Establishing Quality in Content Management

The Content Group today announced that it will be working with BSI British Standards to develop the first ever Publicly Available Specification (PAS) for Enterprise Content Management.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) has become increasingly important in a business world powered by the internet, where information is expected to be available instantly and at any time of day or night on a global basis. The result is a proliferation of information that is often unstructured and difficult to navigate through and, from a company perspective, complicated or even impossible to manage.

The aim of The Content Group’s work with BSI is to develop a best practice standard for Enterprise Content Management (ECM) which will establish a frame of reference for the entire ECM market.

Once completed, the standard will provide definitions and a common understanding of ECM. It will enable benchmarking and ensure consistent, measurable Enterprise Content Management with increased accountability and transparency across the whole information spectrum.

The manifold benefits of an industry-wide code of practice for ECM include helping organisations and individuals to understand ‘What it is’, ‘What it can do’, and ‘How to measure the quality level of any project against a formally recognised specification’. The PAS is intended to be the first step moving towards an internationally agreed standard for ECM.

Ben Richmond, Founder and CEO of The Content Group, will be the lead author and will also head up the team involved in producing the standard using a 2-stage stakeholder consultation. The steering panel of stakeholders will review and provide feedback on the best practice standard before it is put out for public consensus. New and existing best practice work in this area will also be considered in the PAS development. This process is designed to develop a credible, usable method through an open and consultative forum.

Ben Richmond, Founder and CEO of The Content Group, comments: “This is a major step forward for our industry. With the unparalleled proliferation of information and the challenges that presents to organisations across the globe ECM has come to the fore. The establishment of an ECM best practice is long overdue and should be seen as critical to the successful development and implementation of an ECM strategy.”

Mike Low, Director of BSI British Standards, comments: “BSI British Standards is delighted to be working with The Content Group on this important first step towards a framework for best practice in Enterprise Content Management.  The combination of BSI’s development capability and the expertise of The Content Group will ensure a PAS that enables stakeholders to better understand ECM and therefore raise the standard in this area.”

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Notes to Editors

Spokespeople from BSI British Standards are available for interview.  Please contact Lucy Fulton at the BSI press office on 020 8996 7248 or lucy.fulton@bsi-global.com

Spokespeople from The Content Group are available for interview.  Please contact Andrea Gissdal at itpr on 01932 578800 or andreag@itpr.co.uk

For media information:
Lucy Fulton
Public Relations Officer
BSI British Standards
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8996 7248
Mob: +44 (0) 7717 451 990
Email: lucy.fulton@bsi-global.com 
Website: www.bsi-global.com

About BSI British Standards
BSI British Standards works with businesses, consumers and government to represent UK interests and facilitate the production of British, European and international standards to meet economic and social needs. For further information please go to www.bsi-global.com/british_standards. 

A Publicly Available Specification (PAS) is a sponsored fast-track standard driven by the needs of the client organization/s and developed according to guidelines set out by BSI. Key stakeholders are brought together to collaboratively produce a BSI-endorsed PAS that has all the functionality of a British Standard for the purposes of creating management systems, product benchmarks and codes of practice. After two years the PAS is reviewed and a decision is made as to whether it should be taken forward to become a formal British Standard.

About BSI Group
BSI British Standards is part of BSI Group, a global independent business services organization that inspires confidence and delivers assurance to customers with standards-based solutions. Originating as the world’s first national standards body, the Group has over 2,250 staff in more than 50 global offices. The Group’s key offerings are:
• the development and sale of private, national and international standards and supporting information
• second and third-party management systems assessment and certification
• product testing and certification of services and products
• performance management software solutions
• training services in support of standards implementation and business best practice

The Content Group (www.thecontentgroup.co.uk)
The Content Group is the one-stop source for the provision of integrated Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Solutions that enable organisations to gain competitive advantage, improve operational efficiency, gain competitive advantage and ensure compliance and reduce risk.

By partnering with market leading vendors, The Content Group is able to provide truly integrated end-to-end ECM Solutions as well as ‘point of need’ solutions to address specific business requirements. These solutions can be deployed as an infrastructure or as a complete outsourced managed service.

The Content Group’s range of capabilities focus on the ‘Nine critical elements’ of ECM, which are namely create, capture, manage, process, collaborate, distribute, publish, report and store. Key partners include EMC Documentum, Autonomy, Microsoft, INVU, FormScape, Informative Graphics Corporation, iMarkup, Kofax, Ektron, Fujitsu and Kodak.

The Content Group was founded in 1998 and has grown rapidly since. It is a privately-owned UK organisation delivering ECM Solutions to over 375 UK and global clients in a range of vertical markets, including construction & manufacturing, oil & gas, financial & legal services, travel & tourism and government & public sector. Clients include Persimmon Homes, Interserve, KMI Water, Severn Trent Water, Trelleborg, Alba, Virgin Mobile, Travelsphere, Bedford Borough Council and Northumbria University.