioned that some employees felt that the system was forced upon them, and that IM was
an extra job taking place in the background.
However, as the results suggest, working with IM has gained focus and attention in OTS, both
among the employees, and also the management. Most of the respondents expressed
improvements and most of them believed that the business will experience benefits with the
ECM solution when managed and supported properly. Clearly, the new BC RIM can take
some of the credit, as expressed by the respondents. But this is indeed time consuming, and it
87
Discussion and Recommendations for Statoil
is a maturing process where I would argue that it is impossible to reach the ultimate goal. The
question is: how much time should a user spend on managing his/her content? There is no
clear answer, but the effort could probably be weighed against how much time the employees
uses on retrieving content.
In chapter 2.3 I wrote that sharing of information is a sensitive area, because sharing
information means one has to give up on something. One interesting statement by one of the
respondents was that (s)he considered it easier to work with younger people rather than older
people, and that one explanation could be that younger people are used to share information
on social media like Facebook etc. Hence I would argue that there could be a value in
employing new and younger people, as they are not “stuck in” the existing corporate culture
and the old way of working, and may thus offer an unbiased perceptive. This might also
indicate that working with IM and sharing of information will be something completely
natural among new employed young people the coming years, and thus some of the
challenges businesses are facing today regarding information sharing will might be less
prominent.
8.3.4 IM Champions
After the new solution was implemented a Records and Information Manager (RIM) role was
established. Other roles such as information owners and administrators have also been
established. This is in accordance with Duhon (2009) that says that different IM roles are
beginning to differentiate staff in organizations and within education. I would argue that this
shows that Statoil also is innovative within this area and is building knowledge and
competence within an area that still is young. Hodne & Stangeland (2002) suggested in their
study to establish such roles. They also pointed out that such persons should be engaged in
working with IM and understand the business, that they could be valuable assets concerning
future development of ECM in the company.
I would argue that the business cluster (BC) RIM in OTS could be regarded as an IM
champion which is highly engaged and committed to work with IM. Such a person needs to
have a combination of industry experience in information management and business
processes, to understand the user perspective (Duhon, 2009). It is difficult to effectively
support a business cluster like OTS without understanding the processes and the business
needs, and hence a person like this needs to be located close to the business.
In Statoil the RIMs have networks across the different business areas and business clusters
conducting regular meetings discussing and sharing problems, experiences, and best practices
related to C@S. They also settle different IM demands for each business clusters. This is in
agreement with Glick-Smith (2004) that also emphasizes the importance of focusing on this
so that every departmental strategy supports the corporate strategy. She argues that it is
important to form a strategic integration team that holds regular meetings to ensure that
departments are communicating with each other, sharing best practices, and discussing
content cohesion in the context of supporting the corporate strategic plan.
Many respondents for this study expressed gratitude for having a competent person such as
the BC RIM that could directly aid the IM work. The results suggest that it is key to have a
person acting as an IM champion to facilitate organizational IM work. The presence of a
competence person regarding IM has brought greater awareness and focus of the ECM
practice in OTS.
88
Conclusions
9 Conclusions and Implications
This chapter is focused on the conclusion that can be drawn from this study, emphasizing the
research questions I sought to address (c.f. 1.2) and lessons learned. In addition I discuss the
implications this study has for research and practice.
This research addresses several issues and challenges concerning management of large
volumes of unstructured content in OTS which could be regarded as a highly specialized and
diverse business cluster, hence answering the first research question.
I would argue that there exists no silver bullet in order to solve all the issues identified during
the data analysis, and that one never would reach “the ultimate goal”, where all employees
and departments comply 100% with internal and external regulations. However, the actions
taken to improve the ECM practice in OTS, with a process perspective towards compliance,
show to be beneficial in order to cope with the issues, and I would argue that OTS and Statoil
are on the right path for the future. This answers the second research question.
In addition, new awareness of the importance of IM as part of daily operations has been raised
significantly the last few years in OTS. The employees in OTS are also starting to realize that
content management is an ongoing, everyday process, and not just a clean-up project.
This answers the last research question.
9.1 Lessons Learned
This case illustrates that ECM initiatives are much more then implementation of technology to
allow employees to store and share content. Such initiatives involve processes to organize
content, to categorize content, changes in work practices and business processes, and
processes to encourage content sharing and reuse.
