Electronic document and records management (EDRM)
While the requirements for ERM have been defined the industry has been busy working on compliant software. Experience led many public sector bodies to conclude that what they needed was a combination of an EDM and an ERM module to provide a seamless solution. Initially the suppliers were offering loose integrations between EDM and ERM solutions. The problems with that were that often users had to save the same document into two folders. After a flurry of mergers and acquisitions and a lot of development effort most suppliers now offer integrated solutions. The preferred term for systems which manage active documents and provide the core records management facilities are EDRM systems.
However, it is worth noting at this point that some of the suppliers of EDRM solutions offer electronic document and content management facilities and ERM facilities but others are only offering a narrower set of electronic document and ERM facilities. The former can support all the electronic document and content management and Web Content Management facilities described above. The latter support just the document management facilities. This is an important distinction to bear in mind when you move into the procurement stage.
That nearly concludes the historical background. The last requirement is to bring you up to date with the terminology. As outlined above the trend is very much one of merger and acquisition so that a smaller number of larger suppliers can offer users a suite of software that will manage content from cradle to grave - from capture/creation through to controlled destruction - and support all the functions that are increasingly needed by large user organisations.
Enterprise content management (ECM) suites
The term EDRM was adopted by some suppliers who merged EDM and ERM functionality and is widely used in the public sector. Hence it is the term used by JISC and Cimtech for this toolkit. However, as indicated above, there were really two categories of EDRM supplier - those who also supported content management/WCM facilities and those who did not.
The industry has therefore seen the need to invent an even more generic title - Enterprise Content Management - to describe those suppliers who are building a comprehensive suite of software designed to support EDRM functions plus the full range of content management and collaboration and business process management functions.
This is a confusing area. We have tried to give you an indication of the functional differences between an EDM, CMS, WCM,ERM, EDRM and ECM suite. However, there is nothing to stop a supplier adopting whatever title they like for marketing reasons so just because someone says they are the leader in content management it does not follow that they can provide content management facilities any more than it actually guarantees they are "the leader".
As a project team the only sure way is to review all the functions and facilities available and draw up a list of which are mandatory; which are highly desirable and which are optional and then get a preferred supplier to contract to the supply of the required functions and facilities.
The next sub section provides a review of the key functions and facilities so that once you have reviewed your education organisation's requirements at stage three. you can then decide on the preferred mix of functions for you in stage four and specify them in your statement of requirements in stage six.
