An enterprise content management primer: ECM is increasingly important in helping organizations manage and control content according to their business goals and legal needs.

• Author: Blair, Barclay T.
• Position: Business Matters

At the Core

This article

* defines enterprise content management (ECM)

* discusses uses of ECM within the business world

* examines how ECM relates to information management and IT

Business has long sought technologies designed to make operations run better, faster, and cheaper. As business has entered the Information Age, these technologies have increasingly focused on better ways to manage information. Nearly 60 years ago, Dr. Vannevar Bush, one of the fathers of modern computing, proposed the "memex" device as a solution to what was then considered the "massive task of making more accessible our bewildering store of knowledge" Today, industry estimates say the volume of business e-mail is growing at a rate of 300 percent each year, and 800 megabytes (MB) of new information is created for every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth. The "massive task" of 1945 has not gotten any easier.

From the largest customer relationship management installation at global corporations with thousands of employees, to the tiny mobile device used by a one-person contractor, proliferating software applications and hardware devices output information that must be managed. New technologies emerge to facilitate managing such output: the e-mail, instant messages, electronic forms, spreadsheets, digital images, compressed log files, and more.

But growing volume is really only a symptom of the core issue. Namely, organizations need to take control of their digital information assets. This need today is driven by two fundamentals. First, organizations need to comply with laws, regulations, and other directives regarding the care and handling of information, particularly in the post-Sarbanes-Oxley world where information mismanagement is under heightened scrutiny from the courts, regulators, customers, and the public at large. Second, organizations need to make digital information assets accessible and useable to the business in a way that improves efficiency and contributes strategically. Dozens--if not hundreds--of software and hardware products and services have been developed over the years to assist organizations with the problem of managing the output of dozens--if not hundreds--of systems that create digital content, Until recently, there was no dear way to characterize the diverse products--everything from high-output scanners to e-mail management systems--as a group of technologies with the same purpose: the enterprise-wide management of...