The growth of interest in enterprise content management (ECM) has been explosive. The preface writer Tero Päivärinta noted that the simple search of “enterprise content management” with Google Scholar from January 1 through August 23, 2012 resulted in 220 hits. However, recently, I conducted a similar Google Scholar search for the years 2009 to 2013. The number of hits ranged from 675 to 1040, indicating that many more articles were being published. Furthermore, many additional areas of interest have been added to the topic of ECM, such as business process management (BPM), big data, electronic record management (ERM), and knowledge management (KM).

In such a rapidly changing field, it is important to develop a framework with which to study and propose future research directions in ECM. In the first chapter of the book, the editors, who are also co-authors in later chapters with other researchers, do attempt to outline such a framework. They characterize four aspects of ECM: enterprise, content, processes, and technologies. They also define the life cycle of content in four phases: create and capture, store and retrieve, edit and deliver, and retain and delete. This taxonomic approach is useful to a certain extent, but the framework must be flexible enough to accommodate future development. This functional framework for ECM is cited by the authors in figure 3 of the first chapter [1].

Part A of the book contains five chapters and provides a good overview of ECM. Aside from the introduction (chapter 1), the other chapters address the market for ECM software, factors affecting the acceptance of ECM systems, and the role ECM plays in enterprise environments. It also highlights important rhetorical issues, including concerns about sales and implementation and the influence of ECM on the organizational culture and vice versa. Part B has also five chapters and provides more details about the implementation of ECM in each of the four aspects of ECM mentioned above. Chapter 6 deals with strategy development for ECM from the enterprise and content perspectives. Chapter 7 addresses the critical success factors in ECM, especially the framework for readiness assessment. Chapter 8 discusses content management for advisory support information systems from the technical and content perspectives. Chapter 9 looks into make or buy issues and the factors that impact the adoption of cloud computing on the content level. Chapter 10 addresses the content perspective by discussing fostering comparability in content management using semantic standardization.

Part C is a case study of ECM for five different enterprises. Each organization has a different emphasis on its ECM implementation in order to meet its needs. Each chapter of this part addresses one of the organizations in the case study.

One important aspect of the ECM is the diversity of the enterprises themselves. Many issues significant to one type of enterprise may not be of any significance to another. The authors in chapter 3 selected five different enterprises as case studies in Part C. Table 1 provides a summary of these enterprises (note: this table presents slightly different data than the text). Although the selected businesses differ widely in number of employees and are located in many different countries, the lack of an enterprise in a retail business with a large number of customers results in missing some of the important issues and concerns of a major enterprise type. Some of the major concerns would be: the security of customer credit and personal data, the importance of capturing and utilizing social media data, the use of data from mobile devices, and the segmentation of enterprise data in order to allow easy access by all users while protecting the data from unauthorized users and hackers.

A discussion of ECM for the same types of enterprises in different countries is required to understand how different legal, financial, and tax structures, as well as rules and regulations in different countries, affect ECM systems. For example, in the US, all enterprises must archive and back up certain emails and retain them for a certain period. The courts also require, in case of lawsuits, the retention of certain business records for electronic discovery. All publicly traded companies must follow the rules for financial disclosures. These aspects must be properly managed as part of ECM.

There are good references at the end of each chapter, as well as brief biographies of all of the authors at the end of the book. Unfortunately, the book has no index, which is a major deficiency. Overall, though, practitioners and students of ECM should find this book useful.