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Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Understanding the Terms and Abbreviations

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Table of Contents:
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Enterprise Records Management or Enterprise Report Management (ERM) Enterprise Document Management (EDM) Document Management (DM) Document Management System (DMS) Scan Capture Index Store Retreive Scanning and Capture Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) Indexing and Integration Workow Users About the Author

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Enterprise Content Management (ECM): Understanding the Terms and Abbreviations

Page 1

ECM - Enterprise Content Management

ECM is a big one. It is the overarching name that covers all eorts to reduce paper and manage all business information. The whole enchilada! Youll hear it a lot. Lets break it down: Enterprise - A business, organization, prot or not, any group structure set up to achieve some goal. Content All the information, in paper or digital form, all the nancial, customer, product, research, all the knowledge, that the enterprise uses in its day to day operations. Management You know what that means, right? We all know it could be better. Where is my content? Basically it is the management of all your business information of whatever type, location or source. Within ECM we have subsets like ERM, EDM, DM, MRM, PDM, BPM, OCR, EFM, CMS and words like Workow and Taxonomy. Ouch! What a confusing array of abbreviations and words, so lets take a look at them one by one to see which might apply to your business.

ERM Enterprise Records Management or Enterprise Report Management take your pick
This is a part of ECM that stores and handles business records or reports, puts them in permanent digital form, makes them easy to nd and search, until the predened retention time is over then poof, they are gone. Think of this as all the stu you need to keep for easy access when it comes time for government reporting, taxes, your bank or auditors.

EDM or DM or DMS Enterprise Document Management is just a bigger form of Document Management or Document Management System.
Now we are expanding the concept of just records and reports to more of the documents that you create and use in your day to day business operations. These are a business process and system that includes the hardware and software that enables your business to scan, capture, index, store and access your paper business documents, we will get into details on these terms further on. A good EDM system can also help you to avoid creating paper documents to begin with through electronic forms.

Lets break this down:

Scan
Simply, the process of converting paper documents into digital form with a document scanner. This can be a simple desktop device; a heavy duty sheet feed scanner or part of the multi-function devices that are found in most oces today.

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Enterprise Content Management (ECM): Understanding the Terms and Abbreviations

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Capture
After scanning, the digital picture that is made by the scanner needs to be converted into readable letters and numbers. A key benet of any ECM system is the ability to quickly locate and retrieve documents in a logical way. This means that the information, the words (names, addresses, codes, etc.), dates and numbers are in a form that a computer can read. To accomplish this, special software is needed that can perform what is called, sorry another abbreviation, OCR, Optical Character Recognition, we will explain more later. Suce it to say this software can convert what comes out of a scanner looking like this . . .

To something your computer can process like this:

Vendor Invoice # Invoice Date Amount

Verizon 482317998-00001 22-Jul-13 299.02

Index
This is the process of putting key information in a database that makes it easy to nd and retrieve. In the world of ECM this key information is called Metadata which is dened as data that provides information about other data.

Store
Store is the action of saving a digital version of the paper documents into a server hard drive, a storage computer or the cloud. Once stored the paper version can usually be shredded or put in storage. Savings in storage costs are one of the benets of an ECM system.

Retrieve
Using software that is designed to retrieve digitally stored documents can be located by using searches based on indexed metadata or full text search. Indexed searches are faster, while full text is more comprehensive. Ability to quickly locate and retrieve documents quickly is another great advantage of adopting ECM. There are specic application of ECM technology in areas like MRM, Medical Records Management; ERM, Electronic Records Management: PDM, Product Data Management: BPM, Business Process Management: EFM, Employee File Management; CMS, Content Management System, and then some. They are all fairly self-explanatory once they are un-abbreviated.

