An Introduction to Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

Technology makes it easy for businesses to generate many different types of content. When this content isn’t managed effectively, teams struggle to find the information they need to complete tasks.

Enterprise content management (ECM) is designed to prevent that.

In this article, you’ll learn how enterprise content management systems and strategies can help you organize information to increase productivity, cut costs, and reduce operational risk.

What Is Enterprise Content Management?

Enterprise content management, or ECM, describes a large organization’s process of managing its internal and external content (e.g., training materials, contracts, project documents, etc.).

Effective ECM allows a business to securely and efficiently find and store important information. This might be information for:

• Employees
• Customers
• Stakeholders (e.g., investors and suppliers)

Large companies must develop robust, repeatable content management processes. Doing so keeps information organized and findable, which can increase productivity.

Proper document organization is particularly critical for compliance, resilience, and security.

ECM doesn’t refer to a single technology or action, but there is such a thing as an ECM system.

This is software that streamlines and secures the flow of content across an organization. More on these tools later.

Which Content Does ECM Cover?

In ECM, “content” could take many formats. Traditional ECM strategies focus on housing paper documents like invoices,...