ECM Software for Enterprise Content Management
At university I had a professor who used to say: “An IT person’s job consists of taking simple things, giving them complicated names and selling them at a higher price.” Today it is time to put that phrase into practice and explain, in plain terms, what ECM Software is — but without raising the price! Let’s get to it.
What is ECM Software?
ECM Software (Enterprise Content Management), or Enterprise Content Manager, is:
A tool designed to organise content and automate a company’s corporate processes.
ECMs are an evolution of traditional Document Management Systems. The leap happened when their features merged with those of another type of tool known as BPM (Business Process Management) and they became able to control not only documents but business processes as well.
The term was first used in 2002, in a report published by the American consultancy Gartner. ECM Software therefore belongs to the family of Document Management Systems, or Document Management Systems.
10 things it can do for you
Now that you know what the letters ECM stand for, it is time to look at what features this type of software has.
1. Organise all your processes
Organisation is the key to success, and an ECM Software is your best ally for it. With it you can keep tasks ordered according to your preferences (type, importance, etc.) and let the people you choose have access to them. If, for example, you need the human resources department to have access to employee holidays and the sales team to have access to quotes, you can set up specific workspaces for each of them.
2. Keep the files relating to a process together and share them with people inside or outside the company
Yes, organising things into folders is very convenient, but with an ECM Software you can go further. You can link files and information to specific tasks, create web forms that you can send to both internal and external people to collect information, and so on. You can also create download links, in the style of tools like WeTransfer or HighTail, but keeping control, which makes GDPR compliance easier.
3. Create a “record sheet” with the most important fields of each process
Choose all the fields (metadata) you need (customer name, department, etc.) and build your own custom record sheets. That way you will have all the information in one place, with no risk of losing it, and you will be able to edit or change it as many times as you need, just as you do with a contact on your phone. The system also keeps a database of those record sheets.
4. Search Google-style by any of the fields in that record sheet
Getting to the information you need is very simple with an ECM Software. If you cannot remember the file name, it is not a problem: just enter one of the fields and the tool will show you the results in seconds. If, for example, you are looking for “Accepted quote Contoso 2023”, you will get every accepted quote for that customer during that year. On top of that, you can export them to Excel in a single click. Searching for information has never been so easy.
5. Let the people responsible for the same process collaborate better than by email
This works much like a social network. Basically, just as you comment on a post on LinkedIn or Instagram, with an ECM Software you can create comments and alerts on a task for other users to read on their phone or in the tool itself. They will also receive an email or a new notification alert. For example, Julián González has left you a message on document X or process Y.
6. Define the steps of a process with all its variants using a simple diagram
This is known as Workflow Management, Process Management or simply Workflow. To explain how it works in simple terms, we usually use this analogy: if a friend asks you in a bar how you work and you have a napkin and a pen to hand, you sketch out the steps your team follows, what happens when things move forward and the possible options.
Well, an ECM Software lets you create that drawing and, more importantly, it makes sure the steps you drew are followed automatically. In other words, when you are working with the tool creating quotes, for instance, if the first step is “Quote being drafted”, you create the quote in Word. When you are done you press a button or drag its record sheet, and the program changes the state of that task and sets it to “Quote ready for review”.
7. Notify each member of the team when their turn comes round in the process
Continuing with the previous example, once you have finished creating the quote document and you change its state (that is, you move to the next step of the process), the ECM Software steps in again and automatically sends an email or a message to the people you choose, or to those involved in reviewing or approving that document. That way you will not have to send an email with attachments by hand every time something changes: the tool does it automatically for you.
8. Standardise the documentation and emails used in the process through templates
Forget about copying and pasting information from other documents and editing it to create your contracts, quotes and so on. With an ECM Software it is simpler: you upload a Word template and write tags that get filled in automatically with the values held in your record sheet. That way, at the press of a button, your documents are generated automatically.
Using this same mechanism you can also create email templates, saving time and giving your communications a more professional, consistent and polished look.
9. Schedule and automate (without being an IT person) the repetitive actions of a task that a computer can do for you
This is one of the biggest advantages of having an ECM Software. Let’s look at some of the automations it can carry out:
- Convert the quote document to PDF and sign it digitally before sending it.
- Keep version control of each document.
- Remind the salesperson to update the status of a quote when it has been in state X for more than 7 days.
- Move the quote to “Rejected” if it has spent 30 days in the “Sent to customer” state.
- Send the accounts department the details of every accepted quote on the 1st of each month.
- Send the customer an email saying we have received their payment.
10. Make sure only the people in charge of each step of the process can see all of the above and perform the relevant actions
One of the most common risks of working manually is that information can be deleted by mistake, or left somewhere accessible to unauthorised people. When that happens, the chances of making mistakes — changing the state of a document or downloading information you should not — multiply by ten. With an ECM Software you can manage user permissions and create workspaces, so that people only have access to the information they need.
It will also keep a record of every access, upload, download, message or state change that users perform, letting you trace what has been done in the event of an incident or whenever you need to. This is called “traceability”.
Now that you know the theory, it is time to implement your Document Management System (or ECM Software).