ECM implementation in South Africa

Transcription

1 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at Enterprise content management () implementation in South Africa Shadrack Katuu Department of Information Science, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa implementation in South Africa 37 Received 29 April 2011 Revised 10 November 2011 Accepted 21 December 2011 Abstract Purpose This article aims to assess how enterprise content management () has been implemented in South Africa. Design/methodology/approach The article is a five-part analysis of the concept of. The first part outlines a perspective to based on predecessor and related terms such as EDMS and ERMS. The second part reviews literature generated in South Africa on electronic records and document management over the last decade as well as a discussion on value added resellers in the country. The third part provides the results of the survey of ten South African institutions. This section includes an outline on the research methodology used as well as analysis of the data and a brief discussion of the research implications. The fourth part provides concluding remarks and the fifth part is a list of references. Findings A literature review conducted by the author reveals that there have been few published sources on institutional experiences related to implementing electronic document and records management in South Africa. However, the survey published in this article reveals that South African institutions have as much as eight years of implementation experience, a majority using applications from one company and the most common applications modules installed within the organizations being records management, document management and imaging. These survey results suggest additional research is needed to assess proprietary vs non-proprietary applications as well as the impact of value-added resellers to implementation. Originality/value As the literature review has shown, implementation in South Africa has received minimal attention beyond graduate level research. This article provides an analysis of empirical data on implementation in South Africa and serves as a baseline for more comprehensive studies in the future. Keywords implementation, Electronic document and records management, Enterprise content management, Snowball sampling, South Africa, Value-added resellers, Document management, Electronic document delivery Paper type Case study Introduction Enterprise content management () is a concept that has been used by records and information professionals for at least a decade. As early as 2001, Karen Shegda from Gartner, a leading research and advisory firm, discussed core integrated document management software functionality and noted that key vendors were morphing their products into content management systems (Shegda, 2001). In the same year Bob Ward of Teamware Group, a technology consulting company, published an article arguing that content management was a growing sector in the information technology industry and titled it enterprise content management (Ward, 2001). Records Management Journal Vol. 22 No. 1, 2012 pp q Emerald Group Publishing Limited DOI /

2 RMJ 22,1 38 Since then, discussions on applications and implementation have been numerous and widespread throughout the world. However, as this paper will demonstrate, discussions on the subject in South Africa have remained buried in the pages of graduate research papers in information management. This article seeks to bring the discussion about out of the halls of academia. In an effort to contribute to the scarce literature on in South Africa and to relate the developments to those in other parts of the world, this article presents the findings of a survey of implementation across a selection of ten South African institutions. In this five-part analysis, the situation with in South Africa is examined in depth. The first part outlines a perspective to based on predecessor and related terms such as EDMS and ERMS. The second part reviews literature generated in South Africa on electronic records and document management over the last decade as well as a discussion on value added resellers in the country. The third part provides the results of the survey of ten South African institutions. This section includes an outline on the research methodology used as well as analysis of the data and a brief discussion of the research implications. The fourth part provides concluding remarks and the fifth part is a list of references. As an introduction, this section discusses why, and not other related terms, has been used as a point of departure, outlines the understanding of how could be defined and outlines its constituent parts. The evolution of is a term that has been in competition with others such as Integrated Document Management Software or Systems or IDMS (Shegda, 2001), Electronic Document Management Systems or EDMS, Electronic Document and Records Management Systems or EDRMS as well as Electronic Records Management Systems or ERMS. Robert Blatt (2011), an industry specialist, argued that terms such as EDMS and ERMS have been used almost interchangeably with for several years. ERM systems evolved from early automated techniques for managing hard copy records while EDM systems evolved from software designed to build concordances and then became automated techniques for managing hybrid collections of largely similar types of documents such as procedure manuals (McDonald, 2011). EDM systems were also often referred to as Document Imaging Management (DIM) systems since they were used to scan and save images of hardcopy documents for central storage and easy retrieval (Cvision Technologies, 2011). ERMS and EDMS came together in the mid to late 1990s as EDRMS. According to John McDonald, a world renowned electronic records specialist, since then there have been important add-ons and improvements such as integration and workflow. He adds that the most important step has been the migration of these tools into the web environment where, in many cases, they have been integrated with web content management tools hence the name content management to embrace the emerging and wider role of applications thus far known as EDRMS (McDonald, 2011). For the purpose of this article, is viewed currently as the final point in an evolutionary process, where other concepts such as EDMS and ERMS were predecessor concepts. The evolutionary process accommodates predecessor concepts

