The editors at Solutions Rever have compiled the following list to spotlight some of the best free and open-source content management platforms in the marketplace.

Content Management Systems (CMS) are a crucial software category for businesses of every size and industry. And with good reason, considering everyone on the Internet has interacted with a CMS, even if they weren’t aware of it. These systems help companies create, edit, organize, publish, and manage digital content with tools for digital asset management, content collaboration, website building, and role-based content management. With a CMS, businesses can improve how they manage their websites and content without relying on a full-time team of content developers and coders.

Even free and open-source content management tools are available, which can help growing businesses, SMBs, enterprises, and everything in between boost their content management efforts. Some of these solutions are offered by vendors looking to sell you on their enterprise product. Others are maintained and operated by a community of developers looking to democratize content management.

With that in mind, the Solutions Review editors have compiled the following list of leading open-source content management platforms to consider implementing into your company’s tech stack.

Free Content Management Tools Defined

Free content management software refers to commercially free products by a solution provider. These offerings are usually trimmed-down versions of the expert or enterprise editions, offering basic functionality that enables users to manage their content. Commercially free content management tools typically offer less functionality than their open-source counterparts. Still, they are often a great way to gain more than a free trial if it’s a product you were already considering.

What is Open-Source Content Management?

Open-source content management platforms have a source code that anyone can inspect, modify, or enhance. These tools are designed to be publicly accessible and are commonly managed and maintained by organizations with a specific mission in mind. The open-source content management platforms included in this list are surprisingly full-featured, offering various capabilities for various users.

It’s important to remember that some of the open-source offerings included in this list require some development skills, which may make them less than ideal for your use case. We recommend reading each tool’s FAQ to see how much coding is required to take advantage of the software. The open-source tools usually do a good job of explaining the requirements for use on the download pages.

The Top Free and Open-Source Content Management Platforms

Hyland Alfresco

Description: Alfresco provides open-source technology that enables businesses to collaborate more effectively across cloud, hybrid, and on-premise environments. The provider’s content services platform can also be customized and integrated with existing applications and processes. Alfresco’s platform is built on an open-source core with support for various deployment options, including on-prem, cloud, and hybrid-cloud configurations. Users can also expand their solution to include Alfresco Process Services.

Concrete CMS

Description: Concrete CMS is an open-source content management system tailored to the needs of teams. Its applications include web content management, e-commerce, human resource portals, hosting, digital asset management, product portals, multi-site management, and more. Concrete CMS best suits content creators and developers in the banking, finance, manufacturing, education, healthcare, and government markets.

Drupal

Description: Drupal’s open-source CMS is recommended to users comfortable with HTML, CSS, and PHP. The platform is ideal for building a database-driven website that needs to be fast and customizable and provides a developer-friendly CMS environment that can act as a blank canvas. The solution offers over 30,000 extendable modules and more than 2,000 unique themes to assist with site-building. It also has custom solutions for marketers, developers, and agencies, so users can access the tools they need for their business goals.

ExpressionEngine

Description: ExpressionEngine is a flexible and secure open-source CMS capable of building sites, managing content, storing data, and more. Its features include front-end editing, multi-site management, custom field types, entry cloning, user management, one-click software updates, live content previews, a discussion forum module, a marketplace of add-ons, and more. ExpressionEngine also provides a collection of consent and privacy tools to streamline GDPR compliance, cookie consent implementation, and security management.

HubSpot

Description: HubSpot offers various capabilities centered around marketing, sales, customer service, content management, and operations. With HubSpot’s CMS offering, marketers, developers, and IT teams can develop seamless digital experiences for their customers. The free version of its CMS comes with free premium hosting, visual editing features, seamless integration with HubSpot’s CRM, a website analytics dashboard, drag-and-drop page editing, a library of themes, custom domains, blog maker tools, pre-built website templates, and more.

Joomla

Description: Joomla is a free, open-source content management system (CMS) for publishing web content. The platform is built on a model–view–controller web application framework, which can be used independently of the CMS, allowing users to develop online applications. It has a suite of SEO tools, a flexible framework, over 8,000 extensions, menu management, cache management, template design, native front-end content editing, content publishing, custom fields, native integration of multiple languages, and more.

SilverStripe

Description: SilverStripe is a flexible, extensible, and open-source CMS designed to help businesses create valuable customer experiences. The system is tailored to the needs of digital teams across the developer, marketing, and IT departments. Features include enterprise-level security tools, drag-and-drop editing, search engine optimization, workflow management, and a web software development kit that enables users to create fields, data structures, page types, and logic.

