Every business is looking for ways to increase its productivity and efficiency. But there is an easy way to ensure all these; it is with an enterprise content management system. The process is especially beneficial for those businesses that engage in manual processing and maintenance of data. As a result, it will boost the business’ profit margin and enable the company to reach its goal.
Businesses are now looking toward deploying ECM for better management and enhanced operation. It was forecasted that by 2020 the worth of ECM would be $11 billion after a growth of 16% CAGR. The reason that ECM is becoming popular among business owners is multiple.
Benefits of ECM
1. A Protected Digital Repository
All business data needs to be protected and stored in a manner that can assist you in running the enterprise smoothly. Digitizing the documents is one of the basic ways to ensure that all your documents are safe and secure in a digital library. It also warrants the minimizing of paper usage and the anarchy of managing and storing physical documents.
2. A Centralized Digital Library
Often companies maintain their records, data, and documents in multiple locations and formats, ranging from paper-based document storage to online platforms. But having multiple storage facilities can always pose a threat, like a security breach, loss of information, duplication, etc. On the other hand, a centralized digital library offered by ECM is robustly secured and makes it easier to find the documents in a single place. In addition, the process is time and cost-effective and enhances team collaboration of the enterprise.
Also read: EIM: Definition of Enterprise Information Management
3. Secured Data Warranty
Optimizing the records and data is of utmost importance for any enterprise. An effective enterprise content management system is capable of providing just that. Moreover, it also ensures protection against cyberattacks and hacking, thus keeping business secrets, confidential data, and client information safe. An ECM is also capable of staying up-to-date with IT and business compliance rules.
4. Efficient Retrieval of Documents
With ECM, you can look for any content or document that is stored in the library with the help of meta-tags, metadata, specific phrases, keywords, or creation date.
5. Automated Documentation
ECM offers you an automated document-driven process. This feature allows your employees to utilize their time efficiently since the manual tasks are done with a computerized process, thus reducing the overall running cost of the business too.
It has been recorded that after deploying the ECM system into the business processes, there is an impressive spike in the performance and engagement of the employees, which was about 18%. Thus, while the above-mentioned are some of the benefits of ECM, many businesses across various industries are using the system because of its effective nature.
ECM 2022 Trends
With more businesses deploying ECM systems, new trends are developing for 2021, and anyone who intends to integrate it into their enterprise needs to be aware of these trends.
1. Customizing ECM System
You can easily cater to your customer’s needs and goals by customizing the user interface of the ECM. This customization process allows you to streamline the functionalities, features, and workflow, thus providing enhanced solutions and services to your employees. It also allows the employees and customers to have a better experience while you can enjoy enhanced control of the system.
2. Free Flow of Data
With ECM, you can create a culture of accessing data freely by the employees that are relevant to their work. By organizing and reforming the data system with the help of ECM, it can be accessed across all levels of the enterprise by employees who have permission.
3. Updated Security
ECM system is upgraded with data encryption, warranting enhanced security for your business. Additionally, it is also up-to-date with the business compliance and regulatory requirements, thus warranting no lapse during the yearly compliance audits and no breach of security.
Also read: Top 11 Enterprise Password Management Solutions
4. AI and ML Backed System
The ECM system is now being integrated with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), so businesses can perform better. This intelligence support, however, is not limited to multinational organizations. With ECM, SMEs too can utilize the benefits of these latest technologies to streamline the workflow and business process while servicing their customers better.
5. Robotic Process Automation
One of the modern technologies that can be integrated into ECM is Robotic Process Automation. This is immensely beneficial for the monotonous, structured, rule-based business requirements, which often eat up the employees’ time. The robotic process automation can easily take care of the back-end processes with the help of the bots. This can enable employees to focus on the core issues of the business. Robotic Process Automation can also handle workflows that consist of different technologies to create a single process.
6. Improved Scalability
Scalability and flexibility are the two core components of any business’s digital transformation. ECM system is competent in providing any business with improved scalability; hence irrespective of the business’s growth, you do not have to intervene in its everyday operation.
Final Words
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is one of the fastest-growing systems which are being integrated into organizations that are eager to undergo digital transformation. The system warrants quite a lot of benefits and helps in tackling some of the vital issues like the security of data, organizing them, and tracking them efficiently.
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