3 Ways to Improve Your Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

Choosing an enterprise content management (ECM) solution can increase productivity and improve collaboration. However, to see maximum value and succeed from enterprise content management (ECM), challenges and goals of digital document management must be carefully defined and addressed.

Let's take accounting as an example.

1. Identify problems

For example, in Accounts Payable (AP) program, your problems may include cumbersome paper process of collecting signatures from various department heads. This inefficient process made it difficult to pay invoices on time, which also led to problems such as missed early payment discounts and strained supplier relationships.

In an accounts receivable (AR) system, problem is that when finance staff has to call a customer to force payment of an outstanding invoice, they don't have easy access to all relevant documents, which slows down collection process.

With these issues in mind, next step is to determine what is needed to optimize these processes and set specific goals. When companies set goals that are vague and unmeasurable, they run into problems. It's not enough to say, "Our goal is to be more efficient." Your goals should be specific and measurable.

2. Set goals

As an example, let's say that when a customer disputes validity of an invoice, you can't get required documentation and you can't collect 40% of your receivables through your existing system, which would require an average of all receivables received. Payment time. extended to 45 days.

Using an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system, you can reduce data backlogs from 40% to 10%, reducing average data collection time to 30 days. This is a clear, measurable goal for a specific process.

Accounting is just one example of how to identify needs and set goals for Enterprise Content Management (ECM). The sales force is another area where enterprise content management (ECM) has an edge, especially in proposal creation process.

Available:

• Identify your current problems and needs. • Clearly define your goals. • Decide where to start.

Impossible:

• Choose unmeasurable goals. Forgotten to define clear indicators in advance.

3. Take Advantage

Enterprise content management (ECM) solutions enable your sales teams to create better offers and deliver them faster. The productivity of sales force has been improved by using enterprise content management (ECM) to automate approval process and provide sales reps with instant access to price lists and other key information. You can submit more offers, and more you put up, more you will sell.

A key indicator of realizing this benefit after installing an enterprise content management system might be following: current number of created and submitted proposals should be compared with aboutexpected increase. Using average close rate and average gross margin of submitted offers, you can even calculate expected net and top margin on your records management investment.

Again, it's important to define goals with specific metrics. It's impossible to manage expectations and measure success of an enterprise content management (ECM) solution if your company doesn't have clear goals from start. In any company, there will always be people who are resistant to new technologies and new ways of working. Without proper metrics, a project may be considered a failure for some and a success for others. Concrete metrics will help you replace those opinions and impressions with observable facts.

By identifying problems strategically, setting goals, and leveraging strengths, you can get more value out of your enterprise content management (ECM) solution.