OpenText Business Scenarios: Extending the Value of OpenText Extended ECM
Investing in new technology can be as daunting as it is exciting. On the one hand, your new application or tool can transform your business, improve efficiency, and generate growth. On the other hand, a tool poorly implemented, incorrectly integrated, or lacking buy-in from the broader team can turn out to be more money-pit than growth accelerator. It is critical to get started on the right foot if you aim to make the most of your technology investments.
One application that falls squarely into the category of complicated yet transformative when used correctly? OpenText Extended ECM.
OpenText Extended ECM is a great choice for organizations looking to fortify business processes and increase the value of their existing content. The gains in productivity have a positive impact across business lines. Unfortunately, OpenText xECM often requires significant planning to integrate into a typical business effectively, especially if an organization has complex business processes and overlapping departmental workflows.
Fortunately, as a mature and flexible content management platform, OpenText xECM has been used to solve challenges in the most unique businesses for many years. As a result of this long history, OpenText has pre-configured packages of Solution Accelerators and Business Scenarios to jumpstart expanding functionality and guide users on a path to success. We have covered OpenText Solutions Accelerators previously, so this post will detail the more function-oriented Business Solutions and the benefits they offer.
Challenges with OpenText Extended ECM
One of the more common challenges with an OpenText xECM initiative is the time and complexity of getting started. Without a defined plan matched to clear business priorities, the project can quickly consume IT resources, frustrate stakeholders and users, and reduce confidence in the overall initiative. This can cause the implementation team to take shortcuts or make sacrifices to satisfy project managers and maintain project timelines. In the end the project is launched without the promised scope and benefits, producing more frustration. Users who were once eager to utilize the new solution lose enthusiasm and don’t embrace new functionality. Low rates of user adoption and system use ultimately impact the expected ROI and the initiative gets labeled as “less than successful” or worse.
While this is an oversimplified scenario description, it is frequently an accurate summary of what was supposed to be a company’s “digital transformation to the future.”
As industry leaders OpenText recognized the complexity involved with transformational projects and that businesses need solutions to address specific business needs. To fill this need, OpenText released several options to assist modern companies in their journey to success. Both OpenText Solution Accelerators and OpenText Business Scenarios were specifically developed to help OpenText users extend and amplify the reach, utility, and functionality of their OpenText xECM environment.
What are OpenText Business Scenarios?
Similar to Solution Accelerators, OpenText Business Scenarios are turnkey solutions for OpenText Solution Extensions in on-premises, hyperscaler, and OpenText Cloud environments. They are designed to integrate with the OpenText and SAP environment quickly, eliminating the days, weeks, or even months typical custom development often takes.
OpenText Business Scenarios are free-to-use, functionality-specific processes created accelerate your time to value with OpenText xECM. They provide specific business functionality with document templates, out-of-the-box examples and pre-configured workspaces to get up and running quickly. These solutions are already built, tested, and ready to integrate with a customer’s environment, delivering focused process improvements without requiring extensive configuration or customization. By reducing the need for custom development, OpenText customers can take advantage of new workflows sooner, substantially accelerating their time to value and reducing total cost of ownership. Control is put in the hands of the Business Administrators to align the system to the needs of the business, reducing the reliance on complex IT initiatives for configuration and deployment.
For OpenText Cloud customers, these pre-deployed and pre-configured business scenarios can be activated at no additional charge. On-prem customers who have upgraded to 21.4 also take advantage of these scenarios after installing and configuring the modules.
OpenText Business Scenario Examples
In addition to time-to-value, OpenText Business Scenarios also provide features requested by the OpenText community. The current list of OpenText ECM Business Scenarios include:
- Teamspaces
- Maximize collaboration for all business users across the organization by enabling teams to share knowledge and content, discuss progress and work status, and connect directly with other team members
- Agreements
- Manage critical contracts and documents from draft to signature using flexible contract types, master contracts, and document stages integrated with workflows
- Projects
- Support project management through important phases and milestones, and have continual insight into project health
- Enterprise Asset Management
- Powerful document control for resource maintenance, inventory control, and asset intensive industries
Additional Business Scenarios are in final development and will be available in the coming months:
- Sales
- Manage your end-to-end sales process including accounts, opportunities, quotes, contracts, orders, products and more
- Real Estate
- Have a complete, organized dashboard of buildings, properties, leases, and related documents and data
- Procurement
- View and manage all your vendors, materials, purchase orders, and related documents and data in one at-a-glance dashboard
Each pre-built business scenario includes process knowledge and documentation matched with templates and workflows. They also provide for the management of user roles and permissions as well as business workspace types. Categories, integrations, and custom search functionality come pre-configured, helping users immediately realize and utilize the power of their supercharged OpenText xECM environment.
Unleash the Full Value of Your OpenText Investment
Deploying an efficient content management solution can be a complex and time-consuming process. It’s important to plan effectively for quick wins that deliver immediate ROI, and continue to build out to claim the advantages of the system’s full capability. Thankfully, OpenText provides advanced Solution Accelerators and Business Scenarios to help. These pre-configured tools make it easier to select and deploy new functionality, and streamline system adoption across the organization. By speeding up the deployment and adoption process, you’re able to realize productivity gains and allow your team to focus on your business tasks and goals.
To learn more about how Optima can help your organization accelerate time-to-value and expand the use of your existing OpenText xECM license investment, contact us here. We have extensive experience solving complex data, document, and content challenges in a wide range of industries. We are also one of the few woman-owned SAP Gold Partners, and have almost 15 years of experience with a 97% project success rate over hundreds of projects. Call us to discuss your business goals and how to build an effective strategy to maximize value of your software investment.
To determine if OpenText Solution Accelerators or Business Scenarios are right for you, Optima developed a unique DCS Health Check, a low-cost, comprehensive evaluation of your current environment. Our proprietary methodology analyzes your current system to help you get the most from your current environment, and match your long-term capability to your business goals.
Learn more about our DCS Health Check below, and how it is a vital first step to get them most from your technology and start your transformation to an intelligent enterprise.