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Enterprise Content Management (ECM): Understanding the Terms and Abbreviations

Page 3

Scanning and Capture

As promised, lets learn more about Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and associated concepts like Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR); and Optical Mark Recognition (OMR). Are you
interested? When you scan a document it is just a picture, a solid image that programs like Word or Excel or your accounting system can read. So, we need to change that. With OCR software, which has gotten amazingly advanced, your computer will convert the pixels that made up this picture of words:

To data that you can use: Contract with: Virginia Department of Transportation Contract Type: Design and Construction Award Date: June 19, 2008 Amount: 18,977,500.00 Document: VDTAward61908.pdf This all happens with a scanner, and special software that make this work. Greater eciency and results can be achieved when these systems are integrated with back or front oce e systems and when advanced features like ICR, Intelligent Character Recognition, a technology that allows the recognition of hand written information, signatures, and symbols embedded in documents have functional meaning to the system which can kick o work ow. And you are o to the races. There is also OMR, Optical Mark Recognition or Optical Mark Reading, which is a process of capturing humanmarked data from document forms such as surveys and tests. Did you use your #2 lead pencil as instructed? This is amazing stu and it is what makes proper indexing and fast location and retrieval possible. This brings us to one of my favorite words, Taxonomy. It basically means the division into ordered groups or categories according to Random House Dictionary. It is from the French taxonomie which is from the Greek taxo or taxis-arrangement or order, and nomy or nomo - to manage or control. When you look at the root Taxonomy means the control or management of a system of arranging things. If you have spent any time with Enterprise Content Management or Document Management you will know how important this is. We wont go o into chaos theory, but everyone knows the feeling of looking at your desk and asking yourself, how did my desk get so messy. You see maintaining order and proper arrangement is not easy, so it is important to a good ECM or DM system.

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Enterprise Content Management (ECM): Understanding the Terms and Abbreviations

Page 4

Indexing and Integration

Here is where the rubber meets the road, where the real value in enterprise content management comes into play. Yes we have saved money in data entry, maybe, and of course storage, for sure. But the real value comes in being able to quickly nd the information or document you need when you need it. Indexing is the process of assigning to a particular document the right identifying information, the Metadata, remember data that provides information about other data. Designing a proper indexing system is the key to every successful ECM eort. Recording data that allows you to integrate your ECM with your other business systems is essential. That will be an entire article unto itself. Just remember this, when we start talking about indexing, pay attention.

Workow
So we are getting to the end, and to close things out lets touch on Workow, which is really an o shoot of ECM or DM. It is really part of BPM, Business Process Management, which is a separate eld of study, but over the years ECM and BPM has become inseparable, merging into one and ECM seems to be winning as the overall term. So Workow, it is what happens next, and then after that, unless something else occurs and then it does something else. It is a series of organized steps with choices that take a document from A to Z. With the digital information attached to any one document, relating to any one or many transactions, sensible automated workow is made possible, and to great advantage.

Users
Last but certainly not least we have UA, UI & UX, Three very, very, important elements of a success ECM system. Like to take a guess? User Acceptance or User Adoption (UA), User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX). When you come right down to it, this will make or break any ECM initiatives. You can design and implement the most wonderful system but if your users dont like it or wont use it - youre done. The moral of the story is to get your users involved early on and encourage their involvement. You will be happy you did.

About the Author

Peter Conway - ECM Account Manager Peter Conway is considered an expert in business technology for small and mid-sized companies. For over 20 years he has worked with many enterprises in a broad range of industries to improve their operations in core accounting, supply chain management, customer relations as well as business intelligence. Over the last three years he has focused on streamlining key business processes with contemporary tools for enterprise content management, work ow automation and team collaboration such as Microsoft SharePoint.

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Enterprise Content Management (ECM): Understanding the Terms and Abbreviations

Net@Work is a leading provider of business consulting and integrated software applications covering all areas of business for the enterprise. These areas include customer relationship management (CRM), accounting and nancials, manufacturing, distribution, enterprise & document management, human resources/payroll, enterprise reporting, and electronic commerce. Partnerships with proven technology leaders, including Sage Software, Abila, Microsoft, Dell, HP, Citrix and Cisco, allows Net@Work to deliver a range of unbiased, integrated solutions that bring its clients every competitive advantage possible.
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