Once you truly take control of content ENTERPRISE content management (ECM) solutions became popular a decade ago. Unfortunately, ECM has remained focused mainly on subsets of content for content specialists, and rarely makes it across the enterprise, the Global IT Knowledge Forum (GITKF) reports.

This is about to change, as is the acronym. Electronic records management (ERM) takes the useful concepts behind ECM and implements them in ways that allow companies to respond to three new priorities: business risk, compliance and legal discovery. In the process, reports GITKF, content management will finally benefit the entire enterprise.

"A good ERM system makes it easy to share, search, and collaborate on content. It offers intuitive user interfaces in desktop, portal, and business applications.

"It does not change they way users work, but blends functionality into familiar environments. And it is cheap to manage, cheap to run and fully scalable ecause once you truly take control of content, there will soon be terabytes to deal with and everyone will want instant access to it," the site reports.

According to Colman Murphy of Xerox Docushare Business Unit: "Follow these six steps: Identify document-intensive processes in key departments and start there.

"Find immediate cost-savings by replacing hardcopy document storage with an ERM system. Gain the support of the IT department by including ERM with ECM deployments.

"Select a solution that is easy to acquire, easy to deploy and easy to use. Make sure the pilot is considered a success before rolling out the ERM to a larger audience. Finally, demo the pilot to other departments and invite their participation."