History




The technologies which encompassed ECM in 2016 descend from the electronic document management systems (EDMS) of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The original EDMS products were stand-alone, providing functionality in one of four areas: imaging, workflow, document management, and enterprise relationship management (ERM).

A typical early EDMS user had a small-scale imaging and workflow system (perhaps one department) to improve a paper-intensive process and work towards a paperless office. The first stand-alone EDMS technologies intended to save time (or improve information access) by reducing paper handling and storage, reducing document loss and speeding access to information. EDMS could provide online access to information formerly available only on paper, microfilm, or microfiche. By improving control over documents and their processes, EDMS streamlined business practices. Their audit trail increased document security and measured productivity and efficiency.

EDMS product categories were seen as complementary, and organizations wished to use several EDMS products. A customer-service department could combine imaging, document management and workflow; an accounting department could access supplier invoices from an ERM system, purchase orders from an imaging system, and contracts from a document-management system. As organizations established an Internet presence, they wanted to manage web content. Organizations which had automated individual departments began to envision a broader deployment.

The movement toward integrated EDM systems reflected a common trend in the software industry: the integration of small systems into more comprehensive ones. Word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software were standalone products until the early 1990s, when the market shifted toward integration.

Early developers offered multiple stand-alone EDMS technologies as a single, packaged "suite", with little (or no) functional integration. Around 2001, the industry began to use the term "enterprise content management" for integrated systems.citation needed

In 2006, Microsoft (with its SharePoint product family) and Oracle Corporation (with Oracle Content Management) entered the low-cost ECM market.a Open source ECM products are also available.

Government standards, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), BS 7799 and ISO/IEC 27001, influence the development and use of ECM. In 2016, organizations could deploy a single ECM system to manage information in all departments.

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