What is enterprise content management?
Access, analyze and act on business content with an enterprise content management (ECM) solution
What is enterprise content management?
Enterprise content management (ECM) solutions enable an organization to take full advantage of the customer information and company knowledge embedded in its content. ECM solutions capture, store, activate, analyze and automate business content, providing new value from data that was previously unstructured and unavailable.
When effectively managed across the organization, content can be used to engage customers, automate business processes and enhance collaboration.
Control the Content Chaos (04:20)
Why is ECM software important for my business?
Content is the currency that fuels and funds digital transformation. Content possesses information about customers — their behaviors, sentiments and value to the organization — but only if you can harness it. Collectively, content buried in repositories, file shares and cloud folders across the enterprise represents the knowledge of the organization.
As content grows at unprecedented speeds, organizations are taking concrete steps to streamline their processes relating to content services. “Content chaos” — the lack of digitized content and the inability to access the right content at the right time — is a pervasive barrier to businesses today.
Now, more than ever, ECM software is an essential element on the journey to becoming a digital business.
How do I get started with ECM?
Organizations that are serious about digital transformation need to start with the basics. First, capture the content at the first opportunity. Next, classify it and apply governance rules. Then, control who can access it, and give people tools to find it quickly. Finally, put the content in motion for business processes and collaboration.
Identify the role content plays in your business
Successful adoption of ECM begins with an assessment of the enterprise. Where are paper documents slowing down results? Where is business content located in the enterprise? Is it in file shares, cloud repositories or an ECM system? And what is your strategy for governance, compliance and document retention?
Select an initial project
ECM solutions are scalable and often start with a department or line-of-business application. Once all stakeholders are engaged and have provided input, you develop a vision and measurable goals for a management solution. Then, after thorough testing and user training, deploy the solution. Often, the success of the solution spreads to other departments, which start lobbying to be the next project.
Extend ECM across the enterprise
ECM is best deployed as an enterprise solution. Once the first project has been completed, many elements and procedures can be reused, making subsequent projects less expensive and faster to deploy. Many businesses develop a shared-services strategy to maximize their investment in people, content and technology.
How can IBM help me?
One of the founders of the enterprise content management system, IBM has been a leader in the industry for more than 30 years. As part of its comprehensive business operations automation platform, IBM offers ECM services and solutions that support your digital transformation and help you build a cognitive business that is confident, streamlined and competitive. Only IBM offers the complete set of enterprise content management capabilities to capture, protect, activate, analyze and engage with content for greater insight and action.
Content services
Control your content chaos by making it easier for employees to securely access the information they need, when they need it. Combined with the resilience and scalability of the AWS Cloud, IBM Content Services enables you to integrate content into your application with an out-of-the-box user experience.
Content management
Manage your content where it is created. Securely collaborate on and share content wherever needed — and do it from any device. Protect it and make it easier to find. Implement enterprise archival and retrieval. Deploy it in the cloud, on premises or as a hybrid solution.
Document capture and imaging
Capture both paper and digital documents wherever they enter your organization. With automatic classification and extraction of data, you can accelerate customer-related business processes and reduce the overall cost of document management.
Learn more about ECM
Omdia Universe: Content Services Platform Solutions, 2023
Discover which content services provider has the features that best fit the needs of your company and gain an overview of the content service market.
Enabling Innovation through RPA and Content Services
Learn how you can digitally transform your business with foundational technologies like RPA as well as content access and content digitization efforts that go well beyond the tactical ECM solutions today.
Migrating your ECM system to the cloud
Make migrating your enterprise content management (ECM) system to the cloud a painless process with these top 10 tips.
Need to talk to an expert?
Schedule a consultation with an IBM expert to explore which ECM solution is right for you