Handling Objections In Collaboration

Cindy Menges, ECM practice director east at Burntsand Inc., a business consulting and technology services company based in Toronto, talks about the challenges of providing assessment, implementation and support services for content management and collaboration systems such as EMC's Documentum and eRoom applications.

Clearing Technology Hurdles: The technology is rarely the biggest challenge. Usually the challenge is understanding what the client's business processes are and making collaboration and content management work within that process paradigm.

Need For Clear Definitions: Sometimes the first challenge we face is defining content management vs. collaboration. Content management is core document functionality like check in, check out and sharing access to a document. Collaboration is more of a framework to see content and its relationship with other content. The eRoom application broadens the concept of content management to include relationships and functionality like polls, dashboards, calendars, databases and project plans.

Demonstrate Value: I think we're at the point where collaboration applications are better understood. Instead of having to explain how collaboration and content management software can help, clients often already know the value. [But] some companies are still paper-based or their content is not being managed. Many business demands or compliance mandates require they adopt it. We work to help identify the benefits and long-term ROI.

Avoid Upgrade Problems: Don't push customizations because you don't want to create pain when it's time for the customer to upgrade the application. When customizations are required, we develop them using methodologies from EMC/Documentum whenever possible to facilitate upgrade paths.

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