Managing Enterprise Content in ECM
Managing content means managing the lifecycle of the content. All content goes through a cycle of creation, updating, storage for use, preservation in archives and disposal when the content is no more needed.
This content lifecycle is managed through Document Management, Records Management, Email Management, Web Content Management and Digital Asset Management. All involve similar functions such as categorization, storage and retrieval, but are applied in different contexts with context-relevant practices.
One thing should be made clear at the beginning itself. The manage function depends for success on clear formulation and implementation of strategies, policies and practices that serve to achieve the business goals. Without such advance planning, the technologies and tools are more likely to lead to a chaotic mess.
Implementation involves communicating the plans to those concerned, supporting them through training, guidelines, rules and procedures, and finally monitoring that the work is performed to achieve intended objectives.
Document Management
Document management seeks to streamline the practices relating to such document-related tasks as creating a document, updating or deleting it if needed, getting the documents approved by authorized persons and making them available to users.
Library services, search facilities, check-out and check-in, version control and security related issues such as access control come under the ambit of document management.
Records Management
Some of the content have to be preserved for longer terms to meet business purposes and/or statutory requirements. In these cases, documents are formally declared as records that are subject to clearly specified retention and removal schedules.
The records management function implements these schedules and also facilitates e-discovery of evidence in litigation.
Email Management
With the increasing use of emails for business communications, it has become necessary to have clear policies regarding their preservation and removal. All emails do not need to be sent to the content repository; but those emails that can be used as evidence of business transactions or other business purposes must be preserved as long as needed.
Staff must be trained in classifying, saving and disposing emails so that these actions take place in the usual course of business.
Web Content Management
Web presence has become highly important for enterprise scale (and smaller) businesses and there is a need to facilitate content publishing (even by non-technical persons) on the one hand and to control the kind of content that gets published on the other hand.
Web content management provides tools for authoring, layout, review and publishing.
Digital Assets Management
By digital assets, we mean rich content like audio, video and photographs. These kinds of content are invaluable in such areas as marketing and training and must be managed as carefully as regular documents.
DAM provides tools for storing, finding and using these digital assets, which might have high intellectual property value.
Many different kinds of documents and content are generated in the course of an enterprise’s business, and tools and technologies must be used appropriately to manage these in a context-relevant manner. Practices such as document management, records management, email management, web content management and digital assets management have emerged in response to this need.