TYPO3

Description: TYPO3’s CMS is a free, open-source, and enterprise-level platform published under the GPL license. Companies can use the platform to connect to customers, develop memorable digital experiences, and remain competitive without paying for expensive software. Those capabilities include smart content management, multilingual installations, a universal front-end user experience, enterprise scalability, content authoring, digital marketing features, enterprise-level vendor support, asset management, customizable design, content scheduling, and open, adaptable architecture.

Wix

Description: Wix’s free website builder platform is equipped with enterprise-grade infrastructure, website design tools, customizable templates, and other business features to help users grow online. Its toolset includes hundreds of designer-made website templates, a drag-and-drop builder, a whole stack of web development tools, search engine optimization, custom domain names, enterprise-grade security, secure web hosting, custom design tools, and more. Companies can also utilize Wix ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) to create a personalized website with custom images and text.

WordPress

Description: WordPress is one of the market’s most well-known content management systems. Users of all experience levels can use its accessible web publishing software to create websites, blogs, newsletters, and digital experiences. The company offers a suite of products to individuals, small businesses, and enterprises alongside an extensive collection of plug-ins and apps that enable users to customize their sites even further. It’s also available in a Free version, allowing companies of all sizes to create engaging websites at no cost.

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In a note to clients, research analyst firm, Gartner Inc. recently announced that it is retiring the Web Content Management Magic Quadrant. Additionally, the companion “Critical Capabilities” report will also no longer be released. The reason for this, according to Gartner, is that the Web Content Management (WCM) market “has reached its maturity with products becoming more homogenized…Client demand has been shifting from WCM to the broader scope of DXP (Digital Experience Platforms).” 

Does the end of the Web Content Management Magic Quadrant mean the end of WCM altogether? In short, no; providers will, of course, continue to offer WCM platforms. However, retiring an industry report that has been coming out for 20 years is significant. 

In a press statement, Irina Guseva, one of the authors of the former WCM Magic Quadrant and senior research director focusing on WCM and DXP said, “it’s not the death of WCM. It’s the birth of WCM to a new definition of a content management system. Because now it’s not only the web, obviously, that we need to tackle when you have Alexa, chatbots, and different devices, modalities, and channels. Content is not dying. It’s just turning into an original idea of a content management system that’s intended for different content types and now for different channels.”

This change comes on the heels of Gartner’s 2017 shift from “Enterprise Content Management” to “Content Services Platforms.” The difference between ECM and content services boils down to a centralized approach versus a more universal one. The goal of ECM is to accomplish a range of operational goals through the use of a single centralized platform. On the other side, content services are meant to improve efficiency by relying on multiple strategies and tools. The reason for that change, (the evolution of content and technology as a whole,) directly relates to Guseva’s comment on the end of the WCM Magic Quadrant.

Because today, a larger number are consuming content outside of a website, there have been significant changes in the approach to content delivery. This has resulted in native content management capabilities expanding into the DXP space, practitioners wanting WCM technology built on Mesh App and Service Architecture (MASA), microservices, serverless, and containerized architectures.

Guseva continued, stating, “the interest in buying ‘WCM only’ is declining, and when [buyers] do come to that decision, it’s very hard for them to differentiate between all these vendors and products. There are thousands and thousands of them. And that leads to the homogenization of WCM features and functions. Our analytics show us the general interest in inquiries and readership for WCM is declining and the interest in DXPs is increasing.”

The end of the WCM Magic Quadrant does not mean that WCM will suddenly disappear; WCM platforms will be necessary for a long time. Though DXP tools may offer a wider range of functionality, they might not offer the same specificity that WCM products can provide customers.

In its note to clients, Gartner stated that it will be replacing this Magic Quadrant with a Gartner Market Guide, which will offer coverage on the WCM market but not to the same extent as a Magic Quadrant. The Market Guide will potentially be released in July.

To learn more, click here.

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Analyst house Gartner, Inc., recently released the 2019 version of its

Gartner has projected that by 2022, 20 percent of businesses will deploy content services that have evolved from a Content Collaboration Platform (CCP) for digital business requirements, rather than a content services platform. Additionally, the current revenue growth rate for the CCP market will likely significantly decrease from 34 percent in order to match the CSP market’s growth rate of 8 percent.