This case shows that to be successful with ECM, new communication resources is needed,
facilitated by competent and committed persons. Training, planning and setting up team sites
should be executed in groups within each specific area facilitated by RIM. I would argue that
the more people who are part of that process and make contributions, the smoother would the
use of the system be. When applied thoughtfully, the goals of heightened awareness and a
common understanding of content management are more attainable within each specific
business area.
The results for this case study also show that Statoil’s ECM system has failed to meet all of
OTS’s business needs, and hence I would emphasize the importance of determining the needs
of the entire organization prior to the implementation, in order to select the best tool to meet
those needs, and guide the implementation. However, it is important to note that Statoil did a
thorough job prior to implementation, and it is probably difficult to point at a better available
solution at that time.
From this study I do not report “a walk in the park”, but present several issues of concern. But
I argue that it is important to identify such issues and lessons learned to generate new
knowledge which could help organizations work toward the same goals, and to anticipate
challenges and provide helpful guidance for their current and future ECM solutions. As
Walsham (2006) states: “How can we learn from mistakes if everyone writes about
organizations as if things were perfect?” Statoil should learn from its past experiences. Before
89
Conclusions
the company can improve, it must first learn, and then transfer the new knowledge and insight
throughout the entire organization.
9.2 Implications for Research and Practice
This research has been grounded in a local perspective providing in-depth interpretations and
discussions concerning the ECM phenomenon. There are great opportunities to follow up this
study with other studies from several potential perspectives, which could contribute to a
further understanding of the issues organizations are facing concerning ECM.
Further research should investigate the impact of ECM in a more extensive manner with a
case study throughout the whole of Statoil, alternatively within other business areas in Statoil.
A quantitative study would also be interesting to carry out in order to measure and examine
user adoption and acceptance in the entire enterprise, and then see if there is any variation
within the different business areas and business clusters. Subsequent to such studies, lessons
learned and best practices from the various areas could then be used in order to enhance
further development, updates, etc. in the future, within Statoil and other businesses.
Statoil’s ECM initiative has also implication for its external business partners, vendors,
contractors, etc., and thus further research should be focused on examining how Statoil’s
initiative has influenced them. This could e.g. be done in relations with a study concerning
supply chain management.
To compare and contrast Statoil with other ECM projects and initiatives in other organizations
with a multiple case study could also be very interesting and useful for further development of
the concept and the academic ECM research.
This research reveals that metadata serves as both joy and pain in the ECM context, and hence
it would be interesting to look deeper into prior research concerning metadata and
taxonomies. It would also be very interesting to go deeper in the literature concerning IT
enabled organizational change.
ECM technology still remains relatively immature, and thus vendors and practitioners could
learn from the issues addressed in this study of ECM in practical use.
ECM systems are important to businesses and will most likely be even more important in the
coming years. This study presents an overview of issues concerning ECM. Future research
may include a more comprehensive study of the entire enterprise to see if these issues are
widespread.
90
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96
Appendix
Appendix A – Interview Guide – Initial Round
Allment
 Hvilken stilling har du innenfor Statoil?
 Hvilke arbeidsoppgaver har du?
ECM
 Hva er begrepet ECM for deg?
- Strategi, prosess, system, etc.
- Håndtere innhold (Content) i forhold til forretningsprosesser
- Håndtere innhold i hele organisasjonen
 Har Statoil en definisjon på ECM ?
Status på implementering/innføring av ECM
 Kan du si litt om Statoils ECM løsning i dag (Type løsning, ECM-strategi, ECMsystem)
 Hva var bakgrunnen for prosjektet?
 Hva var/er målsetningen med prosjektet?
 Hva har blitt bedre, hva har blitt gjort, hva har blitt dårligere, hvordan har det blitt
gjort, har ting blitt lettere?
 Er alle systemene integrert med ECM løsningen?
Suksessfaktorer
 Hva har du sett på som viktig for implementeringen/prosjektet? Forventer svar som at
de for eksempel hadde en god leder, champion i prosjektet, opplæring, involvering av
ansatte, endringsledelse, etc.
Problemer
 Hvilke problemer og utfordringer har det vært?
Tilpassninger/modifikasjoner
Tidligere har det blitt nevnt at M&M OTS er så spesielle at den nye løsningen passer dårlig
her.
 Har det så langt blitt gjort noen modifikasjoner i forhold til dette?
 Hva tenker du om kostnadene i forhold til gevinstene og funksjonaliteten til ECMsystemet med å gjøre egne tilpasninger til OTS?
 Evt. Hva tenker du om sammenligningen mellom funksjonaliteten/gevinstene med
ECM i forhold til anstrengelsen og innsats som må legges ned i endringer (i system og
avdeling) som må gjøres for å oppnå slik funksjonalitet?
