Enterprise content management vs document management vs knowledge management: what's right for you?

Knowledge workers put knowledge to work. They make decisions (rather than physical items) and ideas are their value currency, not objects. However, there’s a conundrum. Until they put the information they have to work, it can’t become knowledge. So, for an organization to productively use its knowledge workers, it must first organize its information. That's why information, document and knowledge management systems exist.

As the most renowned management thinker of the last century, Peter Drucker’s 39 books (1939-2008) said much and taught many about managing knowledge work. He foretold that information needed to be applied to specific work and outcomes, and observed in his writings how the decades-long shift from manual ‘physical’ work to knowledge ‘thinking’ work, was to be instrumental to greater worldwide economic growth.

The most valuable assets of the 20th-century company were its production equipment. The most valuable asset of the 21st-century institution, whether business or non-business, will be its knowledge workers and their productivity.

- Peter Drucker (1999)

“Management Challenges for the 21st Century”

However, it’s not as easy as simply hiring a team of knowledge workers. There’s a fundamentally practical step that first needs to be taken – one that’s intrinsic to getting those productivity gains and ongoing growth. What's that? Productivity only results from the intensional organization of a corporation's information and resources.

For your knowledge workers to accomplish (both collaboratively and independently) those complex tasks you give them, they need access to key information, applications and data, on demand. Enter stage left, three key organizational concepts and practices: Knowledge Management (KM), the Document Management System (DMS) and Enterprise Content Management (ECM). So, what's the difference and which one is right for you?

What is knowledge management?

Knowledge management (KM) is the intentional, ongoing process used by an organization to gather, create, organize, analyze and share its collective knowledge. The process draws on a common knowledge base and takes a far-reaching, multidisciplinary approach that flows from knowledge creation, through knowledge organization to knowledge sharing.

Importantly, the knowledge management process used (and the ensuing knowledge base that’s assembled) should be specifically architected to achieve an organization's objectives and make best use of its knowledge assets.

ECM and DMS similarities

The terms ECM and DMS are not interchangeable. There are numerous differences (see below) as well as similarities (read on) that clearly differentiate the suitable scenarios, business sizes, use cases and industries for each one.

Both ECM and DMS are designed to streamline workflows, enhance document processes, improve content security and help companies handle an array of data. They can also assist in sustainability initiatives (going paperless), open greater access to information (while still retaining control), help facilitate remote workplaces and reduce operating expenses.

Both perform the following functions:

• Centralize storage for content
• Simplify access and ability to search information
• Manage digital assets (content and/or documents)
• Provide security and control of content
• Help arrange and structure unorganized data
• Create, retain and distribute information
• Support version control and manage review trails
• Improve efficiency of any paper-intensive business process
• Provide data recovery
• Automate workflows

Both DMSs and ECMs can be either self-hosted (on or off premises) or cloud-based SaaS subscriptions.

ECM and DMS rich text editor advantage

The distinctions between an ECM and DMS are clear. What else affects the implementation or upgrade to an ECM or DMS within an organization? The rich text editor that’s embedded in the software solution.

Thanks again to Peter Drucker, we know quite a bit about productivity improvement. We know that in part, it’s due to innovation and shifting resources from old work habits and processes to new, more productive ones. The best technology can increase your knowledge workers’ productivity and in many cases increase the quality of their output.

That’s especially true when you use state-of-the-art content authoring components:

• Improve productivity
  A WYSIWYG editor experience reduces content creation time by 90%. Over a year, your users could save thousands of hours in their workflow.
• Increase engagement
  A WYSIWYG editor creates an experience that’s loved by administrators and content creators alike – with many reporting 85% increases in engagement and readability.
• Maximize developer output
  Comprehensive documentation and customizability allows developers to mold the best rich text editor components into a solution that perfectly fits their needs – saving up to six months' of developer time for each new feature.

WYSIWYG HTML text editor features for ECM and DMS

A WYSIWYG text editor transforms large time-consuming projects into easy manageable tasks and gives you total control over your rich text editing environment and outputs.

Whether you’re building or upgrading your rich text editor, ensure that your developers have:

• Full source code control for endless customizations
• The flexibility of either cloud-based API access or self-hosted
• The ability to prevent users from editing specific content areas
• A feature-rich DMS UI out-of-the-box
• Access to a 24/7 support team
• Well documented APIs
• Availability of (core) open source software that's extensible with advanced features
• Ability to work with emerging digital technologies such as web-native apps and systems.

Many knowledge workers now need anywhere, any time access to information, so your text editing environment needs to be that's optimized for mobile devices:

• Automatically adjusts to different size screens and devices
• Works across multiple popular web browsers without breaking the HTML
• Outputs HTML that’s consistent, despite the different ways users type and format text inside the editor.

A WYSIWYG editor includes easy to use, feature-rich options that enhance users efficiency and productivity:

• Clean, modern interface: a sleek intuitive UI that speeds work
• Clean, accurate copy-paste: content from Word, Excel, or GDocs that replicates its source, without breaking the underlying code or needing developer bug-fixes
• Ability to limit toolbar options: able to hide or disable options like HTML editing, font formatting, and font sizes to prevent straying from the default style formats defined
• Compliance checking: if accessibility is imperative for compliance, ensure your editor automatically spots and suggests fixes for issues before the document’s published
• Multi-language spell checking compatibility: the ability to add your product and brand terms to ensure all content creators spell and capitalize them correctly
• Templates: reusable, predesigned templates with your brand styles so that users can easily insert, edit and publish documents
• Easily pull styling and formatting: take formatting from another paragraph, document, or page and apply it to your selected text.