In this Magic Quadrant, Gartner evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of 18 providers that it considers most significant in the marketplace and provides readers with a graph (the Magic Quadrant) plotting the vendors based on their ability to execute and their completeness of vision. The graph is divided into four quadrants: niche players, challengers, visionaries, and leaders. At Solutions Review, we read the report, available here, and pulled out the key takeaways.

This Magic Quadrant for Content Services Platforms features some changeover, as a few providers from the previous year were added and dropped. AODocs, iManage, and NetDocuments all made their debut in this report in the niche players section, while GRM Information Management, Fabasoft, and Oracle were all dropped.

The leader category of this Magic Quadrant is largely the same as last year, with the exception of the addition of Box. Box barely managed to make it into the leader category but improved its ability to execute and graduated from its 2018 visionary status. IBM, Hyland, OpenText, and Microsoft all retained their leader status. Hyland’s offerings now include intelligent data capture, document generation, and content collaboration, extending its capabilities beyond some of its competitors. IBM is also praised for having one of the strongest sets of features on the market, cementing its leader status. Additionally, OpenText has expanded its SaaS and PaaS presence, which likely contributed to its positioning. 

M-Files and Nuxeo are the only visionaries in this year’s report, maintaining their positions from the previous year. M-Files’ placement is possibly due to its Intelligent Metadata Layer features, which allows users to consolidate a multivendor content ecosystem. Nuxeo’s platform offers a flexible architecture that includes federation capabilities to draw in content from other sources. In the past year, Objective and Box were also visionaries.

The niche player section of the graph is the most populous this year, as all of the new vendors were placed in this category. Micro Focus, DocuWare, and Everteam all remained niche players, while Objective shifted to this section. DocuWare’s placement is likely due to its specific focus on small to midsized clients, while Micro Focus and Objective’s status are possibly caused by the providers’ key vertical markets, such as government and life sciences. Everteam is particularly strong in the Middle East, cementing its niche player status. AODocs and NetDocuments offer true SaaS solutions, which provide a continually evolving platform in the cloud. Additionally, iManage likely earned its niche player status because of its robust document management functionality. 

The challengers remained the same as the previous year, with the exception of Oracle, which was not present in this Magic Quadrant. Alfresco likely stayed a challenger because of its global third-party partner ecosystem. Additionally, Laserfiche offers strong records management and governance capabilities, which likely contributed to its placement. Newgen Software offers a range of solutions that are tailored to certain industries and to horizontal use cases. Finally, SER’s placement is possibly due to its combination of rich content services, federation, and native AI.

This year, Gartner also named three honorable mentions, which are EISOO, Easy Software, and ASG.

Read Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Content Services Platforms.

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The tech research giant explains that the enterprise content management (ECM) space is evolving into content services platforms (CSP).  Gartner defines content services as: “A set of services or microservices, embodied either as an integrated product suite or as separate applications, which share common APIs and repositories, to exploit diverse content types and to server multiple constituencies and numerous use cases across an organization.”

Some key takeaways from this report include the following:

• Content is being reused, as opposed to duplicated, more often.
• The need to move content from application to application is becoming less relevant as out-of-the-box integrations and APIs evolve.
• As cloud-based repositories become more widely used, the number of people with access to content is increasing, which may lead to more threats.

Gartner suggests that enterprises start integrating current content repositories by utilizing out-of-the-box connectors and API sets, knowing the threat levels linked to everyone with access to repositories and generating a culture of reuse.

The four vendors included in the report are ActiveWrite, Quark, Votiro and Xillio. Gartner says these vendors were included given that they “displayed innovative offerings in the realms of content creation, automation, integration and protection that can extend how content is accessed across repositories in a secure and compliant manner.”

Let’s take a closer look at each vendor:

ActiveWrite

This provider was named cool because it enables editing, granular viewing and refreshing of document sessions in a collaborative document authoring interface, according to the report. More than one concurrent user can edit a document in a single web-based editor. It also offers granular control over the editing, branching, viewing, and refreshing of documents. This is a SaaS offering built on Amazon Web Services (AWS) storage, but it can be deployed with other storage methods or on-premises.

This is a small private firm, so scalability could be an issue along with support.

Quark Enterprise Solutions

The Quark Content Automation platform was named cool given that it offers an object-oriented approach to the production, discovery and management of content. The tool automates the standardization of content and streamlines manual processes. It also focuses on supporting internal business processes and interactions with clients.

