How Do You Manage the Unmanageable?

Documents—whether paper or digital—constitute the fastest growing component of most organizations’ information assets. US businesses create more new electronic content each year than all the materials currently contained in the Library of Congress.

If you realize the importance of managing those assets better, on-demand may be a more effective and lower cost alternative to installed software. But is it right for you?

The paradox is that while you want more control, you don’t want to impede the flow of good information to those who need access to it. How do you accomplish both? How do you manage the explosion in content and resolve all of its associated problems?

The Problems that Plague You

Outdated information: You want your field organization and customers to have the latest and most relevant product and pricing information. Because there is no immediate way to share updated material, field representatives use old information because it’s the information that’s available. As a result, inaccurate pricing and product information goes to the customer. Your organization loses valuable time and business revenue.

Blind spots: You are still using paper processes in some parts of your company, and these paper processes lead to “information black holes”—documents and other content that are hard to discover, retrieve and manage.

Lack of access: Your goal is to have geographically dispersed employees, remote workers, distributors and clients collaborating on projects, contributing information and reviewing that which is created among team members. Projects include: preparing proposals, sharing competitive information, resolving billing disputes, repurposing marketing materials and much more.

Relying on specialized remote access software (e.g. VPN), however, that is not usable on every company’s network may mean someone is out of the loop. Your goal is at risk of being realized.

Wasted time: You send a document by email for several people to review; each edits the document resulting in several uncoordinated yet edited versions. Your company spends time you don’t have to reconcile the pieces.

Technology roadblocks: You send out an email only to have it rejected by the receiving party’s system as being too large. The data is critical, but cannot be delivered either because the message itself is too large or the user’s inbox is full (of other large emails and attachments?). Your project is delayed and time spent working around this limitation is a drag on productivity and a distraction from higher-value tasks.

Enterprise Content Management Defined

While there is no single definition of ECM, most experts agree that ECM brings together many of the technologies listed below. While some vendors still provide technology to support a single function, many vendors are bundling multiple capabilities to address a variety of needs:

Capture and imaging: These systems convert and store physical paper documents and forms into electronic versions. Optical character recognition (OCR) converts the document to text and/ or XML and extracts data and makes these scanned documents readable and searchable by a document management system. As a result, files, or segments of files, are re-usable in other applications.

Document management (DM): Document management usually consists of a centralized repository in which electronic documents are stored. Revisions to these documents may be carefully controlled through a versioning process (check in/check out). Relevant content in a document management system is searchable using an embedded search engine. Variations in system implementation can make a large difference in the ability to retrieve content and assign security controls indicating who is able to view and edit each document. Add-on features, such as digital signatures, can accompany document management solutions.

Collaboration and workflow: Team collaboration capabilities allow geographically dispersed members to manage group calendars, coordinate document reviews, conduct online discussions or capture comments. Workflow processes for document routing and forms approval can reduce information bottlenecks by automating structured processes.

Records management: Governs the archiving and destruction of content according to corporate policies. Electronic documents and emails are treated as records that are subject to the same retention policies as physical, paper documents.

Email management: Allows email messages to be managed alongside other electronic documents. Eliminates searching for important content that lives in two places, the document management system and the email system, by having emails centrally stored in context with the content or project to which they pertain.

Digital asset management (DAM): Document management features, including check in/check out functionality for managing rich media such as sound, image and video files. Collaboration tools specific to DAM and digital rights management, for images and proprietary content, are often included in these solutions.

Web content management: Manages the creation and deployment of content for Web sites, intranets and extranets that may start off as documents in a document management system or as images in a digital asset management system. Implements version control and security on Web pages, like document management, and utilizes workflow for approving content and deploying the website.

Demand for access and control: The larger your organization, the more dispersed the participants in your information chain. When critical business information changes frequently, the more pressing the need is to distribute that information to the right people, wherever they are, immediately. On one hand, the demand for access to content has never been greater. The increase in mobile, outsourced or distributed workforces means that access to information is required in more places at once—places often not protected by a corporate firewall. Your employees, partners and customers expect to be able to access relevant and accurate information when they need it. On the other hand, today’s environment of increased compliance and regulatory scrutiny means tracking content throughout its lifecycle from creation through use, and finally through retention and controlled destruction, is becoming a business imperative.

The Enterprise Content Management Landscape

ECM addresses competing issues. Proven ECM technologies enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of information flow in your business—getting the right information to the right people when and where they need it—without compromising the privacy and security of your information assets.