3 (Sphere, 2005) and would help clear any confusion regarding the different concepts (Nguyen et al., 2007). The evolutionary process is shown in Figure 1. This evolutionary perspective to the concept of is supported by the argument of such professional groups as the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) which argues that is all inclusive of strategies, methods and tools for managing content (AIIM, 2010) Additionally, reports by leading research organizations in document and records management have, over the last few years, evolved from terms such as IDMS and EDMS to. Gartner, a leading research and advisory firm, published a report in 2003 that used the concept IDMS (Gartner, 2003) but by 2004 was already using as a concept (Shegda et al., 2004). Another leading research and advisory firm, Forrester had already used the term in a report published in 2003 (Moore and Markham, 2003) and continued to use the term in subsequent annual reports. Lastly, research projects in the records and information management field have started using the term in their research projects. InterPARES, which is arguably the longest running multi-national and trans-disciplinary research project in archives and records management, has developed at least one case study in the area of (InterPARES 3 -TEAM Canada, 2010a). implementation in South Africa 39 s constituent parts According to Gartner, refers both to a strategy to deal with all types of enterprise content and a set of software products for managing the entire life cycle of that content (Bell et al., 2010). AIIM s definition of goes beyond just strategy and software products and defines it as the strategies, methods and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes. tools and strategies allow the management of an organization s unstructured information, wherever that information exists (AIIM, 2010). While this definition has been accepted by several key players in the industry (Pelz-Sharpe, 2008), it is not without debate. For example, there is a need to distinguish between content and documents in the definition. Additionally, unstructured information is a very ambiguous term (McDonald, 2011) since all digital content has physical and logical structure (Duranti and Thibodeau, 2006). An alternative definition such as is an ecosystem that facilitates change may complement the AIIM Figure 1. The evolution of various concepts culminating into

4 RMJ 22,1 40 definition (Pelz-Sharpe, 2008) but still does not adequately replace the strong aspects of the AIIM definition. These aspects are: strategies, methods and tools to be used in certain activities on content within organizational processes. When these strategies, methods and tools are targeted at organizational processes, they manifest themselves in several components. The precise number and composition of the components remains a subject of debate. For the purpose of this article, the ten components considered fundamental include: Document Management, Records Management, Workflow or Business Process Management, Collaboration, Portal, Knowledge Management, Imaging, Digital Asset Management, Digital Rights Management, and Web Content Management (Kampffmeyer, 2004, 2006; CMS Watch, 2010). Figure 2 shows a graphical representation of these components. The representation of using these modules reinforces the evolutionary argument by demonstrating that both document management and records management now exist in an ecosystem that includes other components as well. For a long time scholarly discussions have dwelt on EDRM applications (Scott-Jones, 2002; Biagio and Ibiricu, 2008; Wilhelm, 2009; Wilkins et al., 2009) which, based on discussion earlier in this article, are still in the second phase of the evolutionary process (see Figure 1). However, discussions later in this article show that the South African organizations surveyed have implemented more than just Records Management and Document Management in their institutions. Figure 2. The modules of a typical application

5 Key issues with around the world There has been discussion on the management of electronic records around the world for several years, many of which have been limited to jurisdictional experiences. Examples of discussion in the advanced economies include Australia (Nguyen et al., 2009; Wilkins et al., 2009), New Zealand (Lips and Rapson, 2009), the UK (Maguire, 2005; Williams, 2005) and US (Sphere and McClure, 2005). Additionally there have been case studies from multinational organizations such as the European Central Bank (Garrido, 2008) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (Willemin, 2006). There are a few examples in the developing world and emerging economies, such as Iceland (Gunnlaugsdottir, 2008, Gunnlaugsdottir, 2009), Malaysia (Mokhtar and Yusof, 2009), Pakistan (Henriksen and Andersen, 2008), Taiwan (Hsu et al., 2009), and Turkey (Kulcu, 2009). In the case of African countries, most discussion has originated from academic research such as thesis and dissertations. Examples include Botswana (Keakopa, 2006; Moloi, 2006), Kenya (Kemoni, 2007), Lesotho (Sejane, 2004), Namibia (Keakopa, 2006; Nengomasha, 2008), Uganda (Luyombya, 2010) and regional studies that included African countries (Mutiti, 2002; Katuu, 2004; Wamukoya and Mutula, 2005; Kemoni, 2009). A detailed discussion on South Africa is included later in this article. Three key aspects of these discussions as they relate to this article are comparable surveys around the world, the dichotomy between proprietary and open source applications and the issue of Value-Added Resellers. implementation in South Africa 41 Comparable surveys around the world Different institutions from various parts of the world have had varied experiences in implementing applications. There are two surveys that are most relevant, one conducted in the US in 2007 and another, more global, published in The 2007 US survey report had surveyed five federal agencies on the implementation of records management applications and revealed a variety of observations. Among the agencies surveyed, many had already been using various applications such as Collaboration and Document Management in addition to the records management application introduced (National Archives and Records Administration (United States), 2007). The survey found that, among other things, users who were comfortable in operating records management applications did so because their institutions were already using other modules of the framework (National Archives and Records Administration (United States), 2007). Conclusions of the survey included, among other things, the fact that records management applications must integrate with other applications and that implementation can take years of effort and resources for planning, testing and implementing the system (National Archives and Records Administration (United States), 2007). AIIM, the professional association, undertook a survey that was published in 2010 that had 751 respondents representing various sizes of organizations (from ten employees to over 10,000 employees). According to the survey results, 77 per cent of the respondents were based in North America and the rest in Europe, Australasia, as well as Central and South America. The industry sectors covered included 28 per cent in local and national government, 15 per cent in finance, banking and insurance, 12 per cent in utilities, telecommunication, oil and gas and the rest of the 55 per cent covering over 12 other sectors (Miles, 2010)

