Efficient Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions are the cornerstone of digital transformation, offering organizations a comprehensive solution to manage, organize, and leverage their vast repositories of business content.
From effective document management to workflow automation, the OpenText Extended ECM for SAP (aka SAP ECM) platform centralizes content and empowers organizations to streamline operations, enhance collaboration, and ensure on a more agile and digitized future.
In this article, we explore the key features and capabilities of the ECM module, how it transforms the way companies access and manage critical business documents, and where our team of expert SAP consultants can come in to help.
What is ECM for SAP Solutions?
SAP Enterprise Content Management (ECM), also called OpenText Extended ECM for SAP solutions, is a comprehensive enterprise content management solution designed to help users manage any type of unstructured business content and associate it with existing SAP data, objects, or transactions.
With SAP’s Enterprise Content Management tools, organizations can:
- Improve enterprise content management for better decisions and action plans
- Reduce risk of noncompliance by leveraging improved data privacy and security measures
- Optimize omnichannel customer experiences
- Increase operational efficiency and agility by eliminating critical data silos
- Reduce total cost of ownership and other asset operating costs
Understanding SAP Extended ECM for SAP
The SAP ECM solution provides a critical link between unstructured content and business applications across the SAP landscape, enabling users to optimize their core business processes and improve overall business context by storing all unstructured and structured data in one unified platform.
By extending content services into an organization’s core technical environment, the SAP ECM module enables users to digitize their most critical SAP business processes and enhance content and records management for documents, emails, and content from other SAP business objects.
With OpenText Extended ECM for SAP, companies can facilitate robust integrations with other critical enterprise solutions, such as SAP S/4HANA, SAP SuccessFactors, Microsoft Office, and Salesforce, to further improve connectivity and transparency across their entire SAP software landscape.
Key Capabilities of SAP Enterprise Content Management
Here’s a closer look at a few key features of the ECM SAP module for business users:
Document Capture
By leveraging ECM functionality, SAP customers can support critical scanning hardware and other enterprise systems and manage critical document scanning requirements through image enhancements and automated metadata tagging capabilities.
The SAP ECM module also enables organizations to ensure data consistency and improve future readability by automatically transferring content from non-SAP documents into standardized formats.
Document Management
OpenText Extended ECM for SAP offers comprehensive document management capabilities that enable users to connect any kind of enterprise content with existing business processes to access, manage, and share SAP content more effectively across an intelligent enterprise landscape.
This way, users can access the content they need whenever and wherever they need it, ensuring data accuracy and consistency through access control, version control, and audit trail capabilities.
Records Management
The Extended ECM platform for SAP provides certified records management capabilities that span multiple SAP and third-party solutions and enable users to manage electronic and paper documents throughout their entire lifecycle.
With ECM in SAP, users can outline retention periods and disposition policies, create document classification plans, and place objects scheduled for destruction on hold as needed.
Content Access Management
SAP ECM extends content services throughout SAP and third-party systems, enabling users to extract business documents from any location to ensure data consistency, improve business process efficiency, and create process-oriented, virtual workflow views directly in their SAP landscape.
Enterprise Content Archiving
Extended ECM for SAP solutions enables users to archive critical ECM and SAP content in a common archive store and identify duplicate content instances to reduce data redundancy and duplication.
Users can also transfer existing business content to unchangeable storage media, time-stamp it, and retain critical audit trails within the archive store to improve operational efficiency and decision-making.
Process Collaboration
With integrations between the SAP ECM module and Microsoft Office 365, companies can support collaboration across teams and platforms, access critical co-editing capabilities, and facilitate better connection through Microsoft Teams integration.
Extended ECM for SAP solutions also allows users to leverage intelligent business workspace capabilities to ensure accurate business data, reuse enterprise content, and improve internal collaboration across the entire SAP landscape.
Main Advantages of OpenText Extended ECM for SAP
Let’s take a look at a few critical benefits of SAP ECM for SAP customers:
Improved Efficiency
By automating manual tasks and improving content access and collaboration across teams, the ECM SAP module makes it easier for companies to improve efficiency throughout their lead applications and other enterprise content management tools and accelerate overall cycle times.
Streamlined Business Processes
SAP’s Extended ECM platform for SAP solutions allows organizations to extend content services into their foundational technical environment and access a 360-degree view of structured and unstructured information in a single, unified interface.
This way, users can access, view, and manage critical electronic content in context without switching between applications, thus streamlining innovation, digitizing value chains, and improving productivity.
Comprehensive Insight
Companies can leverage integrated data and intelligent content analytics functions to deliver deeper insight into supplier, product, customer, and asset performance and improve overall decision-making.
Centralized Business Content
The ECM module ensures users are working with accurate and up-to-date content by providing a centralized repository for all business content from multiple business applications, business models, and data sources.
Reduced Compliance Risk
By automatically applying metadata and other document requirements to existing business content without end-user intervention, the ECM solution enables users to improve content management and mitigate compliance risk.
How Can We Help?
Whether you need help implementing SAP solutions for the first time, additional support enabling point-to-point document attachment inside SAP transactions, or just an extra hand getting started on your SAP journey, Surety Systems is here to help.
Our senior-level, US-based SAP consultant team has the knowledge, skills, and experience to handle your most critical project needs and help you achieve continued success over time.
Getting Started with Our Team
Interested in learning how OpenText Extended ECM for SAP solutions can improve transparency for critical structured and unstructured information? Ready to get started on a project with our team of expert SAP consultants?
Contact us today for more information!
