As organizations research potential enterprise content management options, project teams are often overwhelmed by the massive amount of information available on the topic. To complicate matters, the vast majority of enterprise content management resources focus on the features of software packages while providing little insight on how to systematically lead a team through the critical first steps of an enterprise content management implementation. Dakota has prepared a Quick Start Guide to outline the necessary tasks a project team should complete before making any financial or resource commitment to a particular authoring, content management or publishing software package. These five critical preparatory tasks are listed below. Ideally they are implemented by a dedicated project team over a span of 60 - 90 days.

• Publishing Process and Resource Analysis
• Business Justification
• Publishing System Design
• Time Line and Budget Projections
• Proof of Concept Development