6 RMJ 22,1 42 Proprietary vs non-proprietary software applications There are two general categories of software applications; proprietary software that is licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder and open-source and non-proprietary software where the licensing is not exclusive. The term often used for non-proprietary applications is free and open-source software (FOSS). At a minimum, for a software application to be considered as FOSS, the license must allow access to the source code, not just compiled versions of the code, and users must be able to modify the source code and redistribute the modified versions or derivatives (InterPARES 3 TEAM Canada, 2010a). However, there may be several variations to this key set of requirements. For example some licenses may allow the selling of the derivatives or the combination of the software with other software applications which may then be sold as a package. This, therefore, means that FOSS licensing arrangements exist along a continuum. In the world, proprietary applications have dominated since the first phase of the evolution. Alan Pelz-Sharpe of Real Story Group, an advisory firm, conducted a market analysis of vendors in 2010 and found that the top six companies by market share are (in alphabetic order) Autonomy, EMC, IBM, Microsoft, OpenText, and Oracle (2010). Pelz-Sharpe adds that even though there are literally hundreds of small software vendors, these six companies account for 80 per cent of the revenues and 100 per cent of the very large deals. The AIIM survey conducted in 2010 revealed that 6 per cent of the organizations surveyed were already using open source applications and a further 9 per cent were planning to migrate to them within the next two years (Miles, 2010). This small percentage reflects the few number of software application offerings organizations will find in the market that can be identified as FOSS compliant. Value-added reseller In general terms a Value-Added Reseller (VAR) is a company that adds features or services to an existing product and then resells it to end users as an integrated solution. In the environment, VARs are often companies that provide professional services such as integration and customization of the application as well as training. While these added services make VARs an integral part of the market eco-system, there is very little scholarly discussion about their contribution to the success or failure of implementation. implementation in South Africa This section takes a closer look at discussions in South Africa with two interrelated domains. First, the section provides a sample of key literature that has looked at in particular and electronic document and records in general within the country. Second, it looks at the array of VARs as well as applications available in the South African market. Literature review Preceding discussions have outlined a few of the published articles on in the African context. Several commentators including Keakopa (2006) and Kemoni (2009) note that South Africa is the most advanced African country in implementation.

