Prosource | Business Technology Blog

5 Benefits of Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

Written by Danielle Hoverman | 2/3/16 8:59 PM

Have you ever wondered how much time you could save by managing your business documents electronically? How much storage space you could save in your business by digitizing documents? How much easier getting your work done would be if you could access the documents you needed offline – from home or on the road?

Integrating enterprise content management (ECM) into your business can play a critical role in providing your customers with more efficient and effective service. So what exactly is ECM? ECM is the technology, strategy, and method used to capture, manage, access, integrate, measure, and store information related to business operations.

On average, professionals spend 18 minutes trying to locate a document they need, resulting in $14,000 worth of lost productivity per worker every year. Here are the top five benefits of digitizing documents with ECM.

1.   Access

Accessing your content easily, from anywhere, is achievable with enterprise content management. Whether you’re on the road using your mobile device or at home working offline, retrieving the digital documents that you need to get the job done where ever you are is possible with ECM.

2.   Collaboration

Working with teams in different locations, whether they are in the same office as you or in a different time zone, is possible with ECM software and systems. With ECM, manual collaboration of documents is eliminated and physical collaboration of teams can be eliminated if desired. Improvements in the efficiency of how individuals electronically communicate and work together due to electronic documents, in turn, improves organizational productivity.

3.   Reduce

With ECM in place, businesses can benefit from return on investment (ROI) opportunities that are not possible with manual document processing and handling. The amount of time, money, and paper utilized in hard copy document management reduce as automated systems are put in place and accurately used. As a result of ECM, businesses will benefit from a decreased paper trail, reducing printing costs company-wide.

4.   Retrieval 

Retrieving hard copy documents can be time-consuming, taking minutes, hours, or even days to locate the relevant documents you need to do your job. ECM allows you to retrieve all of your documents instantly and in one secure system.

5.   Store

Having a centralized location to store electronic documents reduces the need for physical filing cabinets within the office. Documents are securely stored and protected with ECM, allowing you to control access to content based on the user profile. Access to sensitive documents can be restricted to a limited number of users, regardless of the total number of users actively working within the system, ensuring that the right people have the right access to the documents they need.

By replacing manual document management with ECM, your business will be able to take advantage of the benefits of an automated information workflow that will improve accuracy and efficiency of processing documents while not compromising the security of sensitive information.