ECM system: Everything you need to know about Enterprise Content Management

ECM platforms let you centrally file, store, and archive all your company’s content in an audit-proof system. This gives you a single digital storage space for all your data, along with meta-information, indexing, and versioning.

As such, an ECM system brings order and structure to your entire information inventory. It allows you to create centralized data pools with defined users. Now, no information gets lost under piles of paper or left behind in a data silo.

With a clear content management system in place, you can avoid duplicate, redundant documents, and unnecessary inquiries. With just a single click, employees can view all the necessary information and the current status of the document. The system also manages access and keeps a record anytime someone views a piece of content.

Thanks to technological advances and changing legal requirements, you no longer need to archive documents in paper form. Digital, audit-proof archiving as provided by an ECM system is all you need. An ECM lets you set predefined rules to automatically store, retain, and delete documents, which ensures your company complies with legal requirements and avoids compliance risks.

An ECM provides a defined folder structure and centralized data pool for storing content. This makes it easier for you to create a standardized system for storing and managing content. Modern ECM systems also offer you an intelligent, high-performance full-text search functionality, which helps users to find the information they need within seconds and make it available within the desired process. Time-consuming searches, queries, and lost documents are now a thing of the past.

When it comes to reducing costs, many people immediately think of the large amount of paper your company can eliminate by digitizing files in your ECM system. But saving on the costs of printing and paper are only the beginning. An ECM offers many other potential savings, including costs related to:

• External archives
• Shipping and delivery
• Procurement and maintenance of office materials and furniture, such as file cabinets
• IT support
• Security risks and violations

Enterprise Content Management systems are designed to connect every part of your company. They use agile interface technology to network existing software and integrate it into the information flow. These seamless information channels facilitate knowledge and information management, streamline processes, and increase your chances of successful automation. As a result, departments can greatly increase productivity.

ECM software works according to fixed, predefined rules. Your company’s administrators can define key ECM factors like storage locations, access authorizations, and permitted document actions, depending on the business process or document type. All information related to your content is stored in the background as metadata and can be audited at any time.

This improves your ability to provide evidence and meet disclosure obligations for compliance purposes. Plus, the status of a document or workflow is always clearly visible, which reduces the need for queries. Your ECM’s administrators can assign clear roles and responsibilities to each user, including backup users and escalation paths. Now, your company’s employees can process their tasks under the securest digital working conditions possible.
 

We already mentioned that ECM systems consolidate and centrally archive content and make information easier to find. They also seamlessly integrate with other systems, so your content is fully embedded into any process within your company. This greatly improves collaboration within departments and throughout the company.

By enabling an exchange of data between applications (such as SAP, Office 365, CRM and ERP systems), an ECM makes it easier for your employees to work on project-related, decentralized tasks while minimizing compliance risks. Plus, your employees can also use the data and content at any time, and documents and processes can be edited simultaneously, including change history, versioning, and deduplication.

The integrative approach of Enterprise Content Management improves collaboration both within your company and with customers. By enabling you to access and analyze data more efficiently, an ECM helps speed up decision-making and resolve queries faster. This helps enhance your company’s overall business performance when it comes to pricing, handling complaints, or maintaining good supplier relations. Lastly, ECM systems help you offer a more consistent service experience and establish stable, long-term customer, partner, and supplier relationships.

By clearly defining the way your company stores and retains all its information, an ECM system greatly increases security. In addition, it controls access and encrypts data transfers of content to ensure stronger data security. It also provides more information into the contexts in which content is accessed, which helps your company quickly identify any irregularities and handle its data more securely.

An ECM system lets you flexibly and dynamically manage document-centered, content-based business processes. To achieve this, the ECM analyzes your company’s process and identifies opportunities to add digital value through automation. Most processes can be effectively simplified in this way, leading to productivity increases and freeing up resources to be used in new ways. 

Instead of wasting time waiting for content or performing tedious, repetitive tasks, you and your company can now focus on more productive work and streamline processes. ECM software significantly boosts your company's overall performance by centrally controlling workflows, increasing transparency in all document-related processes.

After a document has been created, it must be captured within your company. It does not matter if the document was originally created on paper or in digital form. In either case, every document must be created, captured, prepared, and finally processed.

Capturing the document means making the document itself or its contents available in digital form for further use. This enables documents to enter your company digitally via numerous software and hardware channels, or to be scanned (for example: paper invoices and receipts). 

After processing, the documents are stored in digital archives or files and folders so they can be enhanced with additional technical functions and integrated into automated processes.

This means that documents in the ECM system are

• Instantaneously accessible in your digital archives
• Easy to find thanks to full-text search
• Traceable with metadata
• Audit-proof, with long-term archiving
• Tagged to prevent duplication
• Only available to the right users based on clearly defined rights and role management

To make this possible, your ECM will include features like optical character recognition (OCR), which allows it to automatically detect text, such as invoice information, field entries, handwriting, and barcodes. The ECM can then feed this information directly into the right processes and business applications throughout your company.