7 This section provides an outline of key research projects that have been conducted in South Africa and share some of the findings. The earliest discussion on electronic records in the scholarly arena was in 2000 by Brad Abbott. In his masters degree thesis on electronic memory in South Africa, he investigated the role of the National Archives of South Africa with regard to the management of electronic records in the country. The study found that the institution faced numerous challenges including lack of staff resources, lack of adequate practical experience, as well as, the low status of the institution within government. The study established that the National Archives had partnered with the State Information Technology Agency (SITA), the government agency responsible for managing technology projects within the public sector, as an effort to address its own areas of weakness. Jointly the two institutions were developing specifications for an integrated document and records management application that could be used by public institutions in the country. The study observed that the National Archives had maintained a reactive and overly cautious approach to the management of electronic records and recommended the institution be involved in the planning and design of electronic systems that contain records (Abbott, 2000). In 2001, Mphalane Makhura (2001) completed a masters level dissertation on the role of electronic records within a municipal government in South Africa. The study surveyed staff members within different departments of the municipal government in order to determine, among other things, their areas of responsibility, their educational and skills background and to what extent they used the EDMS. The study found that the surveyed staff reasonably represented various sections of the municipality, were largely not highly qualified or skilled but a majority could access the EDMS. In 2006, Masegonyana Keakopa (2006) completed doctoral level research on electronic records management in Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. The study targeted records users, records officers and IT specialists in selected government agencies in the three countries. The study established that the South African National Archives had developed a number of policies and procedures to guide the management of electronic records. However, it observed that the institution still needed additional strategies as well as updated legislation in order to adequately address the newly emerging challenges within the electronic environment. This study was later revised and published as a book (Keakopa, 2010). In 2007, Verne Harris (2007), who was part of the team that worked on the archive of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa between 1996 and 1998, published an assessment of South Africa s disappearing electronic memory. Harris argued that, while the TRC archive was not representative of state agency archives in general, it was, nonetheless, illustrative of the challenges facing South Africa s National Archives in dealing with the management of digital content. The paper-based records of TRC had been transferred to the National Archives for custody but the reality of electronic records was, as Harris puts it, messy and worrying (Harris, 2007). The word processing, spreadsheets, electronic communications and other office management systems where the richest evidence of organizational process is to be found were downloaded from file servers, hard drives, and floppy disks onto tapes (Harris, 2007). While many electronic documents appear to have been transferred from one medium to another, such as tape to CD-ROM, there was little evidence of archival intervention, and there appeared to be no concern about the loss of metadata implementation in South Africa 43

8 RMJ 22,1 44 or about the fragility of the digital materials. The material was supposedly receiving preliminary archival intervention but this could not be verified (Harris, 2007). In 2010, Ntombizandile Kwatsha completed masters level research on implementation of software applications to manage electronic records in four national government ministries with special interest in the Office of the President. The study investigated factors that determined the success or failure of implementing EDRM applications. In order to do this, the study provided a detailed historical background on EDRM implementation processes at the Office of the President that spanned at least five years. The study concluded that the factors that determine the success of failure in implementation are varied. These include strategic factors (such as the business case, top management support and change management), social factors (such as user involvement, VAR involvement and support, training, and effective communication) as well as technical factors (system functionality and system integration with records management). Additionally, the study found that these different factors were also interrelated both within the specific groups and across the groups (Kwatsha, 2010). Several observations can be made from the previous literature. First, the issues raised in some of the earlier research projects have since been overtaken by events. For instance, Abbott s report on partnership between the National Archives and SITA has already resulted in standards and Keakopa s observation of the need for updated guidelines has been overtaken by new policy and procedure documents. Second, the research projects generally do not identify any of the brands of software applications used by South African organizations. In the one occasion that a brand is identified, in Makhura s case study, the application no longer exists having been bought out by a competitor which has since been bought out as well. Finally, in only case, Kwatsha s study looks at the implementation of in more than one organization, but even then the study provides a sense of the VAR landscape in the country. The immediate section which follows provides an overview of the VAR landscape in South Africa. Value-added resellers There is no evidence, based on current literature, that there has been a comprehensive survey of VARs in South Africa. A search from various documentation sources shows that there are at least 17 VARs in the country. Table I provides an outline of the organizations, their web sites and the various flagship applications. The table shows that South Africa has only three home grown proprietary applications, these are Collaborator, Paper Trail and KnowledgeTree. The rest of the application products are proprietary software and belong to well known global brands. According to Pelz-Sharpe s categorization of the big six (Autonomy, EMC, IBM, Microsoft, OpenText and Oracle), South African VARs seem well presented (2010). Figure 3 gives a graphical representation of the big six and their VARs in South Africa. In South Africa, as Table I demonstrates, two organizations support the only two FOSS products in the list; Alfresco and KnowledgeTree (Gingras, 2009). KnowledgeTree was initially developed by a South African company known as Jam Warehouse based in Cape Town. It has since relocated its headquarters to the United States and now the company shares the same name as the application. KnowledgeTree has two editions of application, an Enterprise Edition which provides a cloud based subscription service and a Community Edition which is reputed to be the open

