Enterprise content management (ECM) is the processes your organization takes with your documents and process materials to store, organize, and maintain. This is knowledge management for your digital information.

The complexity of ECM is based on the universal nature of the solution as it often includes the processes themselves such as the specific methods and content creation tools used during the lifecycle of the content. The basic features of ECM include tools to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver.

The methods and trends for ECM are beginning to require more sharing features and mobile access as key characteristics. We see this in places like government records management and healthcare data entry. What needs to be included is more standardization of information transfer and communication between systems.

For ECM strategy the real work is promoting collaboration between the content owners - the brain trust of processes between departments as well as related organizations (such as suppliers or channel partners). Most communications between these levels are content-centric. This could be a standard phone call one employee makes to another or manual (print and walk) transfer of information that is excluded from a process diagram. Involving these content owners into the strategy and development process means a more business-ready final solution.

As you can see, this is a big topic. We will cover ECM in sections over the coming weeks, broken down by the key features:

Capture

Manage

Store

Preserve

Deliver

Each features requires discussion of the assets themselves, the people that interact with that content, and the processes that create or need that information.