Once the document or its content has been created and prepared, it is ready to be used in your company’s business processes, which means it needs to be managed, edited, and made available. This sounds easier than it is. After all, companies work with a variety of databases and database types as well as existing or future software. In addition, access rights to certain types of information vary greatly, and workflows can be very specific. 

To manage your content, ECM software requires several components (core functions):

1. Document Management (DMS)
2. Records Management
3. Business Process Management (BPM) or Workflow Management
4. Collaboration
5. Web Content Management (WCM)

All these areas fall under the umbrella of “administration”:

• Document Management and Web Content Management focus on managing documents and content, both locally and in the Cloud/online.
• Records Management involves administration of documents and archives.
• Workflow Management defines how processes are managed.
   

Every company stores documents, content, and data, but they have different reasons and objectives for doing this. There is also a key difference between temporary storage (Store) and long-term archiving (Preserve). These practices are subject to fundamentally different legal requirements and guidelines.

Information that does not need to be archived (or cannot be archived in a meaningful way), is held in short-term storage. An ECM’s storage system includes four components:

1. A repository (the specific storage location)
2. Library services for managing the repository’s components
3. Technologies for storing the content
4. Security technologies covering the entire ECM system

This ensures that all information and content is not only stored, but can be found and accessed when needed. To enable you to effectively store your content for the long term, you need a flexible, rule-based system with technology that allows for expansions, updates, and compliance with defined specifications.
 

For centuries, paper documents were the norm in the business world. As a result, many legal document storage requirements were written with paper documents in mind. Those requirements were written on the assumption that paper documents are harder to manipulate and safer to store than digital documents. In recent years, however, digital document management has advanced considerably. Today, it offers a range of functions that makes it far superior to paper document management.

In addition to long-term archiving in digital, audit-proof archives with procedural documentation, some other key preservation benefits of an ECM include electronic signatures, digital stamps, versioning, access control, and automated deletion of documents after a defined period.

To fully leverage these advantages and comply with evolving legal requirements, your ECM system needs robust technology. Beyond just the software’s features, one principle remains critical: ensuring the integrity of digital documents for long-term archiving by preventing any alterations. With OCR technology, you can swiftly and effortlessly transform analog files into digital formats, resulting in long-term cost savings.

In the age of big data, your ECM system must handle the increasing volume of data efficiently, despite the smaller space required for digital archives compared to physical files. That’s why these storage system components are crucial for your company (Wikipedia):

• Write once read many (WORM) rotating digital optical storage media
• WORM tape (magnetic tape with WORM properties)
• Content-Addressed Storage (CAS) magnetic hard disk storage
• Network Attached Storage (NAS)/Storage Area Network (SAN) file server
• Microfilm (microform according to DIN)
• Paper
   

Your ECM system’s Deliver phase is what truly adds value for employees. It involves providing documents, information, and content which employees then use in their tasks and workflows.

To ensure convenient output, your ECM’s Deliver component must include three groups of functions and media:

• Transformation technologies: These ensure loss-free, controlled, and reproducible conversion, including COLD/ERM, personalization, XML, PDF converter and viewer, compression, and syndication.
• Security technologies: These provide security throughout the document lifecycle and certifiable processes, including PKI, digital signatures, and digital rights management.
• Distribution: This facilitates output and distribution across various channels such as the internet, extranet, intranet, email, fax, EDI, XML, SMS, data carriers, output media, and paper.

An ECM system also offers many more potential benefits. It enables quick access to analyses and reports, revealing connections between data, work steps, and customer relationships. Customizable dashboards with data visualizations and heat maps offer employees a clear overview of existing processes, which can be exported and shared across other processes.

Ultimately, the key to greater productivity and efficiency in day-to-day work lies in digital, automated workflows and business processes. Your ECM system can seamlessly integrate into these digitalized document processes.

Administration relies on approvals, which can often be time-consuming and frustrating. An ECM system lets you streamline approvals by setting authorizations, identifying stand-ins, and defining automatic escalation paths for each department and document type. Anytime someone accesses or edits content, this is recorded in the document log. Each document is automatically given a version number to make it easier to trace and clearly identify the latest version. This helps ensure your documents are handled securely within a clear approval matrix.

Approval processes include:

• Digital vacation requests
• Digital business trip requests
• Digital contract management
• Risk management

When employees lack the information they need, it often results in slow or stalled processes. An ECM system eliminates data silos, connects systems, and creates a seamless content experience, bringing information together, storing it centrally, and making it available wherever your processes need it. By taking an information lifecycle management approach, you ensure that your company’s knowledge is collected and protected, so no information is lost, and everything is easily retrievable.

Information processes play a key role in:

• Procure to pay (P2P)
• Digital contract management
• Digital invoice (e-invoice) processing
• Electronic sick leave management
• Digital personnel files
• Employee onboarding
• Risk management

With an ECM system, HR teams can digitalize and simplify many key tasks that involve paper documents, document-related steps, and correspondence. One example is applicant management, which is traditionally a time-consuming and costly process. 