9 Organization and web site Business Connexion Business Engineering Bytes Document Solutions Choice Technologies DataCentrix E-technologies Gijima AST www/gijima.com Graviton IT Systems and Solutions www. graviton.co.za IA Systems Intervate Kanimambo KnowledgeTree and KnowledgeTree Community Edition knowledgetree.org New Dawn Technologies Ovations Solutions for Business Intelligence za/overview.asp T-Systems (previously Arivia) za/ Valor IT Waymark Product Partner to HP, EMC, and Microsoft Own flagship product known as Collaborator Partner to Xerox Partner to Computer Associates, Laserfiche and TIBCO Partner to OpenText Partner to OpenText (edocs) Partner to SAP Partner to TIBCO and Vignette Partner to OpenText Partner to Kofax and Meridio Own flagship product known as Paper Trail as well as partner to IBM and Microsoft Own flagship product known as KnowledgeTree which has an open source (community edition) version. Partner to OpenText (Hummingbird), EMC, Oracle and SAP Partner to Alfresco, IBM and Microsoft Partner to Tower (now HP), EMC, and IBM Own product known as Image Master that integrates with SAP Partner to Autonomy, OpenText and TIBOC Partner to EMC implementation in South Africa 45 Table I. South African organizations and the products they support source edition (Gingras, 2009). Even though the Community Edition is used by a significant number of individuals and institutions worldwide (KnowledgeTree, 2011a), the parent company warns that the Community Edition is not supported (KnowledgeTree, 2011b). Canada s team of researchers in the InterPARES 3 Project conducted a study of three FOSS applications. Their assessment of KnowledgeTree s Community Edition was that it was only a Document Management module and lacked the necessary security, retention and application integration features to offer any capabilities (InterPARES 3 TEAM Canada, 2010b). The other South African VAR in Table I with experience in FOSS applications is Ovations, which offers support to Alfresco, in addition to supporting propriety applications from IBM and Microsoft. This diversification suggests the organization may not simply rely on being a VAR of one product. Alfresco is a global brand and was one of the other FOSS application assessed by Canada s team of researchers in InterPARES 3 Project. Their assessment concluded that Alfresco did not appear to fully comply with the intent or spirit of open source licensing and ideally should not be considered a FOSS compliant application (InterPARES 3 TEAM Canada, 2010b). As Figure 3 shows, one vendor, OpenText, has five VARs, which is unusual since the majority have either two or three with the rest having only one. The large number of VARs is the result of a number of mergers and acquisition in OpenText s history, the most famous being the acquisition of Hummingbird. For more than a decade OpenText and Hummingbird were two separate companies, both of Canadian

10 RMJ 22,1 46 Figure 3. Showing South African VARs representatives for the big six origin that competed in the industry. In 2006, OpenText bought Hummingbird for just under 500 million US dollars (Sayer, 2006). Over the course of the last few years, OpenText has made every effort to rebrand the Hummingbird offering into edocs within its own product (OpenText, 2011). In South Africa however, VARs with expertise of one or the other brand, have taken a long time to make the adjustment with some still identifying themselves with their old brand. For instance, E-technologies identifies itself as a VAR for edocs having been experts on the former Hummingbird product (E-Technologies, 2011). This is not surprising since many institutions that have implemented applications prefer to identify with the older names of their applications (Pelz-Sharpe, 2009). An organization s reliance on the expertise of a VAR in the implementation of poses several risks. Kwatsha (2010) documents one of the respondents to her research study that lamented about the problems their institution faced related to the VAR s management of projects and meeting deadlines as well as well providing timely resolution. This was compounded by the fact that the VAR was the only one supporting the brand in the country. The risk of depending on a few VARs to support a product is quite high since, in South Africa, there have been several instances where these VARs have gone out of business. A few times there is a clear path from an older company to a new one such as IA Systems taking over Mercedes Datakor Group

