You’ve probably noticed how sleek and digitized most customer-facing portals have become in the last decade. But peek behind the curtain, and you may still find critical organizational processes relying on outdated systems. 

These old-school tools might get the job done, but they lack the integration capabilities you’d find in modern solutions. You need to bring your enterprise data into the 21st century—make it accessible, manageable and usable.

In short, it’s time to embrace modern enterprise content management to ensure information flows smoothly and collaboration feels natural to everyone involved. (For more on content management, check out the Wix Studio CMS and read more about CMS in web design.)

What is enterprise content management (ECM)?

Enterprise content management, or ECM, is all about how a company handles its information, from the moment it's created to when it's no longer needed. It’s not just a digital warehouse for storing documents. 

ECM involves strategies, techniques and tools that help businesses store, organize and share content across the entire organization. Essentially, it covers the entire journey of content within a company, ensuring that the right people have access to the right information at the right time, and that it's properly managed and preserved throughout its lifecycle.

A brief history of enterprise content management

You can track enterprise content management back to the era of physical file cabinets—those towering metal frames organized by topic, date or department. You might still spot these relics in some government offices today, standing as monuments to a bygone era of information storage.

As computers became common in offices, organizations began digitizing their paper documents, which necessitated electronic filing systems. However, old habits persisted, and companies often mirrored their existing categorization methods in these new digital systems.

While this category-based data storage helped businesses retain their information, it inadvertently led to a new problem: data silos. These isolated pockets of information couldn't easily be integrated with business applications, limiting their usefulness.

Enter modern enterprise content management systems, the solution to these digital growing pains. These new systems emerged to break down silos, facilitate data usage across the organization, enable seamless business integration and provide mobile accessibility.

What types of businesses use enterprise content management

A large variety of businesses use enterprise content management. Regulated entities like government agencies, healthcare providers and financial institutions benefit from ECM by storing historical data, keeping detailed records and separating different types of content.

On the other hand, data-intensive enterprises—such as manufacturing businesses, legal firms and large corporations—rely on ECM to deal with massive volumes of documents, case files and technical reports. 

What makes enterprise content management different?

Unlike simple file storage systems, enterprise content management offers:

• Integration with other business solutions

• Solid compliance

• Enterprise-level scalability

• Collaborative features

• Unified content across platforms

• Streamlined multi-site management

What’s an example of ECM?

Knowledge bases are great examples of enterprise content management in action. Instead of static instructional manuals that become irrelevant over time, enterprises can develop a knowledge base to capture, organize and deliver updated content across the organization and to customers. 

The benefits of ECM

An enterprise content management solution is more than just a document management system. Instead, it streamlines business processes by offering integration with popular apps, smoother compliance via record management and upgraded user experiences through data accessibility.

Improved efficiency

An ECM significantly improves workflows by automating routine tasks and simplifying document retrieval. Rather than rummaging through digital file cabinets, employees can focus on value-added tasks. 

Additionally, by centralizing information and its access, ECM eliminates redundant efforts in document management. Managers can rely on existing process documentation instead of creating new standard operating procedure (SOP) documents from scratch every time they need them. 

Beyond that, centralized content management ensures updates in one place reflect across all platforms, saving time and maintaining consistency. 

As a result, an ECM system serves as a great reference to supplement your onboarding roadmap since it acts as a centralized repository for all the information new employees need.  

Enhanced communication

ECM turns your organization into a well-oiled communication machine. It provides every stakeholder with a digital megaphone, but since teams can sync up and collaborate as needed, there aren’t any noise complaints. 

In particular, teams can collaborate on documents in real-time, share information seamlessly and avoid dealing with nightmare version control issues. Similarly, remote employees can access the information they need from anywhere, at any time. 

In other words, organizations managing multiple websites or brands get to update and manage content from a single, centralized location. 

Easier compliance

ECM is a great sidekick for meeting relevant regulatory compliance requirements. In particular, ECM software solutions come with document tracking, retention policies and protection for sensitive information whether it’s on-premises or on the cloud.  

Beyond that, ECM makes it easy for you to show a document trail to auditors whenever they come knocking, reducing the risk of non-compliance. 

Solid customer service

With a powerful knowledge base to refer to, customer support teams have an easier time offering great service. Instead of putting clients on hold for minutes to search for information, representatives get all the customer data, interaction histories and relevant documents with a single click. 

Besides that, ECM tools can use metadata and machine learning to empower your customer support. By automatically tagging each piece of business content with relevant keywords and categories, they ensure that customer reps find the most relevant resources quickly—or you can even let chatbots do the job. 

Better decision-making

By centralizing data and making it easily accessible, ECM provides decision-makers with a bird’s-eye view of the organization’s information. 

No more hunting through disparate systems, confusing spreadsheets or outdated data formats to piece together the full picture. Instead, with an ECM platform, the data you need is at your fingertips, so you can make business decisions according to your specific needs. 

What to look for in an ECM solution

While enterprise content management software offers a lot of benefits, exactly how your organizational processes will improve depends on the ECM solution you opt for. (Related: The best content management systems you can use today.)

Cloud-based options

One-third of the American workforce works from home all the time. To ensure remote team workers can access your ECM solution just like office employees, you need a cloud-based option, which also comes with the added benefits of flexibility, scalability and accessibility. 

With a cloud solution, you can also provide public access to external stakeholders and customers for general service documents and private access to employees for internal files.

Integration with existing business systems

An effective ECM solution should get along with your existing business tools. For instance, it should seamlessly integrate with your solutions for customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM). 

Customization options

Since every company is unique, the ECM solution should have customization options to adapt to specific business needs. In particular, you should have the functionality to use different content types, a variety of workflows and custom development tools. 

User-friendly interface

The best ECM solution in the world is worthless if your team can't—or won't—use it. A user-friendly interface is crucial for adoption and efficiency. Look for intuitive design, clear navigation and ease of use across devices.

Robust security features

You must also prioritize security since your ECM will store sensitive and critical business information. Look for features like encryption, role-based access control, regular backups and compliance with industry standards. (Read more about Wix Studio security.)

Multi-site management

You need an enterprise-grade content management system that can handle the complexity of your growing digital footprint. With Wix Studio Enterprise, you can manage multiple sites in a way that suits your needs, all from one centralized dashboard.