A Need for Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

Technology Trends

Although the use of document management and Enterprise Content Management (ECM) may appear like interchangeable, the core and breadth of functionality are significantly different. Document management focuses on document storage and retrieval while ECM allows you to capture, store, integrate, access, process and measures your content; adding key functionality like retention, archiving, annotation etc. that document management lacks.

Content drives digital experiences. However, enabling content-driven experiences presents the challenge of managing videos, audios, images, articles and documents from a wide variety of sources, and then delivers it depending on the business need. The amount of electronic content, unstructured data and documents is growing very rapidly and organizations are seeking advanced and automated content and process management solutions to manage this information to meet regulatory requirements. Also, an organization that has unstructured and decentralized document storage and often times stored in multiple office locations in physical format, shared drives and email.

In addition, we see the waste of time and effort in locating documents.  It is also known that nearly 10% of an average office worker’s day is spent trying to locate existing information and documents challenges. This causes redundancy when there is a mindset that it is easier to recreate a new one instead of looking for an existing document. Doing this will lead to unnecessary usage of storage devices, computer hard-disk, network storage devices and network bandwidth, because contents are stored everywhere across the enterprise, rather than using centralized solution.

Often times, we have not seen businesses take the time to consider the considerable risks that they expose themselves to when not using the right solution to manage the contents generated based on operational activities. There are risks and these are related to:

• Security: This is applied haphazardly and exposes important information to scrutiny by potentially inappropriate people.
• Confidential and Critical documents are stored on laptop, personal PCs that could be lost, stolen, or damaged at any time.
• No existing audit to identify who has viewed and/or edited a document.

This blog's content is intended solely for informational purposes. While every effort is made to ensure accuracy, completeness, and relevance, the information may not be current or applicable in all situations. The opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of any organization they may be affiliated with.