The dilemma of enterprise content management

Superior ECM systems provide tools that help organizations deal with the dilemma of managing enormous amounts of information in a data-driven business world.

Too much information

Each day, the world creates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data¹ – and the speed with which data is created is increasing exponentially². It’s estimated that by 2025, the amount of digital data worldwide will hit 163 ZB³.

Dark data

Of all the information in data repositories, more than 50% of it is considered “dark data.”⁴ This is information that is uncategorized and unknown to the organization, rendering it completely useless. This results in extra expense for storing data that will never be used. But it also represents wasted opportunities, as dark data may hold valuable insight or business intelligence that can’t be accessed.

Unstructured content

It’s estimated that 80% to 90% of organizational data is unstructured⁵ and in a wide range of formats, making it difficult to search and analyze. From videos, graphics and images to presentations, email, social content and websites, this unstructured content is difficult to store and even harder to retrieve unless companies have a way of organizing it effectively.

Waste of time

Information workers spend as much as 30% of each day searching for documents with little success⁶. ECM software that can eliminate these time-wasting activities can help companies significantly improve productivity while reducing costs.

Metadata: the secret to managing enterprise content

M-Files offers an enterprise content management solution with a unique approach to organizing content that overcomes all the obstacles of content management today. Rather than focusing on where data is stored, M-Files tags documents with metadata that makes them easy to find no matter where they live within disparate systems, platforms or data silos.

A file’s metadata might describe anything from the type of document it is, the customer it pertains to, important dates within the document, what the status of the document is and what needs to happen to it next. Metadata essentially converts unstructured data into structured content that can be searched for and found in context.

Because files with metadata can live anywhere in the organization – in network folders, SharePoint, CRM platforms or other business systems – M-Files doesn’t require documents to be migrated to a central repository. Rather, M-Files leaves documents exactly where they are and creates connections to provide a single, unified view of content within the organization. AI-powered technology automatically searches for and finds documents, analyzes them to extract information and tags them with metadata that makes them more visible and easily found.

The result is an enterprise content management system where employees no longer need to spend hours each day searching for content, and where organizations can easily see all the information assets under their control.