Business Considerations

There are business needs that should be considered in a CMS integration effort:

1. Who will maintain the model on an on-going basis?

   After the initial implementation it is important that the model be continually updated based upon user feedback and changing business requirements. A resource should be identified that is responsible for not only maintaining the model but also determining what changes need to be made in the first place.

2. Who will maintain the integration on an on-going basis?

   As requirements change over time how will changes to the integration be made and who will make them? Who will support the integration over time? Provision should be made in budgets and processes to allow for this over the life of the integration.

Regarding the integration itself:

1. How much manual intervention do you want to require from your users?

   If the users are quite technical and understand the model being used then it may be reasonable to allow them to have full control over how documents are classified in respect of that model. However, if the users do not have this technical understanding or simply do not have the time it may be better to allow the full automation of the process behind the scenes so it does not interrupt existing workflow processes. Finally, if you have both technical and non-technical users you may wish to go with an intermediate approach where automation is used but the user can alter the information as required.

2. How accurate must the assigned concepts be?

   This is particularly applicable in situations where compliance with industry standards is required. This will impact on the decision on what method to use for concept entry/selection.

3. What are the core services required?

   It is always enjoyable to have as much functionality as required but there comes a point when too much functionality will interfere with the fundamental usability of the solution. It is advisable to concentrate on the core functionality and keep focused on the main goal of the project whether that is compliance or to improve the ease at which information can be found. After implementing core functionality and ensuring the main project goals are met it is at this point that consideration should be given to additional “bells and whistles” but always ensuring that core functionality is not compromised or in any way diminished. It is also worth noting that Semaphore does provide so much functionality that it is common that new uses for the software come up as the product is used and users become familiar with it.