ECM vs CMS: what’s the difference?

Acronyms: the tech world loves them. ECM, CMS, DMS, CSP, CRM, PLM, ERP, and the list goes on and on. With so many of them floating around, things can get a bit confusing.

What’s even more confusing is when the terms they stand for are similar. Two prime examples of this are ECM (Enterprise Content Management) and CMS (Content Management System). While both terms contain “content management,” they apply content management with different primary goals.

The good news is that the high-level difference between the two systems is relatively straightforward.

ECM vs. CMS: The Big Difference

In the simplest terms, ECM, or Enterprise Content Management, focuses on business content, including documents: their organization, management and control, together with the processes for creating, modifying, validating and publishing content. AODocs is an example of an ECM platform.

ECM supports the management and governance of business content, including controls for document processes and records. Organizations must configure and operate those controls against their contractual and regulatory requirements; the software does not itself establish compliance.

On the other hand, a CMS, or a Content Management System, is a tool for creating, managing and publishing content, including images and videos, on your web pages. An example of a CMS is WordPress. This type of software exists to provide an easy way for non-technical users to create and publish web content.

Now that we’ve established their differences, let’s take a closer look at what makes each of these platforms tick.

Enterprise Content Management: What is it?

As we previously touched on, ECM is any technology that captures, organizes, stores, and delivers unstructured information and content related to an organization’s processes.

It’s about controlling your documents and includes everything from business processes and retention to traceability and compliance, as well as everything in between that helps streamline your business-critical processes.

There are a few key ECM features that help evaluate content-governance requirements:

• Document organization: ECM adds structure and metadata to your documents so that they’re easier to locate and makes it possible to configure rules so you can automate access permissions, retention periods, and validation paths for your documents.
• Document Protection: ECM can provide access controls, version history and retention configuration. Their coverage depends on the product and deployment. Test protection against unauthorized changes, retention behavior and collaboration access against your organization's requirements.
• Business processes implementation: From approval workflows to document creation, review and publication, an ECM platform can support configured document processes. Integration with CRM, ERP or PLM systems requires validation of the specific interface, permissions and error handling.
• Traceability: Evaluate which operations and access events the deployment records, how long the records remain available and who can alter them. Audit-trail coverage depends on configuration and must be checked against the requirements that apply to the process.

Do you feel like you have a better understanding of Enterprise Content Management? We sure hope so! Now, let’s switch gears and take an in-depth look into CMS.

Content Management System: What is it?

A CMS is any technology that helps the user create and modify digital content on your intranet or public web pages. If you’ve ever used a website builder, you’re probably familiar with CMS capabilities.

A CMS can include publishing controls and administration functions that overlap with an ECM platform. Compare the exact products and configured workflows rather than assuming a universal hierarchy. Security and support requirements should be evaluated for both.

Some of the key features of a CMS include:

• One-to-one marketing: A personalization assessment should examine whether the site's content matches its intended readers. Some CMS deployments support personalization through configured tools or extensions. Evaluate those functions and any data-processing requirements rather than inferring that personalization is included in every CMS.
• SEO tools: A CMS can expose fields and tools for URLs, metadata, titles and image descriptions, depending on the product and configuration. Those controls support publishing and SEO work; they do not guarantee higher search rankings. Analytics also requires the selected tools to be configured and verified.
• Customizable Templates: If you’ve ever used a CMS, you may be familiar with choosing templates from an existing library and customizing them, or building your own with features like drag-and-drop boxes. Not only can customizable templates help you achieve the look and feel you want of your web pages but also offer automated widgets and add-ons, like dropdown lists, to improve efficiency.

Feeling a little better about what makes a CMS a CMS? Great!

The Bottom Line

While this overview only scratches the surface of the differences between and key features of ECM and CMS, it’s essential information to know upfront when searching for a content management solution.

A replacement assessment can separate document governance from intranet or web publishing. Depending on the requirements, the proposed environment might combine an ECM platform with tools such as LumApps or Google Sites. Test the required SharePoint functions and integrations before treating that combination as a complete replacement.

Whatever you choose, you now have a solid foundation to start your research and find the solutions that are right for you.