Generally a CMS provides features to manage web content, and an ECM will take these features and facilities further by extending them into different areas (Document imaging, Document management, Records management, Digital asset management, Workflow management)
CMS - Content Management System
The mid 90's saw the rise of the first WCM (Web Content Management) solutions. They allowed for non-technical users to contribute content to the web via templates. The hype cooled down quickly for several reasons: too costly, long implementation cycles, bad user experience.... This was also due to the rise of a new phenomenon: the CMS.
CMS offers advanced front-end functionalities like Front-end user management, Blogs, Wiki, Front-end search, WYSIWYG web-editing.
A Content Management System software supports common development, editing and organization of content mostly in websites, but also in other media forms. These can consist of text and multimedia documents. An author with access rights can use such a system in many cases with little programming or HTML knowledge, as the majority of the systems have a graphical user interface.
ECM - Enterprise Content Management
The powerful enterprise content management software captures, manages, and archives all business-relevant information in the enterprise.
Enterprise content management (ECM) systems help companies to organize, manage and distribute unstructured content, such as documents, images, health or accounting records, surveys, product information, emails and web pages.
Employees at every level of the organization can access and exchange information using ECM software based on user privileges assigned by a system administrator, which streamlines the lifecycle of information and automates various business processes using embedded workflow.
Summary
- Important to know: there exist solutions which combine the challenge of digital transformation with a content management system. Take your company to the next level and prepare it for the ongoing changing technology environment.
- On the web 2.0 / enterprise 2.0 / social media front, a CMS might offer you the ability to build features into a website, whereas an ECM system usually offers web or rich clients to allow users to collaborate around the content in the ECM repository.
- If you are still using a Web Content Management System - think about a change. Prepare your company for the future!