Modern solutions like an ECM system streamline application management, ensuring fast responses to application inquiries and enhancing your company’s employer brand. These systems also ensure compliance with privacy regulations like the EU’s GDPR. Some of the main areas where an ECM can benefit HR include:

• Storage of personnel files
• Employee onboarding
• EU GDPR compliance

• Storage and deletion of personal data
• Creation of digital personnel files
• Distribution of payslips
• Managing vacation requests
• Digital travel expense reporting
• Employee onboarding/offboarding

Efficient ECM means your Finance department no longer has to waste time working with stacks of paper documents. An ECM enables them to reliably pay, store, process, and archive all types of invoices digitally, resulting in stronger relationships with your suppliers and partners. 

Digital invoice processing reduces processing time to days and ensures maximum traceability. This streamlined process helps avoid payment reminders and helps your company take advantage of early-pay rebates and discounts.

• Digital invoice (e-invoice) processing
• Procure to pay (P2P)
• Risk management
• Accounts payable

Accounts payable (AP) processes have traditionally involved paper documents and heavily repetitive, regulated procedures. To digitalize and automate your AP process, you would need to integrate many key business systems, including at least your Document Management System, Accounting system, and ERP. 

An ECM system makes this much easier. It contains software packages that distribute data and allow you to process invoices with simple, rules-based workflows. Now, you can manage your entire AP process, from invoice verification to audit-proof archiving and compliance with tax regulations – fully automatically.

• Digital invoice (e-invoice) processing
• Procure to pay (P2P)
• Risk management

Digitalization and managing contracts are also important processes your ECM system can take care of. Modern contract management relies heavily on digitalized, automated workflows, from initial correspondence and drafting, to approval, coordination (versioning) and legally valid signatures, archiving and, if necessary, deletion. An ECM enables you to complete all these steps in the contract lifecycle digitally.

NDAs and confidential information can be clearly governed using authorization management, which means employees only have access to the information they need or are authorized to see. This brings more transparency to your process and ensures your company is compliant with legal requirements.

• Digital contract management
• Risk management
• Storage of personnel documents
• EU GDPR conformity
• Collaborating on digital documents

Today, digital signatures and documents are generally considered as legally valid as paper documents and signatures. Paper documents are also becoming increasingly obsolete. There are only a few strictly regulated areas in which hand-signed documents are mandatory today.
 
Electronic signatures offer advantages for your business relationships, enabling your company to avoid delays and handle contracts with its partners much faster and more efficiently. The documents are available, anytime, on any device, and can often be signed electronically with just a single click.

The uniqueness of the electronic signature also makes work easier for other departments (such as accounting, administration) and prevents ambiguities in case of legal issues. This helps you ensure a seamless contract management experience without ever having to fire up a printer or wait for a signed paper document to be returned.

• Electronic signatures 
• Digital contract management
• Risk management
• Accounts payable
• Incoming invoice processing
• EU GDPR conformity
• Collaborating on digital documents

An ECM system makes it easier than ever to create and send business proposals and quotes. ECM functionalities like versioning, providing content and information and streamlined approvals ensure a speedy process and bring more security to your day-to-day business. This leads to faster transactions and financial benefits for your company. It also helps your Sales team work more effectively, so they can secure more new business.

• Electronic signatures 
• Digital contract management
• Risk management
• Accounts payable
• Incoming invoice processing
• EU GDPR conformity
• Collaborating on digital documents
• Digital ticket system

Correspondence with customers is always part of the process of securing new business. This usually takes place via email or an online form, but phone calls, letters, and faxes are still common communication in some industries and markets. This mix of communication methods makes it difficult to maintain an overview, efficiently store the different formats and file types, and quickly view the latest status.

An ECM system can store both structured and unstructured data in a useful, consolidated manner so that information is always available. This helps you shorten response times and provide accurate, fact-based information. As a result, your company’s Sales team members and customers enjoy a better experience, which enhances long-term business relationships.

• Electronic signatures 
• Digital contract management
• Risk management
• GDPR conformity
• Collaborating on digital documents
• Digital ticket system

Customer satisfaction is crucial to any business’s success. An ECM system can help you boost satisfaction by improving response times and ensuring your Customer Care team has access to accurate, reliable information.

Digital and digitized documents are not only easier to find and available at any time, they can also be indexed and searched much more easily and connected via links. In addition, consolidated data lets you conduct real-time analyses, so you can adjust your offering to cater to current demand. This means your customers enjoy a personalized experience and feel like your company is taking their needs and interests seriously.

By providing information from different systems, your ECM ultimately helps employees offer the best possible service and make the customer relationship even more rewarding.

• Digital ticket system
• Electronic signatures
• Risk management
• EU GDPR conformity
• Digital contract management