ECM - Enterprise Content Management
Enterprise Content Management, or ECM for short, refers to the enterprise-wide, unified and integrated capture, distribution, as well as administration of information important to the enterprise.
Brief description
As Content Management in the narrow sense means system-supported IT administration of content (databases, archives, etc.). ECM deals with the appropriately enterprise-wide modeling, capture, administration, separation and composition of electronic content and paper documents to support organizational processes. The concept of management here also includes activities such as sharing, version administration and digital document signature. In practice, in-house ECM software is often available here, for example document management, Workflows or commercial process management.
ECM aims to reduce the excess of data and documents so that each piece of information is in the company only once. Further, access to data should be regulated uniformly so that each employee receives only the information he or she needs. Looking from an enterprise-wide angle, ECM can bring cost reductions by reducing the effort in data entry. Also, the quality of existing data can increase as content-sustainable, electronic documents are linked and reproduced everywhere.