Content is the tangible form of an organization's knowledge assets. Managing these assets is a complex challenge, especially when the assets are in different formats, affect multiple aspects of the business, and often physically reside in numerous locations.

Looking a little deeper into ECM, things start to get complicated. Each application within an organization has numerous types of content. Some applications share content, but not necessarily in the same format.

ECM gets more confusing when you consider that the technologies designed to manage content are often specialized for certain applications such as web content management and document management, or vertical applications such as mortgage processing or publishing. The best way to plan ECM strategies, or to select the right solution, is to carefully identify goals and priorities. These goals can then be used to start weeding through the options, and the priorities can help shape your solution requirements.