Enterprise content management
ECM is distinguished from general content management by its cognizance of the processes and procedures of the enterprise for which it is created.
It manages the life cycle of information, from initial publication (or creation) through archival and eventual disposal.
It is delivered in four ways: Benefits to an organization include improved efficiency, better control, and reduced costs.
Information about how (and when) people use the content can allow the system to acquire new filtering, routing and search pathways, corporate taxonomies and semantic networks, and retention-rule decisions.
Solutions can provide intranet services to employees (B2E), and can include enterprise portals for business-to-business (B2B), business-to-government (B2G), government-to-business (G2B), or other business relationships.
This category includes most former document-management groupware and workflow solutions that had not, by 2016, fully converted their architecture to ECM but provided a web interface.
The technologies which encompassed ECM in 2016 descend from the electronic Document Management Systems (DMS) of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
A typical early DMS user had a small-scale imaging and workflow system (perhaps one department) to improve a paper-intensive process and work towards a paperless office.
Word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software were standalone products until the early 1990s, when the market shifted toward integration.
Early developers offered multiple stand-alone DMS technologies as a single, packaged "suite", with little (or no) functional integration.
Government standards, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), BS 7799 and ISO/IEC 27001, influence the development and use of ECM.
ECM streamlines access to records with keyword and full-text searching, allowing employees to quickly obtain needed information from their desktops.
ECM facilitates organizational efficiency through the following capabilities: The management systems can help businesses comply with government and industry regulations such as HIPAA, the Sarbanes–Oxley Act, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
ECM is a multi-layer model which includes technology for handling, delivering, and managing structured data and unstructured information.
Automatic or semi-automatic capture can use electronic data interchange (EDI) or XML documents, business and ERP applications, or specialized-application systems as sources.
Data aggregation unifies documents from different applications and sources, forwarding them to storage and processing systems in a uniform structure and format.
Many of these components were developed from collaborative-software packages; ECM collaborative systems include elements of knowledge management.
They use information databases and processing methods which are designed to be used simultaneously by a number of users on the same content item.
Administration components (such as virtual whiteboards for brainstorming, appointment scheduling, and project management systems) and communications applications such as video conferencing may be included.
Workflow management includes: According to the AIIM, BPM is a way of looking at (and controlling) organizational processes.
Typically accomplished by ECM records management, it may be designed to help companies comply with government and industry regulations.
Preserve components have special viewers, conversion and migration tools, and long-term storage media: To ensure the long term availability of information, several strategies are used for electronic archiving.
Applications, index data, metadata and objects may be continuously migrated from older systems to newer ones.
Documentum purchased Bulldog for its digital asset management (DAM) capabilities; Interwoven and OpenText countered with acquisitions of MediaBin and Artesia.
In March 2009, Autonomy purchased Interwoven; OpenText acquired Vignette in July of that year and MetaStorm in February 2011.
[10] In April 2007, CMS Watch principal Alan Pelz-Sharpe said: "Some of the biggest names in this business are undergoing substantial transformation that will lead to shifting road maps and product sets over the next few years".
[12] Gartner estimated in 2010 that the ECM market was worth approximately $3.5 billion in 2009; this was expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 10.1 percent through 2014.
[13] In 2014, Real Story Group (formerly CMS Watch) added cloud-based vendors to its 2014 ECM evaluations.
