5 Reasons Your Company Needs an Enterprise Content Management System (EMCS)

An Enterprise Content Management Software (ECMS) offers many advantages, from centralizing business processes and information management to maximizing data security and compliance. In this blog article, we discuss some of the most important benefits of an integrated ECMS and examine why your company might want to implement one.

1. Gain a helicopter view of your content processes

With a helicopter view, we mean the ability to view your project’s content status easily and fast.

The problem: silos of information

Document management, Risk Management, Action Tracking, Project Planning & Cost Management… How many different software packages that support business processes or business functions are running within your company? Most likely more than you would expect. Typically, all of these run independently of each other, and that eventually leads to information silos.

If there are too many different software applications used within your company, you lack a central access point to view critical company information. Utilizing several different software applications not only leads to spending more time managing them, but it can also make you prone to make more errors, lose sight of details, reduce efficiency, and generally have your growth process slowed down.

The solution: centralization and optimization

By adopting integrated ECMS software, such as our ECLIPSE Software Suite, you can replace a large part of any existing decentralized software systems and cut down on the time you spend managing them. This also allows you to gain a better understanding of how your company functions. What does this mean? You simply gain comprehensive and real-time insights into which aspects of your business operations are going smoothly and which weak areas might need attention and improvement.

By integrating different software silos together in one Content Management Software, all company information can be found in one system: a single source that everyone, whether that is your employees or your supply chain, has access to. It can be safe to say that the better job you do at centralizing your content, the more control you gain over it, and eventually, you can optimize it better to ensure success.

2. Improve efficiency and cut down on costs

Everybody wants to get more done, and a CMS system is the way to cut costs for everybody involved.

The problem: a waste of resources

In addition to the lack of clarity and information silos, the biggest disadvantage of multiple applications or software systems within a company is a quite apparent one: the time and resources required to manage and maintain them.

Accessing information from different applications can become very tedious. Not only will your employees spend more time and effort extracting or transferring data from one application to another, but manual data extraction can always lead to human errors. The result? Your company will end up spending more time on administration than on work, which adds value.

Another issue of a decentralized business management approach that should be mentioned is the lack of flexibility. Any changes in one part of a project or business operation will most likely affect other aspects. What this means is that your teams will have to make sure that changes are implemented consistently across different platforms.

Lastly, while a decentralized IT environment can be functional for a while, the cost of its ownership remains high, raising the obvious question: How maintainable is it?

The solution: an integrated platform

An integrated CMS such as ECLIPSE Suite minimizes all of the above issues. It eliminates the need for manual data extraction and transfer and allows you to respond easily to changes or additional processes.

With IT no longer having to procure, install, and maintain multiple systems and their various integrations, operational costs can be significantly reduced, and IT time can be spent improving business operations.

Being highly customizable also enables your teams to activate additional modules at any time. Adjustments are made quickly through centralized administration and configuration, and for those dedicated third-party applications you must have separately, integration is possible through efficient APIs. All in all, hidden costs and lost time are minimized, and your team’s productivity increases as operations become smoother.

3. Improve security & compliance

Ensuring the security and compliance of your data is crucial, especially in large projects where the risk of vulnerabilities is high.

The problem: more vulnerability points and errors

Data is everywhere in your business. Safeguarding this data should be your top priority, especially for large projects. Decentralized content simply creates multiple risks, as you have to keep checking security.

In addition, if your projects require a certain level of standard compliance, keeping up with those standards and maintaining them across many platforms can be time-consuming and, again, leave you exposed to errors or other threats.

The solution: a trusted, automated software suite

Valued and trusted integrated CMS systems, such as our ECLIPSE Suite, will help you keep your data safe and deliver all the compliance controls in the background or as automated process flows. Examples of that include audit logs, electronic ‘read and approved signatures,’ secure action management tasks, documentation version control, and many more features that ensure that you are compliant with standards and securely restrict access to data sets. By managing information security centrally, you can control policies, procedures, and data flow, ensuring that confidentiality, integrity, and data availability are always considered.

Growth brings success, but it always comes with a price: complexity. The larger your organization becomes, the more evident the need for streamlining your processes becomes. Especially when it comes to projects that involve a large amount of data, stakeholders, and review cycles, easy access and a clear pathway for information flow become imperative. Even if your company is in its early stages, if your vision is set on growth, laying the groundwork for a smooth business function should be your priority.

4. Enhance content consistency and quality

Maintaining a consistent and high-quality standard, whether created by a project manager, quality manager, or engineer, is crucial for quality.

The problem: inconsistent versioning and poor quality control

Managing content across different platforms without a centralized system often leads to inconsistencies and poor quality control. Different teams may use varying styles and formats, creating an inconsistent user experience. Moreover, without proper workflows and templates, the content might be published with errors, missing approvals, and based on the wrong version.

The solution: templates and a fixed system

A CMS like the ECLIPSE Suite provides tools to standardize content creation and ensure quality control. With features like standardized templates, deadlines, collaborative editing, quality control, and rigidity, your content will consistently meet your standards.

5. Streamline data management and collaboration

Efficient data management and collaboration are essential for engineering companies handling large and complex projects.

The problem: fragmented data and inefficient collaboration

Engineering projects often involve large volumes of data and require collaboration among multiple teams. Without a centralized system, data can become fragmented across different platforms, making it difficult to access and manage. Additionally, collaboration can be hampered by version conflicts and a lack of real-time communication tools.

The solution: proper workflow management

An ECMS like the ECLIPSE Suite provides a centralized data repository, version control, collaboration tools, and access control features. These capabilities improve data management. By consolidating data and improving collaboration, your engineering projects can run more smoothly and efficiently.

Discover the ECLIPSE Software Suite

Our ECLIPSE Software Suite is a CMS with a proven track record of supporting the project and mission management of several space organizations at different stages of growth for more than 10 years. Offering a streamlined user experience and centralized project insights with real-time dashboards and reports, the ECLIPSE Software Suite can provide a secure and trusted environment for your business and project management needs.

Contact our experts today to learn how ECLIPSE Suite can support your company by integrating processes and helping you reduce the operating costs of disparate software packages and platforms.