Explore the essentials of ECM, its benefits and how it transforms content management to enhance efficiency and compliance in your organization.
Managing vast amounts of information efficiently is critical for businesses of all sizes. Enterprise content management (ECM) offers a comprehensive solution to this challenge, enabling organizations to streamline their document management processes, enhance customer service and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.
By implementing an effective ECM strategy, businesses can significantly reduce operational costs, minimize risks and improve overall productivity. Whether you're new to ECM or looking to modernize your current system, this guide will provide valuable information to help you make informed decisions and maximize the efficiency of your content management efforts.
ECM, sometimes referred to as document management or records management, is the process of managing the entire life cycle of an organization’s content, including documents, spreadsheets, contracts, scanned images, photographs, videos, CAD drawings and any other type of document. When choosing an ECM, the goal is to reduce risk and improve productivity, efficiency and customer experience by eliminating paper-based tasks and enhancing process visibility.
Explore Gartner’s analysis of 15 vendors in the document management space, and see why Hyland was named a Challenger with strengths in our scalability, open source and industry-specific capabilities.
The value of today's ECM solution goes beyond simple scan, store and retrieve capabilities, evolving into comprehensive content management platforms that address broader business challenges and processes with important information contained with documents or other business content.
Traditionally, ECM was primarily focused on static document management, including archival, document storage and collaboration. However, the field has evolved significantly with the introduction of transactional content management (TCM), which integrates closely with business workflows and systems, making ECM more relevant to organizational processes and decision-making.
Modern content solutions are holistic, designed to adapt to changes in technology and work patterns. They help combat information silos by delivering the right information to the right people at the right time, ensuring seamless integration and coordination with business systems across the organization.
Additionally, robust ECM platforms offer centralized repositories that consolidate documents and data from disparate systems. These repositories ensure that all content is stored in a single, secure location, making it easier to manage, search and retrieve information. This centralized approach enhances data governance, improves collaboration and supports compliance with regulatory requirements.
> Read more | Using an electronic document management system (EDMS) as a centralized document repository
Yes, according to 81% of respondents to Forrester Consulting’s 2024 study. To stay competitive, your organization must close the gaps by integrating AI and automation into your content strategy. Read this compelling study, full of stats and insights, for more.
Understanding key components of ECM helps organizations manage their information lifecycle effectively. Here are the key elements of ECM:
Large volumes of incoming and outgoing content can be difficult to track, and it’s no surprise that many organizations struggle to maintain a successful content management strategy.
Here are some ways ECM solutions can benefit an organization.
Both internal and external compliance regulations are getting stricter. With the amount of paperwork and documentation that most companies need to keep, it is incredibly difficult to ensure audits are accurately completed in a timely manner when using legacy business processes such as paper or manual work.
An ECM solution facilitates audits and other compliance requirements. It provides structure and security to the entire audit process, allowing teams to exercise greater control over all relevant documents. Armed with this, organizations can create efficiency within their internal processes and subsequently reduce expenses associated with manual operations.
eResearch Technology (ERT), a global provider of health outcomes research services, faced challenges in maintaining regulatory compliance due to paper-based processes and the complexities of global operations. This inefficiency increased risks associated with regulatory requirements.
To address this, ERT implemented Hyland’s Alfresco platform, which integrates with digital signature solutions and adheres to stringent regulatory standards. This ECM solution enabled ERT to centralize and secure over 40,000 documents, maintain comprehensive audit trails and ensure compliance with FDA regulations.
> Read more | View a breakdown of document retention periods and guidelines
How would your business succeed if each sales rep worked from a different price list? Or if some were using outdated contracts to finalize sales?
An ECM solution allows for document management and version control. Organizations big and small can centralize all relevant files, provide offline synchronization for remote users and ensure that everyone has access to the latest document versions.
Read more | ECM vs. DMS: Understanding the difference and which is right for you
The Royal Marsden Hospital in London, a leading global cancer destination, had a goal: Minimize paperwork in clinical administration throughout the hospital's core departments.
This shift to digitization empowered administrative staff and clinicians with a complete view of their patients from the very beginning. By eliminating paper-chasing and lost records, the hospital streamlined its patient care.
A recent Forrester Consulting study found 78% of content management leaders consider customer experience (CX) a primary objective driving their content management strategy. Unfortunately, paper processes and manual workflows can negatively impact the service provided to customers. Slow response times, lack of one “source of truth” and human-introduced errors can all add up to dissatisfied customers or clients.
An ECM can improve CX with faster turnaround times and better quality control. Additionally, it can help lower costs by freeing up staff from manual tasks and enforcing consistent business practices to ensure accountability and compliance.
