Business process management

Most education organisations will need some form of business process management tool to allow them to model existing business processes, re-design them and automate them taking advantage of the fact that the content is now available electronically. As indicated in stage one, step one above, there are really three options open to you. You could use the BPM module supplied with the EDRM system, you could use a third party BPM package which you perhaps already use or you could use a BPM package that perhaps already comes with your preferred business administration system, e.g. SAP, Oracle, etc.).

The best solution may be a mix and match solution. For structured business processes relating to student administration or finance use the BPM that comes with the administrative package if it is flexible and powerful. For document centric processes such as routing correspondence for action or approval or managing the approval of content for publication on the web site etc then use the BPM supplied with the EDRM solution.

Collaboration/knowledge management

If your education organisation already has a firm commitment to a portal product for providing a single point of access to core corporate information or if your education organisation is already developing collaborative applications based on Share Point Portal Server or other collaboration software then you may have decided to implement the document capture; EDM; ERM and BPM modules but not the collaboration module. In that case you will need to ensure that you specify that the EDRM solution can be accessed via a portal and can interface with the preferred collaboration package such as Share Point. A number of EDRM solutions are specifically designed to interface with Share Point. Others are provided with their own collaboration software. Other IT issues are considered in stages three and six below.