Gartner Drops the Term “ECM”
Enterprise content management (ECM) is a term that has been used for decades to describe the tools and systems used to manage, store, capture, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to an organizations’ business processes. This past December, Gartner decided that the term ECM wasn’t living up to its goals and expectations and they needed to use terms that reflected how the marketplace has changed.
A recent blog from Gartner explains that the term itself hints at a single centralized enterprise-wide platform. In most cases, especially as of recently, we have found that many organizations have multiple ECMs as repositories of record. Another common characteristic of an organization is that different departments may interact differently with their content, which leads to the multiple repositories within a single organization.
ECMs were created as an answer to several pain points. A few noteworthy ones, as explained in the Gartner blog, are regulatory compliance, retention of business knowledge (content), cost and process efficiencies, and innovating new ways of working. But not all ECMs answer all of these pain points. They primarily answer the issue of regulatory compliance. When it comes to the retention of business knowledge, as we said above, many organizations use different ECM systems for different departments. About 10 years ago, we saw the ECM market going in this direction. That’s why we started creating solutions so organizations can integrate, synchronize, or migrate their ECMs.
So what is Gartner going to call it? Well, it seems they have found a name that can basically be an umbrella term for anything that deals with an organization’s content. The new term is “Content Services.” This term supports the increase in cloud SaaS demands and the fact that many organizations are integrating their best of breed solutions to answer the pain points listed above. In today’s world, it is not uncommon for organizations to have several ECMs in addition to other repositories of record like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics. The new challenge is to be able to let those systems talk to one another and do it in a way that remains compliant.
SeeUnity has been an industry leader in integration, synchronization, mobility, and migration. We understand the different ways that users interact with their content. We can help you get the most out of your ECM, collaboration platforms, and CRMs. Email info@seeunity.com for more information.