Diverse
 Opplæring?
 Er/var gamle etablerte prosesser en barriere for å lære seg de nye systemene?
(avlæring).
A
Appendix
 Har det blitt drevet holdningsskapende arbeid for å få bort ”gammel vane vond å
vende” tankegang.
 Belønningssystemer for å ta i bruk teknologien?
 Bedriftskultur: er det mye konkurranse, kan dette hindre deling av informasjon?
 Er det merarbeid for de ansatte å dele informasjon?
 Forstår de ansatte verdien av å dele informasjon?
 Tror du de ansatte i OTS er kjent med informasjonsforvaltningen i Statoil?
 Finnes det skriftlig dokumentasjon for arbeidsprosesser i OTS? Og er
informasjonsforvaltning inkludert her?
 Har ECM-strategien blitt integrert med prosessorganiseringen til Statoil?
 Har det blitt bedre integrasjon mot eksterne?
 I H&S blir det anbefalt å opprette roller for informasjonsforvaltning som er fokusert i
forhold til prosesser og ikke bare prosjekter slik som Project Data Managers PDMer.
Er dette gjort og kan disse rollene identifiseres med RIM roller?
B
Appendix
Appendix B – Interview Guide – Main Round
Hensikten med masteroppgaven min er å undersøke OTS sin informasjonshåndtering og
problemer, utfordringer, og positive ting rundt dette. Derfor er det nyttig å intervjue ansatte
rundt i avdelingen angående informasjonshåndtering av ustrukturert informasjon og tema
rundt dette.
Åpen del
Du kan først starte med å si litt om hvilken stilling du har innenfor Statoil, og hvilke
arbeidsoppgaver du har.
Hva syntes du er hovedutfordringene med informasjonshåndtering i OTS og ditt daglige
arbeid?
Hva forårsaker/skaper/årsaken/bakgrunnen til problemene og hva fører problemene til (nye
problemer)?
Strukturert del
Hvordan ser du på arbeidet som gjøres med å forbedre informasjonshåndtering i OTS?
- Stairway to compliance
- Arbeidet RIM gjør
- Workshops
- Trening
Hva er bra/dårlig?
Hva kunne vært gjort annerledes/bedre?
Det vil også være interessant og nyttig å høre om holdningen til de andre ansatte ut i
avdelingen du jobber om informasjonshåndtering i OTS (brukerrespons).
Unike og spesielle behov for informasjonshåndtering i din avdeling i forhold til Statoil
generelt vil også være nyttig informasjon.
-
Er verktøyene lette å bruke?
Har gammel kunnskap vært en barriere for å lære seg nye måter å jobbe på?
Work arounds?
Synes du den gamle måten å samarbeide på har vært en barrier for å lære seg den nye
måte å samarbeide på?
Ser du på informasjonshåndtering som et ork? Eller tenker du mer langsiktig og ser
gevinstene av at du håndterer informasjonen? (får en enklere hverdag)
Du tar kontroll over informasjonen istedenfor at den tar kontrollen over seg selv.
Kan du fortelle litt generelt om hvordan du håndterer og bruker informasjon i ditt daglige
arbeid?
C
Appendix
Opprettelse og lagring
Hvordan oppretter og lagrer du informasjon?
 Hvilke systemer
 På lokal disk, nettverksdisk, team site, etc.
 Bruk av metadata
Distribusjon og deling
Hvordan deler og distribuerer du informasjon?
 Hvilke systemer
 Internt
 Eksternt
 Prosjekter
 Epost, team site, ect.
Søk/gjenfinning/gjenbruk
Hvordan bruker du eksisterende informasjon?
Finner du nødvendig informasjon du trenger ved hjelp av de eksisterende verktøyene?
 Hvor lang tid bruker du på dette?
 Finner du alltid det du trenger?
Hvordan ser du på tiden du bruker på å lagre informasjon i forhold til at det da blir lettere for
deg selv og andre å søke etter informasjon i ettertid?
Arkivering/sletting
Arkiverer du dokumenter?
Hvor ofte?
Hvordan ser du på om for eksempel dokumenter ble slettet av seg selv, eller om du fikk
beskjed om at nå kom det til å bli slettet?
Aksessering av systemene
Hvordan aksesserer du systemene?
Funksjonalitet
Hvor mye funksjonalitet i systemene (team site) har du brukt for, og kjenner du til all
funksjonalitet?
D