11 or Solutions for Business taking over Exsol (Solutions for Business Intelligence, 2007). This means that client institutions have some recourse and continued support. However in instances where there is no clear merger or acquisition, then risks are greater. For instance, in 2010, IA Systems was still registered with Companies Intellectual Property Registration Office or CIPRO which is the nation s registrar of companies (CIPRO [South Africa], 2010) but seems to have gone out of business since August Two other VARs that cannot be traced within the database of the CIPRO database are Solutions for Business and Lava Systems (CIPRO [South Africa], 2011). In other instances, there may be procurement problems relating to the implementation itself which adversely affect the completion of projects. The most well known is the protracted saga between the Companies Registrar and an VAR known as ValorIT relating to alleged unethical awarding of the contract resulting in more than a year-long wrangling in and out of court (Mawson, 2011a, b). For the client, this has meant that after almost three years since the implementation project began, the final deliverables have not yet been received and, based on current developments in court, will likely not be received from the VAR. implementation in South Africa 47 survey and results The idea of a survey was conceived during the course of 2010 after several years of being responsible for, among other things, the programme in my organization. During the period when I was responsible for the programme I had read about research projects such as those highlighted in earlier discussions in this article yet none gave much insight on the landscape on implementation in the country. The survey was therefore intended to expand personal knowledge but also to share the results. This section covers three aspects; first is the research methodology used in the survey including the organizations surveyed, the data collection technique used and the rationale for the survey questions. Second, covers the survey results and data analysis for each of the research questions. Finally, there is a brief discussion on implications of the results and issues that would require further research. Research methodology Research can be defined as the systematic investigation of a specific question in order to establish new facts and draw new conclusions (Hickson, 2008). In order for research to be systematic it is important to delineate who is being investigated, what research methods or techniques are being used and what research questions are being addressed. The first part of this section gives a description of the institutions that were surveyed and the research techniques used. The second part looks at the research questions and their justification. Who was being surveyed and choice of research techniques? As stated earlier, this research was conducted in 2010 as an exercise in enhancing knowledge and therefore candidate respondents for the survey were identified on a recommendation basis. The referral as a form of data collection technique is known as snowball sampling and falls within non-probability sampling techniques. According to Hakim (2000) the application of sampling allows the production of descriptive statistics that are representative (on a national, regional or state basis) of the whole study

12 RMJ 22,1 48 population. Sampling is preferred to conducting a census of every member of the population. Snowball sampling occurs when samples emerge through the process of individuals providing references to others who further provide other references (Denscombe, 2007). In contrast to snowball sampling where samples are referred, with other non-probability sampling techniques, such as accidental sampling and purposive sampling, the samples are handpicked (David and Sutton, 2004, Denscombe, 2007). Using snowball sampling, ten institutions were eventually identified. Considering that these institutions were all the results of referrals, a certain bond of trust has to be kept, particularly, since they preferred not to share any significant details that would make them identifiable. Therefore these results identify the institutions as letters (A to J) and will only provide a basic outline of the industry sectors. The surveyed institutions were a mix of public institutions including three state owned entities, a charitable organization, as well as, national level and provincial level government ministries. Beyond this information, the institutions preferred to maintain their anonymity. What were the survey questions? The main aim of research was to provide a basic picture of the landscape in the country, and therefore three fundamental questions were envisaged. These were: (1) When was the application installed in the organization? (2) What application brand products does the organization use? (3) What application modules does the organization use? These questions were identified in order to provide basic descriptive information regarding the situation in South Africa. The first question drew from other experiences, such as from the US survey, where one of the fundamental questions relates to how long the applications have been in place. The second questions drew from the discussions where several commentators (Gingras, 2009, Pelz-Sharpe, 2010) noted the dominance of certain brands over others. It was important to identify what brands the surveyed institutions were using compared to the products in South African institutions as discussed in the section about the VAR landscape in South Africa. The third question drew from the need to understand whether more than just Document Management and Records Management modules have been installed in organizations. Data analysis This section provides result findings and discussions for each of the questions asked. The institutions participated on condition of their right to privacy. installation date Each of the institutions was asked when they began their installation and Table II reveals the date of installation. As Table II reveals, 60 per cent of the institutions have been using their applications between one to five years while 40 per cent have had their application for more than five years. This pattern is similar to the AIIM survey which had a 22 per cent of the organizations with one to five years experience while 14 per cent of the

13 Organization Installation date A 2003 B 2004 C 2009 D 2003 E 2010 F 2009 G 2007 H 2010 I 2003 J 2010 implementation in South Africa 49 Table II. organizations and the year they installed their applications organizations had more than five years experience (Miles, 2010). While this result shows that a significant number of the institutions surveyed have several years of experience with implementation, this is not an automatic reflection of the quality of the implementation and other criteria would have to be used to assess an institution. application product Each of the institutions was asked about the brand of application product they had installed and results are shown in Table III. As Table III reveals, only 10 per cent of the institutions use the EMC brand product while 90 per cent of all the institutions have OpenText products, with 50 per cent using Livelink, which is also known as Content Server, and 40 per cent using Hummingbird that is now known as edocs. Three issues are observed from these results. First, the results show the weakness in using snowball sampling as a data collection technique. As discussed earlier in this article, there is a wide variety of VARs in South Africa supporting a number of globally recognised brand products. However, the results show that there are only three products from two vendors being used by the ten South African institutions. The disadvantage of snowball sampling in this instance is the fact that institutions referred other institutions, most likely because they shared similar experiences including their brand product. In this particular aspect of the research results, the sample cannot be considered representative and therefore cannot be used to make generalizations. Nonetheless, this fact does not disqualify the other observations made through the survey results. Second, while Microsoft SharePoint remains one of the most pervasive product brands in the world (Pelz-Sharpe, 2011a, b), it is missing from the results. According to the AIIM survey more than 50 per cent of the institutions surveyed had or were in the process of implementing SharePoint (Miles, 2010). This is highly significant considering that the product is often in conflict with other applications application OpenText (Livelink/Content Server) OpenText (Hummingbird/eDocs) EMC (Documentum) Organization A, B, D, I and J C, E, G, H F Table III. organizations and the applications implemented

