Enterprise content management is a system for managing your organization's digital and physical documents. US businesses alone spend about $25 to $35 billion a year filing, retrieving, and storing paper. An ECM system promotes a paperless environment and lets you get back to value-added tasks for your business.
Keep reading to discover the top features to look for in an enterprise content management system.
Intuitive Administrative Design
An enterprise content management system gathers your unstructured information, such as documents, invoices, pdfs, etc and stores them in a secure digital location. These documents can be scanned manually, created in-app, or uploaded and made available for anyone with access permission. Having an intuitive design reduces the headache that goes with learning new software. It will also provide customizable analytics for your business workflow.
In 2019, more than 4 billion records were exposed in data breaches. Look for a system with security as a top priority to keep your and your customers' information safe. Your documents should be easily searchable using a variety of tags or keywords with customizable levels of access.
Automation
Today's workers spend an equivalent of 69 days in hours of repetitive office work. This is time spent sending, receiving, searching for, or completing forms. With ECM software, repetitive tasks involving documentation are handled by the technology. Documents are auto-filled and flagged when a mistake is made or some else's approval is needed. This decreases the time lost to administrative mistakes and repurposes it for revenue-generating activities.
ECM software also allows you to track projects through various stages of completion. This helps business managers to identify workflow bottlenecks and gauge overall productivity for individual employees.
Integration
Businesses lose about 20 to 30 percent in annual revenue due to inefficient processes. An efficient system will have cloud accessibility so you can run your business from anywhere on any device. Any enterprise content management system you choose should be easily integrated with your current applications. A lack of integration means you have to open and close more apps, copy and paste, or restart the entire process, leaving yourself open to frivolous distractions.
When your ECM software is integrated seamlessly into your document, accounting, social, and email software you save time and money for your organization.
Enterprise content management eliminates the need for excess paperwork and storage space dedicated to manual filing systems. The best software automates your workflow, eliminating repetitive steps, and gives you and your employees the freedom to work from anywhere. Find an ECM system that integrates seamlessly into your business and promotes a more efficient environment.