Many businesses operating in Australasia today are complex organisations that have grown and expanded their capabilities over time and their IT systems have grown with them.

As a result, a large number of organisations are now faced with what have become very ‘siloed’ IT infrastructures with a range of different systems in place to serve different areas of the organisation. These siloes can make it difficult to share data between different parts of the organisation and place a significant burden on IT teams. They create inefficient workflows, added costs for the organisation and, most likely customer dissatisfaction.

Adopting an integrated approach
Rather than continuing to grapple with a siloed and disparate IT infrastructure, a more efficient approach is to implement a single enterprise content management system (ECM). An ECM system centralises data from all systems across the organisation, and makes it available to staff as required. It can store all organisational content, whether it be documents, emails, faxes, videos, or any other data.

An important decision when choosing an ECM system is to ensure it is built on a single enterprise information platform. The benefit of this for an organisation is ease and speed of implementation, rapid user uptake, and, reduced time and costs for ongoing management of the system.

Implementing an ECM system is attractive for cost-conscious organisations because it can be done without the need to decommission or replace existing computer systems. Instead, the ECM system can act as an electronic backbone that tightly ties those systems together. ECM has proven very effective when installed on an organisation’s own infrastructure or in a cloud deployment for a monthly fee reducing capital outlay.

It is critical that an ECM system integrates with an organisation’s existing business systems, whether they be ERP, accounting, HR, claims, lending, electronic medical record, student information or other critical systems, as these drive an organisation’s core business processes.

By integrating an ECM system with needed applications, organisations will be able to:

• Eliminate switching between screens to find the right information – Users gain instant access to related content stored in the ECM system without leaving their business application.
• Ease the transition to new software – Because users can access content within the ECM system directly from their other applications, training is minimal. User acceptance also increases because staff can access needed content from the familiar applications.
• Reduce manual data entry – An ECM system should instantly update your business applications as soon as it receives information, and in turn, other applications can update the information stored in the ECM system.

Everything from customer information in electronic and scanned paper forms to back-office applications such as CRM, ERP, Microsoft Outlook and SharePoint can be connected to the ECM system. The result is a single, fully connected infrastructure that supports activity across the organisation.

Alternatively, if a decision is taken to decommission ageing systems, the data stored within them can readily be shifted into the ECM system.

Another important consideration for busy organisations is that that the roll out out of an ECM system does not have to be completed as a single, large project. Systems in individual departments can be added over time, and ECM can be integrated as needed by the individual organisation.

Benefits delivered
For many organisations, an ECM can deliver significant benefits in terms of better customer service, improved efficiency and reduced operational costs.

An ECM allows all content to be held in a single, integrated system. Data silos that previously existed within the organisation are removed.

As a result, management overheads are reduced and many complex and unwieldy processes are removed. This, in turn, frees up IT resources and staff to focus on other projects that can deliver more long-term value to the organisation.

An ECM also improves organisational data security by reducing the number of locations in which sensitive information is held. Instead of it being spread across multiple systems and databases it is retained in a single and centralised store, thereby minimising the chances of loss or misuse.

From a corporate perspective, making such a fundamental change to internal IT systems will also reduce risk. A centralised data store can ensure that an overall picture of exactly what is going on across the organisation is available at all times. This can be a particularly significant benefit when it comes to compliance issues.

Using an ECM to manage data also opens up the opportunity of shifting some functions to a cloud-based platform over time. Using cloud resources can significantly improve overall IT flexibility while at the same time reducing operational costs.

Importantly, the path to an ECM can be gradual. A good first step is to convert as much information as possible into digital form. Once this has been completed, the information can then be added to the ECM and more effectively used and managed.

An ECM has a lot to offer Australasian business. In the never-ending quest for improved business processes and more efficient service delivery, it has a critical part to play.

ABOUT BOB DUNN//

Bob Dunn is the Australia country manager for Hyland Software, creator of the OnBase enterprise content management (ECM) solution. Dunn has been part of the ECM industry for more than 25 years, and has held various positions during his tenure, with a focus on providing business process automation solutions.