What Is Enterprise Content Management (ECM)? Definition, Key Advantages, and Best Practices

Enterprise content management (ECM) is defined as a set of digital strategies, practices and technologies used to create, store, collaborate, and access content for marketing, internal, or customer communication.  

In this article, we discuss what enterprise content management (ECM) is, along with its various components, types, benefits, and best practices for 2021. We also break down the ten most compelling reasons for ECM adoption and six best practices to remember.

Table of Contents

• What Is Enterprise Content Management (ECM)?
• Key Functional Components of an ECM Solution
• Advantages of Adopting  Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
• 5 Best Practices for Enterprise Content Management in 2021

What Is Enterprise Content Management (ECM)?

Enterprise content management (ECM) is a set of digital strategies, practices and technologies used to create, store, collaborate, and access content for purposes of marketing, internal or customer communication. 

Four Key Functions of Enterprise Content Management

ECM, as a recognized practice across organizations, originated in the early 2000s when the software began to emerge with the core function of helping enterprises undergo a digital transformation of content and documentation. This meant digitally uploading existing physical paperwork, creating new content digitally and organizing them according to their various departments and uses, such as marketing content (flyers, brochures, website content, etc.), internal/employee communication and training content, sales enablement materials, sales and accounting documents, and customer communication content.

Today, ECM tools adoption is rapidly rising among organizations, and a 2020 Markets And Markets studyOpens a new window estimated the ECM market is expected to expand from about $40 Billion in 2020 to $67 Billion in 2025. This trend is only expected to accelerate in view of the Global coronavirus pandemic shutdown and rise of remote working, which has led to accelerated adoption of cloud-based services for remote access to enterprise content. 

ECM is also key to effective and remote online collaboration among team members to create and edit content documents. With the rise of big data analytics, ECM software is increasingly attempting to deliver text analysis for improved document search and content analytics. 

In fact, in a 2019 study, The Association of Information and Image Management (AIIM) foundOpens a new window that 45% of companies (out of 300) view analytics as a key feature of ECM – this indicates the direction in which this industry is headed.

Before we dive into why ECM is a business staple, let’s consider what is enterprise content management in the first place.

Any ECM has four key functions:

1. Store information from PDFs, images, paper documents, emails, and other sources.

2. Manage information and data by transforming into a digital-friendly format, with the appropriate access and modification policies.

3. Store information and data without redundancies.

4. Deliver the right information with the right access based on the user’s security clearance and search strings.

Today, ECM software allows an array of API integrations with your existing data management technologies such as your sales CRM, marketing content CMS, HR software for job postings, etc. For example, by connecting your ECM solution to your CRM, a sales executive can look up sales enablement content and creatives made by the marketing team directly from their CRM portal without having to switch to the ECM portal.

Since an ECM is an organization-wide software application that will store documents across departments and functions, API integration for large organizations is key to ensuring point-access from existing software already used by these departments.

Learn More: What Is Content Management System (CMS)? Definition, Key Functions, Best Practices With ExamplesOpens a new window

Key Functional Components of an ECM Solution

Now that you know what enterprise content management is, let’s take a look at the key functional components of a modern enterprise content management software solution:

1. Content collaboration 

Team and cross-team collaboration on content creation and management is one of the key functions of ECM software. This includes parallel content editing (multiple users can access and edit the same doc), centralized repository, folder management, and document search and access to authorized employees.

For instance, the marketing team may collaborate within its members to generate an article on a software feature update and collaborate with the product team to ensure its accuracy from a technical standpoint. This article may then be stored as a document/ asset to be published on the site through CMS integration or manually copying the article onto CMS for publication.

2. Digital asset management (DAM)

DAM in ECM focuses on the storage, organization, and access of your vital digital assets – including Ebooks, PDF reports, videos, marketing materials, etc. Companies relying on media for their revenue streams must own a powerful DAM system. 

Take the example of global analysts and agencies like Gartner, which deal with massive volumes of incoming and outgoing content every day. DAM ensures that every piece of content is tagged, securely stored, edited with accurate version control, and never lost. 

3. Web content management (WCM)

All your website content must be centrally managed with an API connection between your CMS and ECM. The CMS will fetch the required document from the repository or can be manually moved between CMS and ECM.

A WCM is a business must-have if you have a large website, and especially if you publish articles/ content frequently. For instance, online publications often make use of ECM to manage and store articles that need to be scheduled for publishing.

4. Internal document management 

Internal document management in ECM refers to secure cloud storage and role-based access to internal enterprise documents such as sales reports, employee documents, accounting and payroll documents, etc. 

5. Intelligent information management (IIM)

Right before we discussed the definition of Enterprise Content Management, we mentioned that IIM is the next bend in ECM’s evolution. A 2019 survey of 1500 respondentsOpens a new window revealed crucial gaps in existing content management models.

• 83% have had to recreate existing documents because they couldn’t find it
• The average company uses four repositories to store information creating silos
• 82% want a system that can automatically tag content

IIM reimagines traditional ECM by adding advanced analytics to garner deeper insights. It is also more flexible, allowing you to pick and choose the ECM capabilities you need. Finally, it uses cognitive technology to increase its automation potential and coverage of content sources.

6. Content analytics 

Even without an AI upgrade (discussed next), traditional ECMs are able to provide content analytics and business intelligence reports with dashboards on key metrics such as content updates, content uploads, total assets by each department, collaborative assets, redundant documents, etc.

7. AI and natural language processing (NLP) for data structuring 

The latest upgrades in AI have enabled large ECM providers like IBM to enable natural language processing in their platforms. NLP has been transforming enterprise content management by reading old digital data (and even physical data when combined with its digital transformation tech suite) and converting them into searchable formats and even derive insights from historic information and trends. 

In the future, it is expected that ECMs, once integrated with AI and NLP, will be the core platform for business intelligence since it will already have all the information as the knowledge base of the enterprise.

8. Digitization 

While most organizations today have either completely digitized their documentation or are in the final stages, digital transformation technology offered by ECMs is still popular for historic organizations like governments, education institutes, and old companies. 

Using the latest tech like optical character recognition (OCR), handwriting recognition (HWR) and optical mark recognition (OMR), can recognize symbols like a checkmark on a survey field), ECMs are able to scan existing physical paperwork and convert them into digitized versions without having to input the whole data manually.

All of these components come pre-built if you opt for an out-of-the-box solution. This could either be a “buy-once, use-forever” license (high Capex, low Opex, and needs maintenance effort) or a Software as a Service (SaaS) ECM that works like a flexible subscription with vendor support bundled in.

But for companies that require extreme customization and configurability, we’d recommend a homegrown solution in partnership with IT service and integration experts.

Learn More: What is Content-as-a-Service? Definition, Examples and Top 15 CaaS Vendors in 2020 Opens a new window

Signs You Need Enterprise Content Management (ECM) 

Most large companies, including Microsoft, IBM, Conduent, Oracle, and SAP, all offer sophisticated ECM solutions, or you can build one for yourself. But in either case, this involves a sizable investment – how do you know if your company needs an ECM? Here are five key signs for you to judge by:

1. You have multiple departments spread across geographies that need to collaborate among themselves.
2. Company departments create multiple documents that need cloud storage and centralization.
3. Information is currently stored in silos without cross-team and cross-geography visibility.
4. There are cases of lost content/documents, leading to lost opportunities and duplication of effort.  
5. Your enterprise content needs varied levels of access based on authorized clearance of the users.
6. You are a historic organization that needs to digitally transform old paperwork and records.

ECM is a foundational building block for the digital world. Governments using powerful ECM technology can offer 24/7 support to citizens via online channels. Companies with an updated ECM can empower its employees and teams to work better, staying in-sync with each other, as well as provide better content and services to customers. As our content consumption habits mature, the latest ECM can give your company a competitive edge.

Let’s now discuss the advantages you can unlock through ECM.

Learn More: Reliable UC&C Infrastructure Can Help Soothe Remote Work ChallengesOpens a new window

Advantages of Adopting Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

ECM or enterprise content management brings together the various processes associated with content management (and the tools necessary) under a single umbrella. 

Some of the key advantages of using ECM are:

1. Reduces content redundancies and enables faster file access 

A large organization is likely to have a sprawling content landscape, making it challenging to locate and retrieve specific assets on time. In fact, a 2019 M-files surveyOpens a new window of 1500 respondents found that a quarter of employees find it difficult to locate the latest file version of documents most of the time, and 83% of these employees have recreated an existing document. 

When employees are unable to find necessary assets that may have already been created, they either engage in redundant work or use an older un-updated version. This is a key source of human resource wastage, and ECM is key to avoiding it. 

Today, almost all ECM platforms come with a document search feature, complemented by intelligent anti-redundancy applications that automatically search for similar documents and prompt you for removal. This ensures that users always find the most up-to-date version of documents in a single search query. 

2. Transforms old paperwork into structured digital content

ECM systems using technologies like optical character recognition (OCR), handwriting recognition (HWR), optical mark recognition (OMR), can enable an old organization to digitally transform their paperwork without requiring manual human input for the digitization of records and content.

This is particularly helpful in the case of governments and old automobile companies, banks, education institutes, and retailers who have years of information, and some may still be in paper form rather than digital. 

Learn More: Risks & Best Practices for Project Collaboration Tools

3. Helps meet compliance and security needs

Laws like GDPR require companies to store information for a specific period of time, offer access to the relevant individuals, and retire it after a certain threshold. Furthermore, even if there is no law, there is always a need for secure access. An ECM stores documents indefinitely unless removed, while also ensuring secure and authorized access to individual documents, files, and folders. 

4. Increases employee productivity

Professionals in every BU need content support. A sales rep would want access to product brochures. A contact center executive would need past conversation records to serve a customer better. And, a supply chain manager can speed up vendor onboarding if the right forms are readily available. ECM enables secure access to all of these assets from employee desktops or even mobile devices for field workers.

5. Opens up AI and automation possibilities

One of the key requirements for incorporating AI is centralized and structured data storage for the system to read, learn, and provide insights. A centralized information management system like enterprise content management is the bedrock for automating various workflows for the organizations, both for external customers and internal use.

For example, if various managers of different teams can upload the ECM, an IT manager may configure the ECM to send a single automated summary email to the CEO where only the summary section of each report is scanned (using NLP), compiled into an email with a pre-set format and sent to the CEO with no human intervention.

6. Aids in business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR)

This is a common reason for adopting ECM or Enterprise Content Management. It stores and preserves your essential documents, ready for backup in case there is any business interruption. Consider, for example, the COVID-19 pandemic and how it compelled companies to switch to WFH. ECM would ensure that your digital assets are backed up to the cloud, allowing employees to pick up where they left off, from the safety of their homes.

Learn More: 4 IT Management Tools to Prepare for Coronavirus or Any Disruption

7. Improves customer experience delivery

While an ECM is completely for internal employee and management usage, its application by marketing and customer-facing teams leads to improved customer experience and satisfaction benchmarks for your company. This is a result of organization-wide access to the customer experience framework set by the company’s CX director/ authority.

For instance, marketing teams spread across languages and geographies can maintain consistency of CX design themes and messaging on websites and promotional materials – when the latest guidelines are stored in an ECM (which ensures zero redundancy) and made easily accessible in real-time to all stakeholders.

8. Improves organizational scalability

Modern cloud-based ECM systems replace the traditional, siloed approach where each business unit would manage its content individually, making scalability difficult due to a lack of centralization and sharing. With a modernized ECM, you can simply follow a hub-and-spoke model, adding on each new business unit/office as a spoke to the centralized hub. New users can access the content at a click with a slight reconfiguration of the policies.

Learn More: 6 Benefits of CRM for Small Business Owners

5 Best Practices for Enterprise Content Management in 2021

1. Define access at leadership and manager levels

Access to various company documents needs to be defined at a leadership level, in lieu of manager recommendations where needed. The basics to be put together here are: 

• Company documents needed by each department 
• Company documents generated by each department
• Levels of employment at each department
• And finally, the access levels of each document for each department at various employment levels.

It is important to remember that an ECM or any document gate will only prevent unauthorized access; it cannot prevent mistakenly authorized access. Defining and ensuring compliance by all managers is key to leveraging ECM for content security.

2. Make ECM the default storage 

Even if digital is your default mode of all documentation and production, this content may very well end up within email loops, local cloud storage, or worse, offline PC storage.

For ECM to work at its full potential and deliver a greater return on your investments in the system, you need to ensure 100% compliance on using only the ECM as the default storage. This is also critical to ensure secure and authorized document access across the enterprise, while also making your ECM a formidable tool for business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) program.

3. Consult your compliance team before deploying ECM

All document management policies must be in line with local, national, global, and industry-specific rules. In recent years, there has been a slew of legislation around data privacy, document storage, and document processing through AI, making it a vital best practice.

4. Tap into the latest technologies

Advancements in AI, analytics, the cloud, and, most recently, blockchain have revolutionized how we handle the content. In an experimental use case in EstoniaOpens a new window , a third-party blockchain system was linked to a document management solution to place accurate timestamps on who is accessing citizen health documents. Explore disruptive ideas like this when putting together an ECM suite.

5. Opt for an API-first ECM suite

Your content management needs will mature with business growth, and ECM needs to evolve in tandem. An API-first architecture will make it easier to integrate ECM with new apps and third-party software.

As content volumes grow, a well-articulated ECM framework can help you optimize content activities internally and maximize its market impacts. Fortunately, the world’s leading technology players provide cutting-edge ECM tools and services to help get this business basic right.

Do you use an ECM solution at your company? If yes, what is your business use case? Comment and let us know on FacebookOpens a new window , LinkedInOpens a new window , Opens a new window and TwitterOpens a new window ! We would love to hear your views!