Knowing The Big Difference: Enterprise Content Management vs Document Management System

Modern day organizations are always on a lookout for cost-effective and efficient method of organizing, sharing and documenting digital data to streamline their business processes. Companies then started adopting different solutions driven by AI technology to automate these workflows. However, there are tons of management solutions in the market making it difficult to choose which is best for their organization especially if the features aren’t defined properly.

For instance, business professionals thought that Document Management Systems and Enterprise Content Management are the same thing. Yes, both caters to the data management needs of an organization, but do we really understand the difference between these two?

Let’s see the difference between an Enterprise Content Management vs. Document Management System:

Qualitative Differences

• A Document Management System is a software to monitor, store and control business records. Meanwhile, Enterprise Content Management is a set of tools and processes for better documentation workflow in an enterprise. An ECM basically offers the majority of the functionalities that you’ll find in a DMS, but targeted for a much larger scale.

• In terms of its functionality, a DMS is utilized to store, manage and track digital copies of documents in an organization; whereas the purpose of an ECM is to store and process content documentation and workflow within an organization. You can look at ECM as a high capacity DMS with much more features.

• A DMS is definitely tailored for smaller companies as it has a simpler user interface requiring less expertise or maintenance, whereas an ECM is a better fit for bigger companies processing high volumes of data regularly. Aside from that, acquiring an ECM is much more expensive and it requires proper employee training before using it.

• In discussing the types of contents supported, a DMS could cater to structured data like a Word or PDF File. On the other hand, an ECM supports both structured and unstructured information which may include graphic content, images, videos, website contents and etc.

Similarities Between ECM and DMS

• Both systems employ SaaS Technology.
• It is used to manage both digital documents and contents.
• It helps give users a better structure in managing unorganized data.
• It manages review trails.
• Has a data recovery feature.

At the end of the day, both Enterprise Content Management and Document Management System offer a network-based collaboration and data sharing which is essential to track records as they go through their life cycle, and it gives you the much-needed security and systematic approach to protect sensitive data.

If you would like to know more about the difference between an Electronic Content Management vs. Document Management System, feel free to get in touch with us by clicking here!

Source:
https://www.efilecabinet.com/the-differences-between-ecm-and-dms/