Authoring is limited with this tool and plug-ins for Microsoft Office applications like PowerPoint, APIs and data connectors help with in-line editing, but may not meet the standards of every business.

Votiro

Votiro is considered cool because its content disarm and reconstruction technology enables businesses to handle threats to content through exploit neutralization. Votiro products use an active cleansing process for new files and can neutralize both unknown and zero-day exploits. This technology can be integrated into any customized, content-based application to provide additional security. It can also be integrated with main content repositories and applied to a variety of use cases, according to the report. These products can be deployed on the ground, in the cloud or as a hybrid of both.

Many enterprises are implementing content cloud services, but are unaware of the possible risks that come along with undisclosed or zero-day exploits that could come from those content services, the report stated.

Xillio

Xillio made the cut because it offers technology for integration between content services platforms and a wide variety of existing content repositories, Gartner reported. The vendor also provides an enterprise content middleware layer for data integration. The tool is mostly embedded into other products or utilized to integrate several content sources into app development projects, according to the report.

Keep in mind that Xillio is a small company and their approach is not unique, Gartner stated.

Click here for the entire report.

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According to Gartner, content services platforms are the “next stage of enterprise content management, representing a shift from self-contained systems and repositories to open services.” By 2020, about 20 percent of major EFSS and ECM providers will transform what they currently offer and provide content services platforms, the report stated. In that same time frame, 15 percent of enterprises will have switched from a legacy ECM vendor to a provider that “offers consumerlike content services.”

A content services platform is “a set of services and microservices, embodied either as an integrated product suite or as separate applications that share common APIs and repositories, to exploit diverse content types and to serve multiple constituencies and numerous use cases across an organization,” according to the report. 

Nineteen vendors were included in the quadrant and then placed into four different categories based on various criteria including ability to execute and completeness of vision.

Leaders

• Microsoft
• Open Text
• Hyland

Visionaries

• M-Files
• Nuxeo
• SER Group
• Box

Challengers

• IBM
• Oracle
• Alfresco
• Laserfiche

Niche Players

• Newgen Software
• Micro Focus
• iManage
• Fabasoft
• Everteam
• Objective
• DocuWare
• Comarch

There are seven newcomers in this report including Box, Comarch, DocuWare, Fabasoft, iManage, Micro Focus, and Nuxeo. Three vendors included in the last Magic Quadrant for ECM were dropped from this report: Dell EMC, Lexmark and Xerox.

Let’s take a quick look at all the vendors that were included:

Alfresco

Alfresco is headquartered in both Maidenhead, U.K., and San Mateo, California. The provider offers an open-source approach and extensive APIs to help clients easily customize content services.

Box

Box has been around since 2005 and is headquartered in Redwood City, California. The public company offers two products: Box, a suite of CSP features and user interfaces along with Box Platform, a cloud-native API for transferring content services to enterprise systems.

Comarch

Comarch is headquartered in Krakow, Poland. Comarch CSP was unveiled in 2008 and includes a wide variety of content-related capabilities and solutions for various verticals. It can be deployed on-prem or in the cloud.

DocuWare

DocuWare is headquartered in Germering, Germany. It boasts several CSP tools including DocuWare for document capture and management, DocuWare Intelligent Indexing, and DocuWare Workflow for business processing. All three can be deployed on-prem or in a multitenant cloud built on a Microsoft Azure infrastructure.

Everteam

Everteam is based in Lyon, France and has a U.S. regional headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts. Its CSP suite features everteam.document, everteam.capture, everteam.case, everteam.records, everteam.archive, everteam.process and everteam.analytics. It can be deployed on the ground or as a SaaS-based cloud service.

Fabasoft

Fabasoft is based in Austria and offers two on-prem CSP tools, Fabasoft Folio and Fabasoft eGov-Suite, along with the Fabasoft Cloud, a Europe-based cloud product. The Fabasoft platform is an integrated solution that can help with the entire document lifecycle and the management of digital records, according to the report.

Hyland

Hyland is headquartered in Ohio and is privately owned. The company’s flagship product, OnBase, provides various content capabilities. The vendor also offers ShareBase, which streamlines internal and external collaborations. OnBase is available as on-prem server software or SaaS.

