Do I really need content management?

You’ve heard of content management. Enterprise Content Management. Content Management Systems. Document Management. You’ve read about it, seen an advertisement, discussed it with a customer, or come across it when looking for, say, a CRM. You know a little bit about what it is, and it seems like a vital solution for many businesses, non-profits, and government institutions. But what is it? What is content management? Do I really need content management? There are more specific questions you can ask the ether. The answers will satisfy your curiosity and guide your purchasing process.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself. If you can answer “yes” to any of these questions, then you definitely need content management for your organization.

Do I really need content management?Are paper files piling up in your office to the point where space is an important cost consideration?

Forget the budgetary considerations of shrinking floor space – an overabundance of filing cabinets, stacks of folders, and general paper clutter can be a detriment to productivity and morale. It’s tough enough to work through an extensive backlog, but when that backlog is a physical reminder and disorganized to boot, you risk driving your employees over the edge. Paper files take more time and personnel to sort and process. Organizing them cannot be easily automated.

There is the ever-expanding expense of file storage as well. Have you rented larger offices as a result of your inflating storage needs? Paper files can be digitized, returning your valuable office space to you almost instantly. After the digitization period, your options for storing, processing, and ordering these documents will increase exponentially. Then, content management can take over, offering simple ways to manage all of your paperwork without the paper.

Do I really need content management?Do you already have digital documents that just need to be organized?

Even if you’ve shed the paper weight and digitized your business documents, there is still work to be done. You need to take all of those files and tag them for indexing, organize them into a filing structure, and manage access for your employees and colleagues outside of your organization. Content management isn’t just for managing files that started in print. With the right CMS, you can keep files in line beyond the digitization process and maintain your data consistently.

Do I really need content management?Are you storing records for archiving or frequently accessing your documents?

Whichever answer you chose, both requirements will benefit from a content management system for your enterprise. An ECM solution will have document capture via a scanner, drag-and-drop, and indexing options. Inputting documents becomes infinitely easier, but so does retrieving them whether they’ve been archived or are still in use.

With a readily available API, integrations are simple. Some content management solutions come with Office integration standard, allowing users to save documents to the system from those programs and open directly into them when retrieving. If your CMS has a hot folder, simply saving to a particular location on your PC will automatically input documents to the processes you most frequently use. Accessing records while on the go can be done with a mobile app or a web browser.

Do I really need content management?Do you need to store, secure, and handle your documents according to strict regulations?

Compliance is one of the strongest cases for leveraging Enterprise Content Management. With the recent implementation of GDPR, and financial institutions and social media still under fire for security breaches, regulation is about to become a new obstacle for industries which never gave it much thought before. And for the organizations which have been handling it for years, they’re all too familiar with the heavy toll it can take on clerical budgets and work load.

You often need to retain documents for longer under regulations. And in order to comply, you might need to maintain those files for years and destroy them no later than a specific date. You may not be audited by the IRS any time soon, but internal and industry-specific audits are more common than you’d think. Accountants and comptrollers are working overtime to weed out any oversights.

Content management dramatically mitigates room for human error when storing and processing documents. A CMS will offer redaction options, role-based user access, version retention, audit trail, document check-out, and archive and purge capabilities. So instead of filing, sending, and retrieving records correctly every time, you can set it once, check it twice, and then let the software handle the rest.

Are you sending and receiving documents from vendors, coworkers, and customers on a daily basis?

Even if you only pass around two or three files a week, between you and everyone at your office, that’s scores of documents sent over insecure connections every day, perhaps every hour depending on your company size. Whichever end of the handoff you find yourself on, whether you send files all the time or infrequently, it only takes one email to the wrong person to send your process careening off of the rails.

Content management will sometimes come with an intelligent workflow built in. Send your document to the starting point, and it will be passed off to all the necessary in-house recipients. If it requires signing or other interactions, you can add these steps to the business process while assembling it in the intuitive graphical designer. For files in demand from outside your organization, use Content Sentinel to provide your customer or colleague with a secure link via email.

Do I really need content management?Have you experienced an increase in digital security threats to your organization over the last ten years?

So has everybody else! We have long since entered the digital age, and with that has come a snowballing arms race between hackers and security, viruses and antivirus programs. Business transactions happen online. Files are stored on local servers and in the cloud. Communication flows through Skype, Slack, even Twitter. It is apparently incredibly easy for malicious entities to breach virtually any business or organization, no matter how big or how small.

Contentverse comes with built-in security in the form of a separate security administrator role, double-layered encryption to make hacking either the server or a client fruitless, role-based user access options, and Content Sentinel – a way to send files safely to persons outside your organization. Coupled with the ability to deploy on-premise, in the cloud, or in a hybrid environment, users can choose the type of access or security their organization needs when implementing.

What are you waiting for?

If you answered “yes” to even just one of these questions, content management can critically increase your efficiency, your productivity, and the safety of your files. Contentverse is the full package for document storage, organizing, security, access, processing, indexing, regulating, retrieving, sending, and more. Send us a message today to learn more about enterprise content management solutions.

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