TOP ENTERPRISE CONTENT MANAGEMENT BENEFITS AND ITS BEST PRACTICES
For decades, offices have accumulated huge file cabinets and storage rooms filled with boxes of paper documentation. Everything from employee forms to data reports is printed, labeled, and then remembered. Nowadays, enterprise content management systems are crucial for maintaining an organized filing system. Software programs in the Enterprise Content Management Workflow help your company gain greater control over the files, forms, and other documents that your business uses daily. If your company has not yet switched to such a system, this is a good time to find out the benefits to your organization.
What is Enterprise Content Management Systems?
The Enterprise Content Management System is a software program that helps your company to effectively index, store, and retrieves the vast business documents that are evolving from your business’s day-to-day operations. With the right enterprise content management system, your company can reduce costs, improve service with quick recovery times, increase productivity and meet regulatory requirements.
Moving towards an enterprise content management system will help you manage and maintain the vast amount of digital documents created in the workplace daily. These systems are designed to handle this challenge for your business and to create a well-organized digital filing system.
Enterprise Content Management Benefits
Below you will learn about the four biggest benefits that an enterprise content management system can bring to your business. Following these benefits, I have included four best enterprise content management practices that you can apply to set your efforts for success.
# 1: Central Hub
How does your company store documents right now? Even if you make a complete transition to digital documentation or operate a hybrid system with hard copy and digital files, you may not have a central hub for all your files. In many cases, each division of the business (marketing, sales, human resources, etc.) maintains its filing cabinets to store documents and files used during day-to-day operations.
The digital environment is also subject to decentralization. With the adoption of the Enterprise Content Management Software Program, your company can centralize all its documents in one place. The system sets up a central hub where all digital files are stored. No matter what department the employee works in, they know where to go to find any file.
The central hub establishes a clear destination for document storage. It also implements better control measures. When each department stores its files in its way, it creates confusion and allows you to create and store multiple versions of the same file. With enterprise content management, more control over document versions will be created to reduce later confusion.
# 2: Easy access
When each department controls its files and sets up its protocols for file creation, sharing, and storage, it can be difficult for employees in other departments to find the documents they need. Enterprise Content Management allows employees to easily access the files they are looking for when they want to.
Because that central hub is more precisely controlled, your employees will not only find the document they need faster but also find the right file for the first time. Ease of access allows employees to complete their jobs accurately without having to search for the correct version of the document.
# 3: Flexibility
It is not easy for any company to adopt a corporate-wide system for managing files, controlling file versions, and providing secure access. Some sections of your business may have different enterprise content management requirements. Depending on your industry, a feature such as a file security may be required.
Enterprise content management software provides the flexibility to meet the various operational needs of your company. Files used by multiple employees in different departments are easy to find and accessible to all, but protocols can be set up to restrict access to other sensitive file types.
# 4: Document Security Systems
Every business has files and documents that are not available to everyone in the company. For example, authorized employees should not have access to payroll documents or other employees’ personal information. The Enterprise Content Management Workflow allows you to set up better security systems that control your company’s access.
Digital file folders can be controlled with secure access codes, which limit the number of people who can view, share, download, and modify files on the network. For example, the company can control financial forms in digital folders, which severely restrict access to top management and directors. Security systems protect your files from inappropriate use internally and from illegal access externally. Best of all, your IT department can set the security protocols of your choice for the enterprise content management system.
Enterprise Content Management Best Practices
To reap the benefits of an enterprise content management system, it is important to implement certain processes. The following enterprise content management best practices will enable businesses to successfully select, implement, and utilize their enterprise content management systems.
# 1: Reliable nomenclature
Even the best file organization strategy may not work if different naming methods are used in each folder sector. Employees must have and follow naming guidelines so that staff cannot create their file names independently; If this is not done, finding the files will be challenging, at best.
The naming meeting can take many forms. For example: department_type-off-file_name_date. If you work in the accounting department, it can be translated into accounting_W4_John-Smith_1–2–21. However, for this naming meeting to be effective, everyone else in your team must follow a strict formula.
Enterprise Content Management Software provides a template with pre-defined document names that employees can effectively use to consistently name documents. Even if pre-defined vocabulary is added, your company can customize the naming scheme to suit your traditions and even include date stamps, making timeline file searches possible.
# 2: Proper user access and permission
The amount of confidential data that companies collect and store is constantly growing; Examples of confidential data range from client financial information to HR records. It is not important to restrict access to these types of documents, it is wise.
Enterprise Content Management Software provides a solution in the form of user access and permission controls that define document access restrictions. Role-based security allows your IT department to create user groups with pre-set access rights. This ensures that entry-level HR employees are in a different access group than the HR manager and that documentation in other branches is irrelevant to their role.
# 3: Retention policy
If you audit all the paperwork in your company tomorrow, how long do you think it is worth holding on to?
Enterprise content management systems can easily alleviate this headache. Compliance behind the implementation of a document retention policy is an important component as each industry has different rules for document retention. Enterprise Content Management Software Documentation allows you to formulate policies for optimal retention.
It involves administrators setting up a specific digital file cabinet for retention and imposing restrictions on deletion and modification until the maturity date. In addition to specifying who can perform these actions, administrators can also change options on files, including those that purge, archive, and copy documents.
# 4: The metadata strategy replaces the folder structure
Finally, there is concern about the role of metadata in the enterprise content management system. With folders, you need to remember where you put your documents. Metadata makes documents much easier to find because they store data (not were) based, replacing this old school organization method.
Folders You also need to store documents in multiple locations. For example, the purchase agreement should be in the Customer folder for Accounting and also in the Project folder. What happens when the purchase agreement changes? You will need to update the document in two places. If one is missing, you will have two documents with conflicting information. You cannot be defined by a single point of truth.
With the metadata, you tag the document with the customer name and project number. When you access data from a customer perspective, it shows the purchase agreement. When you access data from a project perspective, it shows the same purchase agreement. Just in a different sense. The document is stored only once in the system. This reduces the amount of storage required, provides a single point of truth, and allows you to control the document life cycle.
In summary, metadata has three potential roles in enterprise content management: search, presentation, and organization. Metadata helps companies as described above, but it does no good if your tagging system is not maintained and the data is not properly tagged.
Comprehending metadata best methods will enable your business to search faster through documentation and organize the presentation of documents based on this metadata.
The only system that works for your business
Enterprise content management systems are highly customizable. At the end of the day, what works best for your company can best meet your needs. By comprehending these best techniques, your company can reap the benefits of enterprise content management software at any time. Request a free consultation with an enterprise content management specialist to begin defining your needs.