IBM

IBM is headquartered in New York and offers a variety of global content services products, including Content Foundation, Content Manager OnDemand (CMOD), Datacap, Enterprise Records, Connections Enterprise Content Edition, Watson Explorer Enterprise Edition and Case Manager. All of their products can either be deployed on-prem or in the cloud.

iManage

iManage is based in Chicago, Illinois and focuses on marketing its iManage Work 10 product to law firms, corporate legal departments and professional services firms. The vendor also provides iManage Govern for managing records, iManage Share for external file sharing and collaboration, and iManage Insight for enterprise searches.

Laserfiche

Laserfiche is headquartered in Long Beach, California and provides various CSP products, including Laserfiche Quick Fields, image processing, Laserfiche Records Management and Laserfiche Forms workflow. The company also offers Laserfiche Cloud, a SaaS offering hosted on AWS.

M-Files

M-Files is based in Finland and has a headquarters in Dallas, Texas. Its CSP product can be deployed on-prem or as a public or private cloud. The platform was created with a variety of Microsoft components and is integrated with the Microsoft end-user experience.

Micro Focus (HPE Software)

Micro Focus (HPE Software), is headquartered in Newbury, U.K. The Micro Focus and heritage HPE Software spin-merge combines the content offerings into a single CSP: Micro Focus Secure Content Management (SCM), according to the report. The tool is able to work with the heritage HPE ControlPoint data and content analytics product.

Microsoft

Microsoft is headquartered in Redmond, Washington and offers collaborative content management capabilities as part of its SharePoint offerings. SharePoint Server can be deployed on-prem and SharePoint Online is a cloud-based multitenant offering that is usually bundled with Microsoft Office 365.

Newgen Software

Newgen Software is headquartered in New Delhi, India. Its CSP tool has five components: OmniDocs for end-to-end ECM; OmniFlow iBPS for BPM; OmniScan for document capture, digitization and delivery; OmniAcquire for on-demand information capture from a wide variety of endpoints; and the Newgen Enterprise Mobility Framework for building and managing secure, configurable hybrid mobile apps, the report said.

Nuxeo

Nuxeo is based in New York and unveiled the Nuxeo Platform in 2008. It’s an open-source, subscription-based CSP is available on the ground, in the cloud or as a hybrid of both.

Objective

Objective is headquartered in Sydney, Australia and offers Objective ECM, which includes traditional document management, content collaboration, records management and workflow modules. Objective Trapeze for image and drawing processing and Objective Keystone for document collaboration are just two of the many solutions that go well with Objective ECM.

OpenText

OpenText is headquartered in Ontario, Canada. They have a large content and information product portfolio that includes content services, BPM, analytics and customer experience management. The company provides two CSPs, including Content Suite and Documentum, which it acquired from Dell EMC earlier this year.

Oracle

Oracle is headquartered in Redwood City, California and offers a set of content management capabilities as infrastructure. The company offers the on-prem Oracle WebCenter Suite Plus including WebCenter Content, WebCenter Portal and WebCenter Sites. The company also provides a SaaS-based Oracle Content and Experience Cloud.

SER Group

SER Group is based in Bonn, Germany and offers the Doxis4 CSP suite. It’s a set of integrated, modular components for capturing and managing content. The product can be deployed on-prem or in the cloud.

To read the entire report, click here.

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Webinar: ECM’s Future Part II – Cloud content management & governance

John Frost, vice president of sales for Integro, talks about ECM’s future in this webinar. He also touches on the impact the space will have on Information Governance. “ECM vendors are moving platforms to the cloud, cloud governance applications are beginning to enter the market, and companies are demanding ‘componentized’ content management, strong security, ease of use, friendly UI, and portability,” according to the video’s description.

Click here to watch.

Webinar: Future Proof Your ECM Strategy

This one-hour webinar features a guest speaker, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research Cheryl McKinnon. She takes a look at the changing ECM space and talks about how vital analytics can be for your business, along with the intelligent use of metadata.

Click here to watch.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM) – An introduction

This webinar was recorded for those who are new to the ECM arena. It features an introduction to ECM and provides an explanation on the building blocks of the space.

Click here to watch.

Webinar ECM Marketplace Trends

In this video, RSG Research Director Apoorv Durga delivers a tour of the ECM space. The video also shares the latest trends that are impacting the marketplace along with a summary of key vendors.

Click here to watch.

Automate Your Business Processes With Technology – Enterprise Content Management 101

This 30-minute educational webinar shares the basics of ECM, the six key pillars of successful process automation, how to streamline processes within AP & HR, and how to get started with a process overhaul.

