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Enterprise Content Management
101
You have probably heard Enterprise Content
Management referred to by many names including document
imaging, document management, collaborative commerce or
workflow. These are all components of the broader Enterprise
Content Management market or ECM.
ECM is the electronic capture,
storage, retrieval, routing and management of multiple data
types including digitized images, faxes, computer outputs
and electronic data. Its basic purpose is to manage different
data types and make them readily available to end
users.
Companies usually begin looking at ECM solutions when
they realize that they have:
- Too much paper to handle, too little space to
effectively manage it.
- Too many lost, misfiled or damaged documents
- Poor customer/vendor service response times
- Inability to have remote users access critical
business information
- A need to more easily implement and manage retention
schedules and internal controls defined in their corporate
compliance plans
- An opportunity to minimize potential risk of
records-related litigation
Systems range from being simple to extremely complex
depending on how the amount of integration with existing
systems and how the solution is woven within daily business
processes. Regardless of how simple or complex the system they
all have three basic components input, storage and
retrieval.
Input can come from scanned documents, incoming faxes,
e-mail, electronic files such as Word or Excel files and
downloaded computer streams.
All of these data types are input into the system,
indexed and stored on some form of medium. This could be
magnetic storage or optical disk technology. Typically the
image is stored within one database and another database will
contain index information about the image and the address of
where to find the image.
The information about the image is later used for
retrieval. Retrieval can take place over the Internet through
a Web client or from software on the users desktop. In
addition, the image can now be placed in a workflow to
automate processes and allow for parallel processing. The
image can also be printed, faxed or e-mailed directly from the
system.
ECM solutions can help your business
by:
Reducing your transaction costs. A
content management system makes documents available at the
press of a key regardless of where you are. Less resources
are spent retrieving files, hunting for lost documents, and
over-nighting or faxing documents. Employees can be given
secure access to retrieve documents from anywhere.
Streamlining your processes. Once you
have the content stored electronically, you can use the data
to automate your processes. No longer do you have to wait for
one step in your business process to be completed before the
next can begin. These actions can happen in concurrently. In
addition, because the processes are automated, overseeing and
reporting on the processes is made much simpler. Management
can readily see where bottlenecks are occurring in the
processes and take appropriate actions to address
them.
Leveraging your internal systems. For
example, through the use of a content management system, users
can leverage the investment that they have made in an ERP
system. The ERP system contains information about the
transaction but it does not contain the source document that
supports the transaction. When an ECM system is integrated
with the accounting system, accounting clerks can access the
source document, whether it is a purchase order, invoice,
shipping document or some other form of correspondence, all
from within the accounting system leading to a much quicker
response time and better service to vendors and
customers.
Preparing for disaster recovery. By
having data stored electronically, organizations can be
assured critical data is protected should fires, flooding,
human-caused disasters any loss of data occur.
Meeting regulatory requirements. Many
companies have certain regulatory requirements that must be
met. For example, magazine distributors have governmental
audits where they must produce a copy of certain magazine
subscriptions. Without a content management system, clerks
must pour through a warehouse to manually pull documents. With
ECM it is very easy for them to sit with the auditor at a
terminal and automatically present the requested information.
Resolving transaction discrepancies faster and
at less cost. Recent studies have shown that
corporations spend up to 40% of their transaction time
resolving discrepancies. Because ECM provides data that is
accessible in real-time from the desktop, time wasted
searching, faxing, calling back and forth is greatly
reduced.
Looking for more information on the basics of
content management and how to begin? Read our white paper
about Choosing a System or check out our FAQ page
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