14 RMJ 22,1 50 whenever they co-exist (Miles, 2010). Commentators have argued that, among other things, Microsoft SharePoint poses a great challenge to other vendors because of the sheer size of Microsoft s partner footprint (Clark, 2010; Pelz-Sharpe, 2010). Considering that Microsoft s desktop applications are already established in many corporations, ignoring SharePoint would be foolhardy. It is important to conduct further research on the extent to which SharePoint is being used in South Africa. Finally, the results also show that institutions still identify themselves by the product they use rather than the mother company. As the discussion in preceding sections of this article have demonstrated, the distinction of brand in South Africa s landscape is important because specific VARs are identified with specific products from OpenText for historical reasons. This is not unique to South Africa since Pelz-Sharpe (2009) stated that many institutions prefer to identify with the older names of their applications. However in the process of this distinction, there may be, at the very least, tension between VARs and, in South Africa, there is anecdotal evidence that such tensions have been present. modules implemented Each institution was asked about the different modules they chose to install. Figure 4 provides a graphical representation of the results. Several observations can be made from the results in Figure 4. First, the results show that different module configurations were implemented in each organization. Overall, all ten organizations had implemented Document Management, nine had implemented Imaging and eight had implemented Records Management. The three modules, being most common in the institutions, support the argument made in at the beginning of this article that institutions have moved on from merely having Document and Records Management. In addition, Workflow or Business Process Management was found in at least half of the institutions suggesting that a significant representation of the surveyed population has at least four modules in their framework. Figure 4. Showing modules installed in the ten South African organizations

15 Second, while three other modules, Collaboration, Knowledge Management and Digital Asset Management were only found in one institution each, this does not represent the complete picture. For example, records professionals in institution A stated that even though Collaboration was only one of their six modules, it was the one that was most utilised by employees of the institution. This suggests the need to further research to assess the level of utilization of each module. Finally, the survey results show that none of the institutions had installed the three other modules identified in the framework outlined in the introductory section of this article; Web Content Management, Digital Rights Management and Portal. With regards to the Portal module in particular, the South African survey results are drastically different from those of the AIIM survey where 32 per cent of the institutions were using portals to provide employees with a single point of access to content repositories across their organization (Miles, 2010). This suggests the need to widen the research and identify whether the situation is similar in other South African institutions. implementation in South Africa 51 Research implications Several observations can be made regarding the research implications of the survey results. First, the survey technique used has been shown to be weak because the results cannot be taken to be representative of all South African institutions meaning that it is difficult to generalise these results. Snowball data collection technique results in samples with questionable representativeness and is therefore primarily used for exploratory purposes (Babbie, 2008). Second, considering that this survey was exploratory, it would be worthwhile that other research in the country looks at various issues highlighted by the survey results. For instance, it would be critical to assess proprietary versus non-proprietary applications as well as look at the distribution of brands within a wider sample of South African institutions. Additionally, further research should probe the level of module utilization. Finally, there is a need to assess the impact of VARs on the success or failure of implementation in South Africa institutions. Conclusion The beginning of this article proposed an evolutionary perspective to viewing. Steve Bailey (2008), a senior advisor with JISC infonet, argued that for almost a decade, records professionals have relied on the EDRM model as an intellectual crutch. In this article EDRM is seen as the second phase of the evolutionary process but Bailey s lamentation is still valid for. He argued that near blind obsession of the model has threatened to turn records professionals into an intellectually-sterile, vendor-led profession. This article, in discussing the literature on implementation as well as outlining VARs in South Africa has endeavored to avoid intellectual sterility. Additionally, in analysing survey results and finding facts such as 90 per cent of the respondents use one brand and 80 per cent of the respondents have implemented at least three modules, it has sought to go beyond a vendor-led discussion to asking critical questions. Some of these questions include for instance, assessing proprietary versus non-proprietary application as well as the impact of VARs on successful implementation.