Click here to watch.

The Top 10 Best Resources: Content Management

If you’re still interested in traditional resources, we’ve created this video for you that breaks down the top 10 best places to go for ECM research. In under 3 minutes, I tell you the best and most informative tools to utilize for ECM knowledge.

Click here to watch.

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Content collaboration platforms are considered to be the evolution of the Enterprise File Synchronization and Sharing (EFSS) destination products and address digital workplace enablement strategies. EFSS refers to a range of on-premises or cloud-based capabilities that enables individuals to synchronize and share documents, photos, videos and files across multiple devices, such as smartphones, tablets, etc.

Application leaders can then choose among a range of options to transform individual productivity, team collaboration and business workflow automation. This Magic Quadrant report is an excellent resource for buyers looking to choose the right Content Collaboration Platform for their business or organization.

Gartner defines the CCP market as a range of content-centric platforms enabling secure file productivity and content collaboration for individuals and teams as well as supporting the creation of a modern digital workplace. Core functionalities include mobile access, file synchronization across devices and cloud repositories, file sharing with people and applications inside or out the organization, and file search and retrieval across multiple file repositories.

In addition, these platforms (at different levels) support collaborative document creation and teamwork, lightweight content management, and workflows through integration with third-party tools. Deployments of CCP can be in public cloud, hybrid cloud, private cloud, or on-premise.

Key Takeaways

CCP offerings present different levels of support for: mobility, simplicity and usability, file manipulation, user productivity, collaboration, content management, workflow, analytics, security and data protection, data governance, administration and management, integration, and lastly, storage with some using a central data repository.

Gartner researched and analyzed a total of 13 vendors for the Magic Quadrant report. Each vendor is evaluated based on their ability to execute and completeness of vision. They are then placed on the Magic Quadrant graphic composed of four categories: Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries and Niche Players.

Leaders provide mature offerings that meet market demand and Challengers have a strong ability to execute but may not have a plan that will maintain a strong value proposition for new customers. Visionaries align with Gartner’s view of how a market will evolve, but have fewer proven capabilities to deliver against that vision, and Niche Players do well in a particular segment of a market, but have a limited capability to innovate or outperform others.

The report also provides an entire CCP market overview in depth for those still learning about it.

Read the 2017 Magic Quadrant for Content Collaboration Platforms.

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The changing marketplace

The market changes were kicked off early in the year by Gartner, who announced that the Magic Quadrant for ECM would be called the Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Services (ECS) going forward. Alternatively, popular analyst house Forrester prefers to use the term transactional content services (TCS) and AIIM likes the term intelligent information management (IIM).

In the past, users focused on solutions that provided archiving and retrieval, records management and basic workflow functions. Now, users are looking for a tool that delivers content in context and embedded analytics. Users also expect the tool to provide flexible business processing, collaboration, and embedded cognitive features. Plus, it should have the capability to be deployed on the ground or in the cloud.

Platform capabilities

The capabilities of an ECM tool are “designed to manage the process of extricating content that’s trapped in documents, media files and database silos, connecting the information together, and making it available for human understanding, inserting it into business applications, or securing it according to industry and government regulations,” IBM  reported.

And according to the vendor, most use ECM tools are used to “activate business content and put it to work.” The company has designed a series of webinars that focus on this specific space and aim to get users focusing on what an ECM platform can do for a business, instead of the name. The webinars start on Aug. 2 and run until mid-September. Click here for more information and to register.

Building blocks 

An ideal ECM platform goes beyond scan, store and retrieve solutions and fits together with six categories, according to Hyland. Those categories are capture, process, access, integrate, measure and store. Ensure that your ECM tool has these building blocks so you are able to create the best strategy and roadmap for your organization:

• Capture. According to Hyland, your ECM platform should have the capability to capture any file type from any location. Once a document or file is captures, the tool should then classify your docs automatically.
• Manage. A good ECM will optimize your processes and boost productivity and efficiency.
• Access. An ECM product should enable remote or on-prem users to get to their important documents quickly, with ease.
• Integrate. The platform should be able to integrate easily with the rest of your vital business applications.
• Measure. Use your ECM solution to analyze and report on the information within your solution. This should not mean including your IT admins.
• Store. The tool should offer affordable redundancy of your data, according to Hyland, and retention policies.