Effective ECM solutions also allow for the creation of bespoke user experiences tailored to the specific needs of the organization. Unlike rigid systems that force organizations into predefined workflows and form layouts, modern ECM solutions enable customization, ensuring that user experience and satisfaction remain a priority. This flexibility allows organizations to design and implement user experiences that drive improved interactions and satisfaction for both customers and employees.
Redstone Federal Credit Union’s manual dispute resolution process was leading to delays in issuing provisional credit, a lack of communication with members and a deteriorating member experience.
Redstone introduced an ECM solution that digitized and automated its dispute process. The result: 5,100 hours of employee work per year saved and an average dispute resolution time that decreased from five days to a matter of minutes.
Effective ECM solutions ensure that the right information reaches the right person, in the right context, at the right time. By centralizing documents and making them easily searchable, ECM systems simplify access to the information employees need for quick and accurate data-driven decision-making.
Employees depend on fast, straightforward methods to find the information necessary to analyze situations and make decisions. Ubiquitous access, efficient search tools and single source to search are all critical when conducting research to make business decisions. Unfortunately, few legacy solutions address these important requirements.
Unlike legacy systems that required everything to be stored within the system’s repository, best-in-class ECM solutions expand their content management services to include other repositories within the enterprise.
These include file shares, content repositories from other ECM systems and content stored within other business systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and human resources (HR) systems. By federating results across the enterprise, no major data migration is required to create a single source of the truth.
By seamlessly integrating enterprise repositories, best-in-class systems simplify search and accelerate access to critical information. This virtual “single source of the truth,” allows customers and employees to use one search tool to find information that may be scattered across the enterprise.
The Colorado Housing and Finance Authority (CHFA) was struggling with mountains of paper — almost literally. Project files could reach 300 pages or more.
Upon implementing an ECM solution, its records management process became clearer and more efficient. This reduced the time to it took team members to retrieve project files from 12 minutes to 10 seconds or less, making its staff three times more productive.
Efficient business processes are paramount to organizational success and the stability of your bottom line. Whether you’re focused on the big picture or the day-to-day effectiveness of employees, the details of how your information moves through your organization will impact you.
Best-in-class ECM solutions intelligently assemble the right information for decision-making, enhancing employee efficiency and maximizing automation opportunities. By either streamlining employee approvals with relevant data or automating decisions using the right information, these systems improve overall productivity and effectiveness.
Additionally, integrating best-in-class ECM solutions with core applications, such as, enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and human resources (HR) systems ensures that relevant documentation supports business processes.
This seamless integration simplifies decision-making, enabling more informed and faster decisions, ultimately driving better business outcomes.
The right ECM vendor will provide intuitive, native functionality to help your organization get its work done quickly, efficiently and effectively.
The University of Northern Colorado was riddled with paper-intensive and inconsistent processes that kept staff in the dark about their contracts.
After implementing an ECM solution, the university gained visibility into every contract's lifecycle, from request to contract execution. Process automation and case management solutions paved the way for greater standardization, better compliance tracking and fewer manual errors.
> Read more | How to create a business process model
Paper documents consume time and space across an organization. Departments like human resources, accounts payable and receivable, and facilities management often experience delays, incomplete information and duplicate work when relying on paper.
Organizations that go paperless often look to ECM solutions because they improve collaboration, drive cost savings and promote better governance over data. They facilitate electronic archival access, ensuring that documents are easily retrievable and securely stored. Moreover, ECM solutions integrate seamlessly with digital processes, enabling organizations to connect and automate business functions.
By embracing digital transformation through ECM solutions, organizations can enhance efficiency, reduce costs and improve overall productivity, paving the way for an agile and responsive business environment.
The accounts payable team at Canal Barge, a marine transportation company, was overwhelmed with paperwork. It generated about 500,000 paper sheets a year and was running out of storage space.
The company introduced an ECM solution that fully digitized the automation of invoice data capture and document routing. With paper processes gone, the company was able to grow without renovating or relocating.
> Learn more | Digitize and streamline invoice approval process
Selecting the right ECM platform is crucial for optimizing your organization’s content management processes. Here are some key factors to consider:
>Read more | Accelerate modernization with enterprise content services in the cloud
Content — and an organization’s ability to use it to drive efficiency and business insights — has never been more integral to the success of an enterprise. With today’s speed of business, technology innovations like cloud computing, AI and intelligent automation will be a deciding factor in how an organization can keep up.
Hyland’s suite of enterprise content management platforms and process automation tools are an easy win for modernizing your technology strategy and innovating for a competitive future. As industry leaders, Hyland services customers across industries and across enterprises, with solutions for any department.
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