Do you have any license skeletons in your closet?

What with all the focus on efficiency, cost cutting, operational effectiveness or whatever term your organisation is currently using to describe the need to save money, is it time that you had a look at whether you're getting the most out of your existing investments in ECM technologies? Are you making use of all the licenses that you bought when you first started out on your ECM programme?

Enterprise Content Management seems to be one of those technologies that attracts heavy casualties. Not in terms of the people who work with it (no matter how you describe it, you're never going to convince the girls that implementing ECM solutions has an equivalent level of danger as being a fireman) - I'm talking about abandoned licenses.

I'm sure you remember a time when your ECM programme just started, you were young and carefree, and an information sharing nirvana was merely months away from reality in your organisation. Now, years have passed, and with them a mix of success and disappointment, as some of your original dreams were realised and others fell by the wayside.

If you're like most organisations, there's a fair chance that one of the things that will have happened as a result of this is some ECM licenses will be lying around that you're not making the most use of. Perhaps your planned 2,000 seat roll-out only managed to make it to one team, leaving you with around 1,900 left. Maybe the original implementation was affected by a corporate takeover or a change in management. Either way, there's a real opportunity to either make the most of those licenses, (or stop paying maintenance on them). Even if they're for an older version of an existing product, there's definitely mileage in having that discussion with your vendor to see if you can get that upgrade - after all, it's better for them than you no longer requiring support...