Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is about a company's data. In today's tech savvy industry, documents generated by the hundreds every second, not to mention the plethora of legacy paper documents that have to be stored for the next seven to ten years. The issue is that there is a great deal of business intelligence in those documents that are scattered around a company and that can mean real money lost or gained. Indeed in today's business with ISO-9000, Sarbanes-Oxley, and HIPPA (to name a few of the regulations and standards) content management takes on a whole new meaning.

What is ECM?

According to the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) Enterprise Content Management (ECM) encompasses the technologies used to Capture, Manage, Store, Preserve, and Deliver content and documents related to organizational processes. ECM tools and strategies allow the management of an organization's unstructured information wherever the information exists.

Who are some of the technology providers of ECM?

When you look at the ECM market, there are some large names from a variety of vertical markets associated with the technologies. Companies like Xerox, Oracle, IBM, EMC, Pitney Bowes, and Microsoft to name just a few. According to Gartner, the largest ECM providers in 2007 were Open Text Corporation, EMC/Documentum, IBM, and Oracle.

Where is ECM headed?

Having the content is good but there is better. The content is just data until it can be turned into information for running the business, known as Business Intelligence (BI). When you combine ECM and BI you get Enterprise Information Management (EIM). Companies with an Enterprise perspective are taking a growing interest in EIM.

As one looks at the market place they can not help but notice how Microsoft has entered the market and started commoditizing ECM with their SharePoint product. SharePoint works well as an ECM product and with the additional Performance Point product, the BI is added to the ECM capability of SharePoint; making it a viable EIM product. Indeed according to Gartner, Microsoft's entry into the ECM industry has started a transformation of the industry.

An additional benefit of ECM is the "Green Movement". By using a good ECM system, any business can make a significant step towards going paperless. That can be a significant savings and is a worthwhile effort in and of itself. Additionally, companies that have a number of locations will find an additional benefit of an ECM due to the collaboration capability.