What is Enterprise Content Management and Why Does Your Organisation Need to Know?
If your organisation continuously looks for more and better ways to be efficient, adoption of an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system can bring you real benefits in a relatively short space of time. It can also have positive effects on staff, making tasks more manageable and freeing up time. So, what exactly is ECM and how does it help businesses and organisations? ECM is a streamlined system which structures and organises documents for you. From digitisation to storage and categorisation to document retrieval, ECM manages your information and makes administrating your content simpler and smarter for staff or user. There are lots of reasons to implement an ECM system in your organisation; here are just a few:
Work Smarter. Save Time
One of the driving forces in any business or modern organisation is the need for efficiency. ECM saves time and delivers smarter work solutions. If, up to now, you’ve been organising your documents, content and ways of accessing information on a more ad hoc basis, it is probably costing you time and efficiencies. Many organisations spend valuable hours searching for and retrieving information.
Estimates vary on how much time people spend looking for documents at work, ranging from hours to days per week. If this sounds familiar, it’s time to reassess how your organisation’s work or information is managed. With an effective enterprise content management system you bring all the processes together. You can digitise, store, manage and retrieve any information you need, swiftly and efficiently.
Access Information at Ease
One of the key components of ECM is the digitisation of work and subsequent ease of accessing your content. Bringing all existing documents under a digital repository makes them easier to access and manage. Scanning paper documents and creating digital versions, categorised and coded, means that they are simple to find and refer to. ECM also enables you to capture information digitally where you haven’t before. Older documents can be collated into a digital archive, cutting time spent going through filing cabinets or document stores. Forms, invoices, contracts and records all can be created in digital form, where they can be viewed or added to, with an easy to use ECM.
With a good ECM process in place, you can access documents no matter where you are, from multiple devices. You can search documents by identifiers such as keywords, dates or categories, regardless of your location or access to company PCs.
Make Work Meaningful
One of the big bonuses with a higher grade ECM is the value it brings to staff or members of a business or organisation. Manual tasks like endless photocopying or searching for physical files are dramatically reduced in favour of less frustrating automated processes. Automation means that documents can be routed to the right person, when they need it. It can alert users to possible errors, helping reduce stress and giving people ownership of tasks. Staff can undertake more meaningful work in place of cumbersome office tasks, tackling endless towers of paper or physical filing. Freeing up time for staff to work on other projects, can help make your staff happier, too.
Increased Security and Reduced IT Risk
A good ECM system not only provides you with a new way of working in a digital space, it also can provide you with optimised security. Risk can arise both internally and externally to an organisation. ECM can provide protection against unauthorised access to information and it can enable people to manage who can edit or control documents. ECM with a keen eye on hacking risks, can also help protect from external IT threats.
There are many reasons your organisation should be thinking about Enterprise Content Management, from the efficiencies and savings to the protection of valuable data and confidential information. Using a valued ECM system can enhance the work day of staff and eradicate avoidable tasks which don’t bring any business or institutional value to the organisation. If you’re not thinking about ECM, now is a good time to start.
About Bizquip
Our team at Bizquip provides vital workplace solutions from furniture and interiors work to office technology, print management and supplies. Our Solutions team work with businesses and organisations in the areas of digital transformation, workflow and process automation, to assist them in achieving their strategic objectives.
If you are thinking about digital transformation for your organisation, you can contact us via our website, email or by phone on (01) 217 8000 and one of our digital experts will be happy to chat to you about your project.