SharePoint Server 2010 & Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

Tuesday, May 25, 2010 by Jenny Lowry

Most business executives recognize the need for a robust Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution, but most traditional ECM solutions are designed for a small set of users and focus on security and compliance over usability and collaboration. In Microsoft’s white paper, “The Business Value of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Content Management”, they discuss how ECM with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 delivers both a high-quality solution that stimulates and delivers user participation and the tools for highly secure, well-managed content. The following is a summary of this white paper.

What is Enterprise Content Management?

According to The Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM), “Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is the strategies, methods, and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve, and deliver content and documents related to organizational processes. ECM tools and strategies allow the management of an organization’s unstructured information, wherever that information exists.”

An Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system helps businesses manage all data, including structured data captured in LOB systems, such as CRM, ERP, or Sales databases, and unstructured data including all documents, spreadsheets, and other files.

For more information, please read AIIM’s article, “What is ECM?”

Why ECM?

Enterprise Content Management provides a management framework for all data and for the creation and archiving of information. A comprehensive ECM solution helps bring structure and management to all types of documents and information and regulates and tracks them from a single set of tools.

Why Microsoft ECM?

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 delivers a platform approach that can manage unstructured data and address many, if not all, deployment blockers with:

• Tools that enable and encourage user interaction
• Architecture and tools that provide security and help manage compliance and policies
• Guidance and technology that helps avoid high costs of ECM point solutions

User-Centric Content Management

ECM in SharePoint Server 2010 provides users with both a platform and individual solutions for developing, using, and managing documents, with familiar Office Client applications deeply integrated for document viewing and editing.

SharePoint Server provides:

• Easy to use, integrated tools and features for managing, finding, and sharing documents to enhance productivity
• Easy to add and identify document metadata to track, find, and share documents
• Non-invasive inputs built into standard save and upload functions

Balance Between Flexibility & Control

SharePoint Server provides:

• Compliance Everywhere- Any document, record, or other stored information can be managed right from SharePoint
• Risk avoidance features which include information architecture, taxonomy, branding, provisioning, and search
• Management of accessibility to information to the people who need it

Save Costs and Consolidate Systems

SharePoint Server provides a platform for comprehensive, integrated content management, reducing complexity and time and saving costs. Leveraging a single platform also leads to improved reporting and analytics, resulting in cost savings by avoiding wasteful spending by manually generating reports or dealing with consequences of not having content insight.

Organizations can reduce IT costs and complexity by consolidating multiple product investments into a single infrastructure, by reducing infrastructure and support costs, and by getting all enterprise solutions under a single product license.

For more information about SharePoint Server’s user-centric platform, flexibility and control, and cost effectiveness, please visit our SharePoint 2010 page or visit Microsoft’s SharePoint 2010 site.

Read the entire white paper, “The Business Value of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Content Management”.