What is Enterprise Content Management?
The term Enterprise Content Management (ECM) means different things to different people. To put it as simply as possible, it means helping everyone in the organisation (the 'enterprise') to manage ('find, use, share and keep') content (documents, email, web pages - what's sometimes known as 'unstructured' information).
This can mean that instead of simply saving documents onto your computer or into a shared network folder where it may never be found again you would save your documents into a system that will help keep track of them. Sometimes systems like this work like other software, with windows, menus, and buttons that you use to carry out their functions, or they may just look like a set of folders. Either way, they work to enable you to better find your documents, and others who need the same documents would have access to them in the same place.
ECM can also include processes to streamline the publication, and improve the quality, of information on websites; it can refer to the automation of certain business processes (eg creating, approving, editing and publishing documents); and to the management of information from a recordkeeping angle.
But ECM is not just software. Software helps, but ECM is really about everyone agreeing on and using an organised, systematic approach to the management of information. The way that it's stored, kept, shared, and retrieved.
Visit the AIIM website to find out more about ECM.
