Forrester Research/ARMA International survey: e-discovery and regulatory demands ramp up tech adoption plans: survey results highlight dissatisfaction, major technology purchase plans, and hurdles with complexity, high costs, and synchronization.

• Author: Hill, Brian W.
• Position: ANALYST CORNER

Is the glass half full or half empty? A year ago, Forrester Research and ARMA International collaborated on a study and found that more than half of records managers planned to ramp up technology deployments. Of the more than 300 technology and strategy decision makers responsible for records management in the joint survey fielded in mid-2010, 63% of stakeholders said they plan to expand or roll out new records management products in 2011.

This supports what Forrester Research has been saying: there is significant change going on in the market, and the complexity of standards and amount of data are forcing organizations to address their records management, e-discovery, and archiving efforts now.

But digging deeper into the results reveals there are still major issues facing organizations. Only half of stakeholders report satisfaction with current solutions. Three in 10 have more than 50 retention policies. A relatively high 39% of buyers have yet to determine their software budgets for 2011. Only 16% are very confident about their e-discovery capabilities.

Clearly, the market is in transition--but there's no doubt of its organizational importance. Here is a closer look at some of the results from the survey.

Only Half of Stakeholders Report Satisfaction with Current Solutions

With thousands of deployments and a large number of vendors offering solutions, records management is a mature market. The market, however, continues to progress through a difficult transition phase.

The vast majority of legacy deployments focus on managing physical records or on enforcing policies on a small subset of enterprise content. In seeking to expand this reach and apply retention policies across an expanding set of information assets, only 54% of survey respondents report satisfaction with their current records management solutions.

Records management stakeholders outline technical limitations with their current applications, but the top challenges don't focus on the technology itself. Instead, concerns focus on (see Figure 1):

* The complexity and duration of deployments

* Significant expense

* Difficulties synchronizing related efforts like e-discovery and archiving

* Challenges in aligning with other stakeholders, such as IT, legal, compliance, and business

* Inconsistent classification

* Low user adoption

Along with careful application selection and technical planning, successful records management programs require effective policy development, change management, and internal coordination across different organizational roles. Without appropriate information governance, records management efforts stumble.

Budgets Remain Uncertain--Yet Include Major Software Costs

For records management stakeholders who plan to expand or roll out new records management products in 2011, 17% have budgeted more than $250,000 for software licenses (see Figure 2). Again, the glass appears half full but, reflecting comparable uncertainty results from Forrester's 2009 survey with ARMA International, 39% of these buyers haven't yet determined their software budget.

With a broad array of pricing models across vendors, with many charging separately for supporting modules such as SharePoint and SAP connectors, federated records management (FRM), and other add-ons, navigating software licensing isn't trivial, especially since many vendors offer records management leveraging their enterprise content management platforms. Also, software licensing typically represents just a fraction of total solution costs--services supporting change management, deployment, integration, and training can account for significant additional cost.

Complexity Rules: Three...