Why ECM?
Most companies determine they need a strategic enterprise content management (ECM) solution after they identify an overarching business challenge. Often this looks like too much paper or unstructured information causing bottlenecks when trying to process, access or store information.
Consider a mortgage loan origination file. There’s a lot to keep track of in that file.
If a form, a signature, a bank statement or a notarization is missing, it takes that much longer to close.
When implementing an ECM solution with the help of ISSI, it’s easier to track the status of documents and allow immediate access to the people who need it. Using the same ECM system, your organization can reduce costs while improving compliance with industry standards and security requirements.
Content Management: What Are the Biggest Challenges?
Large volumes of incoming and outgoing content can be difficult to track, and it’s no surprise that many organizations struggle to maintain a successful content management strategy.
Here are the biggest challenges in content management:
1. Ensuring Regulatory Compliance
Both internal and external compliance regulations are getting stricter. With the amount of paperwork and documentation that most companies need to keep, it is incredibly difficult to ensure audits are accurately completed in a timely manner when using legacy business processes such as paper or manual work.
An enterprise content management (ECM) solution facilitates audits and other compliance requirements. It provides structure and security to the entire audit process, allowing teams to exercise greater control over all relevant documents. Armed with this, organizations can create efficiency within their internal processes and subsequently reduce expenses associated with manual operations.
ECM in action:
The MetroHealth System, a nationally ranked nonprofit healthcare system in Ohio, was using paper-based and manual processes. It was slowing down operations enterprise-wise and risking regulatory compliance.
To combat this, the organization onboarded a comprehensive ECM with native and automated business process tools. This workflow automation would lead to expedited decision-making. The ECM solution also helped improve patient care and ensure compliance, in part by delivering a complete audit trail.
2. Maintaining Control over Documents
How would your business succeed if each sales rep worked from a different price list? Or if some were using outdated contracts to finalize sales?
An ECM solution allows for document management and version control. Organizations big and small can centralize all relevant files, provide offline synchronization for remote users and ensure that everyone has access to the latest document versions.
ECM in action:
Without a standard procedure for implementing policies at Minneapolis’ Allina Medical Laboratories, lab staff often missed out on reading new policy announcements or updating older policies.
After implementing an ECM solution, Allina was able to store and monitor policies in a central repository and ensure employees collaborated on the most up-to-date document.
3. Delivering an Exceptional Customer & Employee Experience
When an organization depends on paper processes and manual workflows, it can negatively impact the service provided to customers. The slow response times, lack of one “source of truth” and human-introduced errors can all add up to dissatisfied customers or clients.
An ECM can help improve customer satisfaction with faster turnaround times and better quality control. Additionally, it can help lower costs by freeing up staff from manual tasks and enforcing consistent business practices to ensure accountability and compliance.
ECM in action:
Whatcom Educational Credit Union, a Washington-based credit union, was growing its membership rapidly. As it grew, so did its paper piles of loan applications, membership profiles and other member-related documents.
Whatcom introduced an ECM solution that integrated effortlessly with its core system, and its employees gained instant access to member files and information. Employees now use a workflow management tool to route the right documents to relevant users, enhancing the customer experience and efficiencies among staff members.
4. Keeping Track of Information
Intelligent information management will be critical to the data-driven decision-making of tomorrow. Unfortunately, storing and accessing documents efficiently in legacy systems is often still difficult because in many cases, the data is in disparate systems.
An ECM or content services solution allows for complete document life cycle management as well as secure document storage, from input through destruction. In high-performance ECMs, documents are centralized, searchable and automatically linked to the appropriate account, customer, patient or employee.
ECM in action:
The Colorado Housing and Finance Authority (CHFA) was struggling with mountains of paper (project files could reach 300 pages or more).
Upon implementing an ECM solution, its records management process became clearer and more efficient. This reduced the time to retrieve project files from 12 minutes to 10 seconds or less, making its staff three times more productive.
5. Streamlining Business Processes
Efficient business processes are paramount to organizational success and the stability of your bottom line. Whether you’re focused on the big picture or the day-to-day effectiveness of employees, the details of how your information moves through your organization will impact you.
Best-in-class ECM solutions integrate with core applications (ERPs, student information systems, etc.) to eliminate siloed information and streamline your existing technology investments. The right ECM vendor will provide intuitive, native functionality to help your organization get its work done quickly, efficiently and effectively.
ECM in action:
BSA Limited is a domestic satellite and installation company in Australia that provides technical services to the telecommunications industry. It required a more straightforward approach to managing their documents across eight branches; and needed one platform to streamline their document-based processes.
After implementing an ECM solution, BSA Limited managed to deploy stronger document management capabilities. The company was able to automate key financial activities through configurable workflows, reduce invoice processing time and improve information accessibility using simple metadata.
6. Going Paperless
Paper documents consume time and space across an organization. Human resources, accounts payable and receivable, facilities management and other departments get slowed down by processing delays, incomplete information and duplicate work when processes rely on paper.
Organizations that go paperless often look to ECM solutions because they improve collaboration, drive cost savings and promote better governance over data.
ECM in action:
Canal Barge is a family-owned marine transportation company in Louisiana, United States. Their accounts payable department was overwhelmed with paperwork (generating 300,000 – 500,000 sheets in a year) and was running out of storage space quickly.
The company introduced an ECM solution to digitize and streamline its invoice approval process. This simplified data collection and storage by automatically capturing invoice data as soon as it arrived, routing documents efficiently and notifying reviewers without the need for paper copies. The company continued to expand its business without needing to renovate the building or relocate to a larger space to store physical documentation.
Find the Right ECM Solution with ISSI
With ISSI, you can use ECM solutions to improve ease of access, control, and organization in your content management processes, while staying compliant. Contact an expert today to get started.
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