"Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the strategies, methods and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes. ECM tools and strategies allow the management of an organization's unstructured information, wherever that information exists." (source: AIIM)
Benefits of an ECM Solution:
- Business process automation allows users to focus on higher value tasks and enhances productivity.
- Significant cost savings related to consolidation of isolated information and document silos, increased employee productivity and reduced costs for storage and administration.
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Instant access to all information which leads to better and faster decision making. It is estimated that employees in organizations that lack an ECM spend almost 30% of their time searching for the right information they need to conduct their daily tasks. An ECM solution can locate and retrieve any document within seconds even when there are millions of documents in storage.
- Compliance: It has become vital today for all businesses to implement policies and technologies that allow them to comply with privacy and regulatory acts such as SOX, PIPEDA, HIPAA and others. The courts are imposing severe legal penalties on companies that fail to disclose all requests information in a timely fashion or if that information was lost or destroyed.
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Simultaneous access: Multiple people can view and collaborate on the same document at the same time no matter where they may be located.
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Revision Management: When a user changes a document and checks it back in, the original document is not overwritten. Instead, a new revision is created. This maintains the integrity of the original document and creates a history of changes that can be audited.
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Audit Trail: Tracks and records every action taken within the ECM such as who edited which document and when, or who deleted a document, etc.
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Access Control: A good ECM will provide security features to restrict access to sensitive documents in a variety of ways such as document type, user, group, security level, and other criteria.
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Eliminate "Multiple Original Syndrome": When several users keep their own local copies of a document, they tend to write notes and make changes on their local copy. This results in there being multiple "living" copies of the same document which makes it very difficult to get all the information about a certain document or file.
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Reduce Physical Storage: Once information has been scanned or otherwise captured into ECM the , the filing cabinets and storage boxes can be significantly reduced or eliminated. This frees up floor space for more productive use. Similarly, external warehouse storage facilities may also no longer remain necessary.
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Retention & Disposition Controls: An ECM can implement policies and rules for determining how long certain documents should be kept and how and when to dispose of them.
Contact Enara today to learn how we can help you with your organization's information and content management requirements.