Every organization has at least slightly different uses for an enterprise content management solution. Right now, many companies need ECM for one specific reason. Their team is remote but still needs to work together and access files. Growing apart and more isolated during lock down is a common occurrence. Managers look for ways to reverse this process. A good ECM not only offers intelligent workflows, version control, file auditing, and more. It offers companies a way to implement office team building via collaborative file sharing. That way, your team can communicate and coordinate projects without having to risk their health at the office.

What is enterprise content management?

Enterprise Content Management software is a way to organize, control, and access files on local servers, online, or via a cloud server. It captures information or documents and puts them into a storage location. Then, it processes and manages those files, making it easier for you to organize your content, distribute it, and sometimes publish it to the web (depending on the platform). Users with access can securely view and/or edit content, and the solution tracks who is editing or has possession of which content. The content management software should have built-in workflow for passing these files between parties in your organization. It should also have safe options for sharing documents with colleagues outside of the organization, when necessary. These documents have associated metadata, so that they can be easily categorized, sorted, tracked, and recalled.

This is just the most basic way that Content Management software keeps your organization on track. Enterprise Content Management solutions have audit capabilities for monitoring both documents and users; email and various other input methods for entering documents into the system; file retention and version revision for industry compliance. Again, the list goes on. Suffice it to say that any Content Management worth your time has a wealth of features and capabilities that come standard. Now, let’s take a look at what many companies are using ECM for and what problems it helps solve.

How to do office team building in quarantine?

In a survey of over 1,700 business users, which asked questions about ECM, collaboration was a key issue that came up in companies of all sizes when discussing the adoption of a content management system. Among the most commonly brought up collaborative challenges, 40% of business users cited automated workflow, the greatest percentage of any other challenge listed. 36.4% cited file sharing and centralizing content. 31% chose compliance and information governance.

So, it is clear that companies and their users are looking most for ways to properly store their files in a central repository that maintains compliance. They are then looking for a solution that can share these files through automation. If this sounds like your company, we hear you. These are pretty basic needs, but many companies’ administrative departments overlook them, or the product they use is inadequate for these tasks. File sharing to collaborate should be at the top of the wish list of any organization without it, and honestly most groups need to invest in it by now.

Where does collaborative file sharing fit in?

The survey also found that 61% of users were looking for a Document or Content Management system with Workflow or Business Process Automation. Workflow and BPA are often used interchangeably to mean the same thing — the big one we’ve been talking about this whole time. Workflow is the process of passing documents, tasks, and altered documents from one employee or department to another. Automated Workflow is what a proper Content Management or BPA solution will do to make these processes painless, quick, and secure. No wonder so many companies are looking for this in an ECM solution!

59% are seeking collaborative file sharing from document management software, a topic that came up in the last section. Being able to store all of your documents in one place, accessible to the appropriate parties, is a key part of document management. It allows you to search for what you need, anytime, anywhere, whether you have your ECM solution in a home office or hosted via a third party cloud server. Organizations can use this centrally located system to team build even without the office as users share files and collaborate via workflows. All users want more control over their documents. With Contentverse, you get just that.

Features every ECM should have

35% of business users described search, access, and discovery of documents as a main challenge they plan to solve with Content Management. Access to your documents by all necessary parties is standard for ECMs, DMSs, and BPAs. And we think that a lot of other features should come standard as well.

Automated workflow; integration with mission critical apps; mobile access to your data through Android and iOS apps; access via the web through our professional client; double layer encryption security; advanced search, find, and view; instant notifications; version and revision tracking; and more features than we could possibly fit in this article all come standard with Contentverse! We looked over the stats, and no matter what you are searching for, we have it. Even in quarantine during the pandemic, when office team building seems impossible. You’d be surprised that collaborative file sharing is easier than ever. With Contentverse, you’re never far from everything you need.

A version of this article was published as Collaborating Through a Content Management System on August 31st, 2017.