The Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system enables companies to leverage structured and unstructured data to improve business outcomes. While previous AI approaches such as OCR are no longer referred to as AI, most ECM systems still rely on rule-based approaches to extract, classify, and enrich data. With advancements in AI, machine learning, and especially deep learning, companies can now execute ECM applications more autonomously with higher levels of compliance.
What is Enterprise Content Management?
ECM helps businesses derive business value from their content and automate processes based on content.
ECM ensures that documents and other business content are organized, classified, meaningful, and easily discoverable. ECM is responsible for aggregating content streams across various channels such as documents, videos, audio, databases, etc. Almost every file created by the company (Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PDF files, etc.) is stored in ECM so that the system can provide them when needed.
What is an AI integrated ECM?
Integrating AI into ECM involves using Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology within an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system to enhance process automation, improve content classification and extraction, as well as enhance predictive capabilities and data analysis
AI takes ECM a step further by its ability to "read" information on documents. An ECM system supported by AI can classify, analyze content, and provide information in various formats.
Which AI technologies support ECM systems?
Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Natural Language Understanding(NLU)
AI-supported ECM can understand data and context at a deeper, more semantic level and enable data processing. It can comprehend the language used in emails and other documents. Therefore, it can establish relationships between the context of documents and make information retrieval easier when requested.
Machine learning
For example, AI-integrated ECM can be trained to classify documents using various machine learning algorithms such as decision tree-based algorithms (decision trees, random forests), gradient boosting algorithms, neural networks, and/or clustering algorithms. AI-supported ECM can learn to identify document types based on content, classify documents, and make appropriate decisions.
AI-supported ECM can enhance data insights by using predictive analytics tools supported by machine learning such as time series analysis, regression analysis, other forecasting tools, etc.
Image Recognition
With image recognition technology, images can be automatically tagged upon upload, and ECM can capture text within those images without human intervention
Speech recognition and transcription
As of May 2019, over 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, equivalent to about 30,000 hours of new content uploaded every hour. That's why YouTube is expected to have over 1 billion gigabytes (1 exabyte) of data on its servers!
With the increasing use of video in both B2B and B2C communications, speech recognition and transcription technology play an even larger role in ECM as information is extracted from audio and video files.
What are the benefits of ECM?
Cost savings: ECM helps optimize workflows, reduce waste, and increase labor productivity, thereby saving costs for the organization.
Faster processing: ECM automates many processes, enabling quicker document and data processing, reducing wait times, and accelerating work speed.
Improved decision-making: ECM provides quick and easy access to necessary information, helping users make smarter and more effective decisions.
Enhanced compliance: By automating processes and securing data, ECM helps organizations maintain compliance with legal regulations and industry standards.
Collaboration: ECM provides a platform for teams to collaborate, share information, and work together efficiently, fostering organizational development and success.
How to get started with ECM?
- Identify the role of content in your business: Assessing the business is the first step towards successfully implementing an ECM system. Companies should seek answers to questions such as:
- Where do paper-based processes create bottlenecks?
- Where does business content reside: is it in file shares, cloud storage repositories, or in deployed ECM systems?
- What are the company's document management, compliance, and retention strategies?
ECM solutions are modular and typically start with an application for a specific business area. Stakeholders provide input, establish a vision, and set specific solution goals. The ECM vendor then deploys the solution after rigorous testing and user training.
2. Expand ECM across the entire enterprise:
After completing the initial project, some components and processes can be reused, making subsequent projects less costly and easier to deploy. To drive investment in people, content, and technology, many organizations build a shared services strategy.
Which business functions utilize ECM?
- Sales: Businesses use ECM to efficiently store customer information and gather insights from this information to drive sales revenue.
- Marketing: Content created for various advertising campaigns is stored in the ECM system for distribution as needed for similar projects. Accounting and
- Finance: ECM automates the processing of documents such as invoices. Eliminating such documents speeds up the process between departments.
- Human Resources: ECM accelerates the recruitment process and allows HR staff to compile performance evaluation reports of current employees within minutes.
- Contract Management: ECM enables contract digitization, providing collaborators with benefits such as receiving notifications before contract expiration dates.
- Supply Chain: ECM helps supply chain collaborators make better forecasts because stock data, sales data, financial data, and supplier-provided data are all retrieved from the same ECM system.
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