What is enterprise content management (ECM)?

Ultimately, all companies share the need for a platform on which they can store and protect information, and make it available to other employees as quickly and easily as possible. Forget working with lots of different approaches: if you want to make this process as efficient as possible, it makes sense to choose an ECM solution.

ECM systems are specially designed for company-wide use and can be deployed in virtually endless scenarios, from single departments to entire companies. By offering extensive flexibility and scalability, an ECM platform can be easily extended to include more use cases, meaning even individual departments can jump on board and use the software.

ECM covers a huge range of applications and is always adaptable to the exact requirements of specific company areas. While some functions — such as filing HR documents or managing contracts — can be restricted to defined departments, other parts of the platform remain accessible to the entire company. These include purchasing, IT, HR, management, production and development, quality management, accounting, legal, sales and more besides.

ECM systems are universally deployable solutions which are fully adaptable to the diverse requirements of an industry. While all industries need solutions for secure invoice retention, etc., others, like the financial services or insurance sectors, need to be able to, e.g. store credit cards or process applications and claims. Regardless of how files are structured or processes are run, an ECM system is customizable to unique industry requirements to ensure that all essential areas are covered.