Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is a critical component of any modern business or organization. ECM refers to the systems, processes, and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes. With ECM, organizations can improve efficiency, productivity, and collaboration and gain a competitive edge in their markets.
ECM is essential for organizations in the industries that generate and manage large volumes of content and documents among complex projects, such as engineering, energy, and construction. ECM allows these organizations to organize, manage, and access their content and documents in a way that is efficient, secure, and compliant with industry regulations.
Content is the currency that fuels and funds digital transformation. Content possesses information about customers — their behaviors, sentiments and value to the organization — but only if you can harness it. Collectively, content buried in repositories, file shares and cloud folders across the enterprise represents the knowledge of the organization.
As content grows at unprecedented speeds, organizations are taking concrete steps to streamline their processes relating to content services. “Content chaos” — the lack of digitized content and the inability to access the right content at the right time — is a pervasive barrier to businesses today.
Now, more than ever, ECM software is an essential element on the journey to becoming a digital business.
Identify the role content plays in your business
Successful adoption of ECM begins with an assessment of the enterprise. Where are paper documents slowing down results? Where is business content located in the enterprise? Is it in file shares, cloud repositories or an ECM system? And what is your strategy for governance, compliance and document retention?.
Select an initial project
ECM solutions are scalable and often start with a department or line-of-business application. Once all stakeholders are engaged and have provided input, you develop a vision and measurable goals for a management solution. Then, after thorough testing and user training, deploy the solution. Often, the success of the solution spreads to other departments, which start lobbying to be the next project..
Extend ECM across the enterprise
ECM is best deployed as an enterprise solution. Once the first project has been completed, many elements and procedures can be reused, making subsequent projects less expensive and faster to deploy. Many businesses develop a shared-services strategy to maximize their investment in people, content and technology.
Document capture and imaging
Capture both paper and digital documents wherever they enter your organization. With automatic classification and extraction of data, you can accelerate customer-related business processes and reduce the overall cost of document management.
Managing an organization’s content begins with the capture and importing of information into a secure digital repository. This can be any kind of document that is created, captured, stored, shared or archived, including:
Invoices from vendors, Resumes from job applicants, Contracts, Correspondence and Research reports.
A few methods of capturing these documents include:
Traditional methods of capturing documents require a great deal of effort and expense. Capturing documents in a digital repository eliminates many of the obstacles created by paper: labor-intensive duplication, slow distribution, misplaced originals and the inconvenience of retrieving files from offsite storage.
With robust ECM systems, organizations can easily store any business-critical document in a digital repository, allowing users to:
The benefits of enterprise content management go far beyond document storage. An ECM system also reduces the time, cost and complexity associated with managing documents that require retention schedules, throughout their life cycle, assisting in efforts to bolster regulatory compliance. In fact, a recent Research study showed content management systems returning R110.25 for every rand invested.
Once an organization’s records have been securely stored, you can:
Enterprise content management software helps eliminate time spent searching for information, enabling employees to answer information requests from clients, citizens and auditors immediately. More than that, staff have instant access to the information required to make better decisions about issues that can your organization’s bottom line.
Automation helps organizations eliminate manual tasks — such as photocopying or even drag-and-dropping digital documents — to achieve greater results with fewer resources. Some ECM systems have digital automation features that can:
Every day, businesses need purchase orders signed, records archived and employee vacation requests approved or denied. Automation moves these critical documents through the necessary steps of review and approval, in the order specified. The end result is processes that are more cost-efficient, streamlined and error-free.
With strengthening compliance restrictions in a wide range of industries, organizations are increasingly using ECM systems to optimize records management practices and protect against risk. An enterprise content management system must provide customizable security settings to allow organizations to protect information from unauthorized access or modification. These settings should allow you to:
Leading ECM solutions enable line of business departments to manage user access independently — which means sensitive HR information stays within the HR department, while private financial information stays within the finance department, even if the information is stored in the same repository.