16 RMJ 22,1 52 A recent skills assessment report demonstrates that discussions of this nature are needed in the working environment. The research team that prepared the report, after surveying more than 180 employer institutions in both the public and private sector, identified several requirements in addressing the skills shortage in the country. Two of those key requirements are the need to train in electronic records management as well as the use of electronic filing systems (Research Focus and Content at Work, 2010). These observations are echoed in other studies in the African continent (Katuu, 2009) as well as other parts of the developing world ( Johare, 2006). Finally, South African institutions need to address not just the current challenges of managing digital content using applications but also continuing challenges of long-term preservation in an environment where the national archival institution does not have the infrastructure necessary to ingest any electronic records for permanent preservation (Ngoepe and Keakopa, 2011). References Abbott, B.S. (2000), Preserving electronic memory: an investigation into the role played by the National Archives of South Africa in the management of electronic records of central government, Master s dissertation, University of Natal. AIIM (2010), What is enterprise content management, available at: -Enterprise-Content-Management.aspx (accessed 5 March 2011). Babbie, E.R. (2008), The basics of social research, Thomson Learning, Belmont, CA. Bailey, S. (2008), Has EDRMS been a success? The case for the prosecution, paper presented at the 2008 Records Management Society Conference, 22 April, Edinburgh, available at: Bell, T., Shegda, K.M., Gilber, M.R. and Chin, K. (2010), Magic Quadrant for enterprise content management, available at: (accessed 5 March 2011). Biagio, M.L.D. and Ibiricu, B. (2008), A balancing act: learning lessons and adapting approaches whilst rolling out an EDRMS, Records Management Journal, Vol. 18 No. 3, pp Blatt, R. (2011),? EDRM? EC3M?, available at: (accessed 5 April 2011). CIPRO [South Africa] (2010), IA systems, CIPRO, Pretoria, available at: 3f9xmem (accessed 7 August 2011). CIPRO [South Africa] (2011), Enterprise search, CIPRO, Pretoria, available at: za/products_services/search.asp (accessed 7 August 2011). CMS Watch (2010), The Report 2010, available at: / (accessed 25 March 2011). Clark, G. (2010), Enterprise content management at a crossroads the case for Microsoft SharePoint (Part 2 of 2), available at: Content-Management-at-a-Crossroads-The-Case-for-Microsoft-SharePoint-%28Part-2-of- 2%29- (accessed 12 June 2011). Cvision Technologies (2011), Electronic document management, available at: com/pdf/pdf-document/electronic-document-management.html?lang¼eng (accessed 11 June 2011). David, M. and Sutton, C.D. (2004), Social Research The Basics, Sage Publications, London.

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20 RMJ 22,1 56 Solutions for Business Intelligence (2007), Overview, Solutions for Business Intelligence, Johannesburg, available at: (accessed 7 August 2011). Sphere, J.T. (2005), The positive benefits of electronic records management in the context of enterprise content management, Government Information Quarterly, Vol. 22 No. 2, pp Sphere, J.T. and McClure, C.R. (2005), Lifting the burden, The Information Management Journal, pp Wamukoya, J. and Mutula, S. (2005), Capacity-building requirements for e-records management: the case of East and Southern Africa, Records Management Journal, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp Ward, B. (2001), Enterprise content management, Information Management and Technology, Vol. 34 No. 4, pp Wilhelm, P. (2009), An evaluation of MoReq2 in the context of national EDRMS standard developments in the UK and Europe, Records Management Journal, Vol. 19 No. 2, pp Wilkins, L., Swatman, P.M.C. and Holt, D. (2009), Achieved and tangible benefits: lessons learned from a landmark EDRMS implementation, Records Management Journal, Vol. 19 No. 1, pp Willemin, G. (2006), The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) official system: an example of records management, Records Management Journal, Vol. 16 No. 2, pp Williams, D.J. (2005), EDRM implmentation at the National Weights and Measures Laboratory, Records Management Journal, Vol. 15 No. 3, pp About the author Shadrack Katuu has had a diverse international career, spanning various information management fields in several countries including Botswana, Canada, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland and the USA. He has a Masters of Archival Studies and a Master s in Library and Information Studies, both from the University of British Columbia, Canada and is currently an archives/records officer at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The views expressed herein are those of the author and should not be attributed to the IMF, its Executive Board, or its management. Shadrack Katuu can be contacted at: skatuu@gmail.com To purchase reprints of this article please reprints@emeraldinsight.com Or visit our web site for further details: