Components of enterprise content management

Why an enterprise would need an ECM system

Enterprises have so much content. Individual departments produce reams (to borrow a term from the heyday of paper-based content). It can be hard for people in a department to manage and keep their own content organized.

With all this content, it’s nearly impossible for different departments and teams to know what content is available outside of the one that created it. And that’s a problem an enterprise content management system can solve.  

An ECM isn’t just about storing content. It’s about making it usable. By tagging each piece of content with meta-data (searchable information about the content), it becomes “find-able” by anyone with access to the area where it resides. 

Suddenly, information becomes available, usable, and more easily shared. Plus, the content can be tracked to meet compliance and information governance standards. And management of documents throughout their entire lifecycle becomes more automated, simplifying document retention policy management and enforcement. 

For some enterprises, an ECM system makes business intelligence possible. Advanced data capture solutions extract the data from your documents for analysis, transforming documents and content into business intelligence.

So, why would an enterprise want an ECM? Perhaps the simplest answer is business agility.

Managing the Content Lifecycle

Every piece of content shares the same five elements in its content lifecycle:

• Capture

• Publish

• Retention

• Archive

• Deletion

How long you keep a piece of content depends on the document type, its relevance, and often any regulatory compliance requirements. As content volumes grow, keeping track of each piece of content becomes a bigger challenge. It’s easy to find a document in a mostly empty file cabinet. It’s more difficult in one bursting with documents.

The centralized and digital nature of enterprise content management makes managing the entire life of content simpler. Every piece of content gets a creation date tag when added to the system. It's always in the same location. In many cases, you can even add retention dates to a document or group of documents. This way, as a document reaches the end of its lifecycle, you can decide whether to set it for deletion or continue to store it as needed.

At this point, we’ve looked at enterprise content management from the perspective of digitizing all files. Realistically, you may have some files that must live on paper such as legal contracts. Cases such as these still belong to enterprise content management. To facilitate the management, you would engage with a system for tracking these documents. This might look like:

• A barcode on each document, scanned and recorded in the document database.

• Boxes of the content likewise barcoded and scanned and then stored in a secured facility.

• Regular audits to ensure security and validate the presence of each document.

We live in a digital world, but it isn't completely paperless yet. It's important to know that even paper documents can be managed via a centralized application to ensure your enterprise contents' accurate and efficient management.

Elements of ECMs

The Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) identifies five elements of enterprise content management systems:

1. Capture: The creation, scanning, saving, or digital recording (in terms of documents that still live in paper) of content into the system.

2. Manage: How you store, retrieve, and use the documents in the system based on your retention policies.

3. Store: The different platforms used that house your content, including any IT or cloud infrastructure and backup and disaster recovery services.

4. Preserve: This is your lifecycle and records management policies put into practice for storing, archival, and eventual deletion of the materials.

5. Deliver: The ways you share, collaborate, and send the content where and to whom it needs to go. Workflow automation tools such as automated routing with applications like our Smart Integration Solutions belong in this category.

Although these five cover the many different elements, we include two more elements in every enterprise content management system – 

6. Information governance: The policies that define how you manage your content should exist for every type of content. Best practices include written policies and employee training to ensure everyone understands proper handling of company content.

7. Reporting and analytics: See detailed analysis of user access, content usage, and more to better understand the content lifecycle, user behavior, and to track access for compliance reporting.

Is document management the same as enterprise content management?

Document management is an aspect of enterprise content management, but ECM involves more than the system that manages, stores, retrieves, and archives electronic documents.

For example, website content management systems solely store all the material that lives on your website. Databases, CRMs, ERPs, and line of business applications store data and other business-specific content.

A document management system like DocuWare can act as a content management system for small and mid-sized businesses but would not have the full range of tools enterprises require. An enterprise may use a document management system like DocuWare as a departmental solution, a small component of the larger enterprise content landscape.

How to choose an enterprise content management solution

The following steps can help you choose a content management solution for your organization.

1. Determine the scope of your need. Do you need a system for your entire enterprise or only for select departments? Which type of ECM do you need: for web, collaborative, or transactional content? Effectively, the first step involves determining who will be using it and what they will generally be using it for.

2. Identify your objectives. What problem are you trying to solve? Starting with questions can help you define and prioritize your objectives. For example, questions to consider may include:

• Do you need to make your content more easily available to remote workers?

• Are you trying to reduce the time spent searching, filing, and organizing content?

• Do you have compliance requirements you need to meet?

• Is there a need to reduce the time currently spent on capturing data and routing semi-structured documents like invoices?

• Have you found a need to digitize and automate workflow processes to help employees stay productive in a more mobile and remote work-oriented world? 

• Do you need to integrate documents into a more streamlined process with your current line of business applications, ERPs, or CRMs?

• Are you looking to reduce infrastructure? 

Once you identify your specific objectives, you will find it easier to determine what element of ECM you should start with.

• If you need a document or data capture solution, you might look for products like Kofax ControlSuite.

• For data capture and analysis tools, a platform like the Intelligent Business Platform (IBP)℠ can deliver the applications that complement an enterprise content strategy.

• A web content management solution like SiteCore may deliver web content intelligence to enhance your web presence. 

3. Find a partner. Many companies provide ECM products and services, but that doesn’t mean they are the best fit for you. You want to consider: 

• Does the provider understand my business?

• Do they have the resources to support my implementation?

• Will the provider be able to scale the product to your need?

• Does the vendor have the expertise needed to ensure seamless integrations with line of business applications?

• What kind of training is offered?

This step may be the difference between a successful implementation and frustration and a lack of adoption by your organization. Take your time here and research your options, see a demo and understand how the application will work in your implementation, and talk to partner references.

4. Define the requirements of the implementation. Take time to understand the roles and responsibilities for the implementation and onboarding process. Although the vendor will likely create the Scope of Work document, view your organization’s role as coauthor. And make sure to understand how you will be able to scale it as needed. 

5. Deliver. The ways you share, collaborate, and send the content where and to whom it needs to go. Workflow automation tools such as Kofax TotalAgility®, XM Fax (fax over IP – FoIP), or, at a departmental level Smart Integration Solutions, address enterprise needs.

How to implement enterprise content management solutions

Many ECM systems reside in the public cloud, data center infrastructure hosted by a third-party provider and outside your network. Amazon Web Services and Salesforce are examples of this.

Public cloud – often just called cloud hosted or cloud-based – application setup fastest, making it only necessary to create users in a new system implemented specifically for your organization.

An installation in a private cloud will require software deployment and setup. If you choose an on-premise installation, you will need hardware infrastructure setup in addition to platform deployment and setup.

The details of the implementation – whichever you choose – should be outlined in the Statement of Work document.

Once the system is ready for use, your first step will be to complete your initial configuration. Working with your partner at this point can help administrators gain a quick understanding of how the system works.

Then, it’s time for training.

Stakeholder and user training can be casual but should be mandatory, follow a well-defined plan, and involve multiple stages to ensure adoption and maximize the benefit of the system.

Finally, work with your vendor partner to create any initial dashboards and reporting to monitor system usage.

For more information about enterprise content management…

We invite you to check out our other articles on ECM.