Customize your own roadmap

IBM provided a content platform roadmap that kicks off with a container based deployment. The company says an ECS tool should bring people to content to workflow in a way that knowledge workers are seeing the information that they need.

If you’d like to digitize your business, you must first ensure you can deploy the following, according to IBM:

• Cognitive document capture
• Mobile capture, content access, and work processing
• Unified content management
• security features including encryption and redaction
• Workflow automation
• Electronic signatures

Once you find an ECM tool that meets all of these requirements and your tool has been deployed, you can get to work on taking advantage of all those features. Implement policies around each of these steps in your own roadmap and cater your strategy to your business.

Now watch this video, provided by M-Files, that shares more information on this space and how to future-proof your ECM strategy:

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If meeting compliance regulations is vital to your business and you haven’t deployed an enterprise content management (ECM) tool, you may want to talk to the decision makers within your IT department.

In a recent blog posted by Onbase by Hyland, the vendor addresses how an ECM solution can aid in business when it comes to regulatory compliance. The post mentions an example: the changes at the U.S. food-safety system. The system is now subject to additional government inspections at food processing locations, according to the post, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is able to put mandatory recalls of unsafe food in place.

“Part of the recall process requires manufacturers to provide remote access to critical records and documentation to the FDA for investigation and audit purposes,” according to the post. “That’s a nightmare come true for food producers with scattered and disorganized document management. One that could mean disaster to the business – from lost revenue to facility closure. After all, a typical FDA recall can cost millions of dollars.”

The post went on to say that a good ECM tool can facilitate audits and other compliance requirements with ease. And in the manufacturing space, many companies reportedly save when it comes to audits after deploying an ECM platform.

Finding and implementing the right records management tool is also helpful for business and will allow users to place an expiration date on a document. After the expiration date is set, the tool will either delete it automatically or alert the user, letting them know it’s time to get rid of the file.

Those in financial services can also benefit from an ECM tool as it can monitor Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance requirements, according to the post. It also helps manage compliance costs.

The blog post also listed other benefits to an ECM tool, including an enhanced response to evolving compliance regulations, storage and communication of changes, the ability to manage the retention of stored docs with predetermined rules and more.

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Hyland has been around for about 25 years and, according to a recent release, has worked with upwards of 15,400 enterprises to digitize their processes. The organization will expand its Westlake, Ohio campus, and broke ground Monday.

The plans include a new wing to house their research and development tools and staff. Hyland reported that the 70,000-square-foot addition should be completed by May of next year. About 400 staff members will be able to work in the state-of-the-art training center and the company plans to add about 330 additional employees this year.

This isn’t the company’s first rodeo with construction; in fact, this will be their second expansion in four years.

“This is an exciting time for Hyland. This expansion reflects our continued growth and is one of many initiatives underway to support our growing global customer base,” Bill Priemer, president and CEO at Hyland, said in a release. “We feel fortunate to be in this position and look forward to welcoming employees, customers and partners to our new space.”

The last operating business housed on the land set for the expansion was the Five Seasons Family Sports Club, Crainscleveland.com reported. Hyland bought the Five Seasons building for $11.14 million back in 2013, but since then has expanded its local staff by more than 400 people. The vendor reportedly has 1,604 staffers in Northeast Ohio and 2,232 across the globe.

Hyland was also recently named one of Fortune’s 2016 Best Companies to Work For. We assume the employees will be even happier after the expansion is complete. A Hyland spokesperson confirmed that for Solutions Review, saying, “One of the main goals of expanding Hyland’s  headquarters is to create an additional workspace for both current employees and new hires. The more than 300 employees we plan to hire in 2017 will help support our growing customer base. It’s an exciting time to work at Hyland!”

The organization first took to Twiiter to announce this news:

We're excited to be expanding! #HylandLife #NowHiring https://t.co/JVDztZT0bE

— Hyland (@Hyland) February 6, 2017

And then followed up with this photo the next day:

ICYMI: Hyland breaks ground on 70,000-square-foot campus expansion: https://t.co/h6sut183eM via @CrainsCleveland #HylandLife pic.twitter.com/rMDlXQGI6J

— Hyland (@Hyland) February 7, 2017

Click here to read the release in it’s entirety. And stay with us to learn what technology will come from this new space for research and development. Do you have any predictions? Tweet me @missashleytv!

The post Hyland Expands, Adds Research and Development Wing appeared first on Best Content Services Platforms‎, Software and Content Management ECM Vendors.