Be updated, subscribe to the OpenKM news

How to share and distribute content with an ecm

Written by Ana Canteli on March 06, 2020

The accumulation of information and data that occurs in any organization today makes it essential to determine how much information is valid and for how long it is. From there, it can be determined what is not needed and therefore get rid of it. In addition to identifying valid information, companies must know when and how to use it. Properly manage the information that will improve relations with its customers, and even the work experience of its employees, which will result in benefits and advantages for all involved. The need to improve results leads many companies to implement enterprise content management solutions, or ECM for short.

What is an ECM?

An enterprise content management system is software that serves to access and manage information, whether structured or unstructured, to achieve the organization’s goals efficiently while ensuring regulatory compliance. Enterprise content management covers the needs of document management, web content management, business process management, and collaboration needs. In the beginning, enterprise content management ECM was limited to websites. Over time, more functionalities were added, giving the ECM solution a new dimension. Thus, at present, the management of enterprise contents can be defined as the set of services, technologies, and functionalities that control and manage the entire life cycle of the contents. This process starts with creation or capture, then edition, revision or approval, and ends with recovery, distribution, preservation, or elimination.

Without a means to capture and organize business content accurately, the flow of information within the organization can stagnate or even be the source of more serious problems. Enterprise content management must offer complete coverage of the documentary life cycle; otherwise, outdated documents can create confusion and be the seeds of future incidents.

The number of cases in which an organization can be involved can be summarized as follows:

• Employees do not have accurate information at the time and place where they need it to work effectively.
• A considerable amount of time is spent searching and finding content due to various causes (the existence of a document is known, but not it’s location, and there are no clear classification criteria or adequate search means).
• There is a wide variety of content: from documents to records, through e-mails, videos, images, reports, or forms that can be in any format or version.
• Existing content management does not offer security guarantees: access, editing, or deletion controls are insufficient.
• The exact volume or status of the contents of the company is not known, which makes it difficult or impossible to determine their validity.
• A lack of process integration that directly affects the coordination and collaboration of employees, as well as the adequate distribution of content.

What is the best enterprise content management system?

Choosing the best ECM solution for the company depends on several factors, some of them environmental and beyond the control of the organization. Still, others are not, and those are what the organization must take into account when deciding on a business content strategy.

The enterprise content management system must allow the entity to achieve a triple objective:

• Maximize the use of existing information. This will directly improve the progress of the business by reducing inefficiencies, saving time and money.
• Improve customer service, the primary objective of any organization, be it a private entity or public administration.
• Return on investment: the acquisition of an enterprise content management ECM should not be treated as an expense but as an investment that benefits all members of the organization.

OpenKM, as an ECM system - enterprise content management - can contribute to the achievement of this triple objective through:

• Digitization, file management, and digital assets: OpenKM offers the necessary tools for capturing and digitizing content, whatever the format and type of file. The administrator may update the repertoire of contents supported by the system, when necessary. The archival plan guarantees control over the life cycle of content, from creation to storage and elimination following established protocols.
• Document management: Once the content is created or captured in OpenKM, users will enjoy editing features, collaboration, communication, and distribution tools that will allow them to work with documents, records, and content of various kinds, when and where they need it.
• Business process management: Workflows or bpm engines are nowadays one more functionality among the set of tools offered by the ECM. OpenKM contains a workflow engine that allows you to work with the most sophisticated business processes.
• Records management: OpenKM is also an electronic record management system. It offers the technology platform necessary to manage this type of content that requires special treatment in terms of security, creation, control, storage, and search conditions.
• Search and recovery: the OpenKM search engine allows users to find any content, using any word that is part of the file, along with other attributes: keywords, repository section it is hosted in, date range, language, authorship, title, description, category, mime type, notes or metadata.
• Collaboration: Users can be in touch through the chat and use the collaboration and communication tools integrated in the manager, from the insertion of notes, keywords, categories or relations to the contents, such as the use of forum extensions, wiki or the inclusion of metadata, which adds relevant and valuable information to all files with which the staff works.
• Content Publishing and Distribution: OpenKM, through the KCenter platform, allows the customization of the system to create, design, edit, publish, and distribute web content for company use. This digital content can serve to maintain relationships and communication with our customers, suppliers, but also with the members of the entity.
• Security, risk management, and information governance: Security in OpenKM is applied at three different levels that allow the articulation of the entity’s permissions, rules, and policies, which in turn define the regime of access and use of the contents. It is a fundamental characteristic that any business content management system worth its salt must-have.
• Integration: OpenKM, thanks to its complete API and SDKs in Java, PHP, and .NET. offers the necessary set of tools to ensure the integration of content management software with any third application.
• Help and support: when deciding on a provider of ECM solutions, it is vital to check the coverage and support conditions offered by the entity. OpenKM is a project of proprietary technology of document management solutions consolidated since 2004, in which the creators of the software continue to provide support to their customers.

How to distribute digital content?

The distribution of content must be considered sensibly, especially when you have worked hard to create quality content and do not want it to be set in a corner and forgotten. To do this, creating a content plan is a step, without which, the marketing strategy of the organization will be hard-pressed to reach its objectives. The content plan helps to be more creative and effective in distributing content and achieving various goals, such as improving brand position, creating influence relationships, benchmarking, audience engagement, and creating and maintaining a trustworthy and reliable digital reputation.

The OpenKM document management system can be used as a platform for content creation and distribution. Our employees and collaborators can access the system and, in their session, create the contents, without the format or extension being a limitation. Also, through automation, we can set quality protocols or approval of the new content, to make them accessible to the general public when they have reached the final version. Even thanks to the integration of OpenKM with Twitter, we can tweet the new content and contact in real-time with our audiences in other social networks.

The creation of content by the marketing and sales area can be distributed to current and potential customers as well as to other series of beneficiaries that could well go unnoticed. The contents can be a source of high-quality information about our products and services that enrich the commercial arguments and arguments of the sales staff. In the relationship with our customers, the distribution of content can help us educate, nurture, and improve the relationship of commitment and even neutralize the possible misunderstandings you may have. The follow-up of the relationship with our clients can also be a source of continuous improvement for the organization.

By creating a close relationship between marketing and sales, we can create mutually beneficial relationships so that content creation prepares and paves the way to identify potential customers. It could lead to an interview to include in new content. At the time it is distributed, it is advisable to share it with them, it will improve the relationship while they will appreciate the opportunity to be cited.

The creation of quality content for subsequent publication, in many cases, involves the investment of a considerable amount of time and resources in obtaining relevant data that corroborate the information we prepare, whether for the commercial department, marketing, or in The preparation of proposals. It is recommended to cite the sources used, but you can also take the opportunity to report your conclusions based on internal studies. And it is the OpenKM document management software, with its reports functionality, that allows us to obtain reliable data concerning any aspect that is of interest to us.