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In this opinion piece, Brian DeWyer, CTO and Co-Founder of Reveille Software, a provider of management and monitoring solutions for Intelligent Process Automation-based applications, outlines the key trends in Enterprise Content Management that are shaping the market and that companies should keep an eye on.
Virtually all businesses depend on Enterprise Content Management solutions (ECM software) to manage their document lifecycles. These solutions enable users to scan, capture, and store structured and unstructured data while streamlining workflows and improving data accuracy, security, and collaboration. As organizations scale, ECM becomes imperative for simplifying the growing content management responsibilities. According to Fortune Business Insights, the total ECM market was valued at $42.93 billion in 2024 and is expected to grow to $150.97 billion by 2032.
Proactive ECM monitoring, which can be thought of as intelligent automation observability, is the key to success. It enables organizations to have comprehensive visibility and control over their ECM environments, track vital metrics, and optimize content management. And it gets better: With zero footprint monitoring software, organizations can deploy a range of pre-built tests to ensure optimized systems where data is easily accessible to authorized users. With content access and security paramount to business processes, the reliance on ECM is growing and driving new initiatives. Because of this, companies need to keep their eyes on these top ECM trends shaping the market:
- Compliance and Security – Regulations like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) require organizations to prioritize their data security infrastructure to avoid penalties and fines. As a result, more businesses are turning to ECM systems for advanced automated security assistance. ECM observability tools help companies streamline data security and improve content management strategy by allowing for observation of the entire ECM environment performance—in real-time—to ensure it adheres to data regulations. Organizations with complex content management systems can leverage compliance and security features such as:
- a. Cloud Security Services: Cloud-based ECM solutions offer remote capabilities to help companies maintain data integrity through security, privacy, and monitoring tools.
- b. Encryption and Access Controls: ECM platforms protect corporate data in content management processes from unauthorized access.
- c. Audit Trails and Monitoring Tools: Businesses can gain in-depth insights into user behavior, suspicious activity, critical business documents accessed, edited, or shared, and similar activity to prevent breaches.
- No-code and Low-code ECM Solutions – Legacy ECM systems have required organizations to upskill or invest in expert coders. However, many low- and no-code ECM systems are available. These solutions allow companies to quickly and reliably develop and deploy custom applications without expert coding knowledge. This means that companies are likely to see increased user adoption and experience. ECM software reduces implementation, onboarding time, and costs and enables organizations to be flexible and agile.
- Sustainability – As businesses become more environmentally conscious, sustainability becomes essential. Without ECM software, organizations rely on paper-based processes, increasing their carbon footprint. ECM software helps organizations support environmental goals by digitizing content management workflows. It has been shown that sustainability benefits internal operations and influences how potential partners, customers, and associates perceive an enterprise. Recent statistics show:
- a. 92% of customers trust environmentally responsible businesses.
- b. Companies collectively receive $26 trillion in economic benefits when going green.
- c. Almost 70% of organizations that have green initiatives experience an increase in brand value.
- d. 63% of eco-friendly businesses experience increased revenue.
As such, ECM plays a significant role in digital transformation and influences how businesses impact the world. By enabling organizations to rely on automation and digitization, ECM software ensures companies contribute to the green movement.
- Cloud-based ECM Software – Cloud-based ECM solutions deliver flexibility, security, streamlined collaboration, and scalability. While ECM software and monitoring tools support various deployment methods, cloud platforms accelerate the adoption of ECM. On-premises solutions are often associated with high maintenance costs and low scalability. In contrast, cloud solutions leverage advanced technologies to simplify content management, optimize data security, and easily support cross-department collaboration. Cloud-based solutions also allow organizations to organize digital content, improve document storage, and maximize operational efficiency, as teams can easily access, share, and edit content.
- Automation – Automation helps enterprises streamline content and document management processes, including scanning, indexing, classifying, data extraction, and searching. In addition, it simplifies digital asset management and enterprise resource planning so organizations can focus on high-level tasks and eliminate the cost and inefficiencies associated with manual errors. Organizations can accelerate the development and deployment of applications and improve workflow performance.
- AI Integrations – Integrating with AI gives organizations all the advantages of machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), and predictive analytics for ECM. These capabilities combined allow in-depth visibility and control into ECM environments, delivering insights into user behavior, data security, and system performance. These AI functions automatically monitor ECM system health in real time and resolve issues before they evolve. Through one seamless integration, businesses achieve efficient content management and a comprehensive understanding of their ECM environments. AI integrations improve insights, data accuracy, and security.
- Security: Agentless Monitoring – The agentless monitoring for ECM prioritizes content security. Organizations can gain critical insights with metrics for content and document management, including:
- a. Transaction Count
- b. Transaction Type
- c. User Details
- d. Transaction Duration
- e. Transaction Information
- f. Transaction Date and Time
- g. Server and Client Details
These are key insights for protecting data. Automated ECM systems with effective observability management can restrict access to content if any rules or parameters are broken, mitigating the risk of a cyberattack.
Conclusion
The top market trends for ECM highlight that compliance, security, automation, sustainability, low-code and no-code solutions, AI integrations, and automation will shape the ECM market. Security, too, will play a critical role in ECM software, as these platforms must protect sensitive information and ensure that client and business data are protected against cyberattacks.
In the insurance world, ECM systems streamline workflows, managing claims forms and client data. Instead of manually uploading structured and unstructured data, ECM scans, indexes, and classifies information, making it accessible for business and clients. As a result, insurance companies resolve claims quicker, improve record management, and deliver optimized customer service. For pharmaceutical companies, which must maintain compliance standards, ECM systems simplify processes for managing structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data and enable swift and seamless collaboration between external and internal users. And throughout the processes, ECM solutions safeguard all personal information.
With ECM observability, organizations have in-depth visibility into system performance and health. As the ECM market grows, which is assured to, zero footprint observability and monitoring tools are imperative to optimize productivity, efficiency, and server health.
About the Author
Brian DeWyer is CTO and Co-Founder of Reveille Software. With more than 25 years of experience in technology, Brian DeWyer provides product strategy and technical leadership in his role as Reveille CTO and board member. Brian leverages his extensive knowledge from his tenure as a senior IT leader at Wachovia and previous role as a process consulting practice leader for IBM Global Services delivering on-premises and cloud-based solution implementations for Fortune 1000 commercial and government clients. He has led process change efforts within large organizations, building on content-driven solutions for high-volume transaction processing applications. He is a past board member of the Association of Image and Information Management (AIIM) industry association. Brian graduated from Virginia Tech with a BSME and holds an MBA from Wake Forest University.
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