Focus SMB sales pitches around risk, service, and cost savings

Enterprise content management (ECM) solutions include technologies for digitizing paper documents and applications that manage, store, preserve, and deliver content to business processes. Thanks to price reductions in ECM applications and easier-to-use document-capture hardware, small- and mid-sized companies are a growing market for electronic documents, which opens up new opportunities for solution providers.

What are the biggest business drivers that solution providers should focus on to encourage their customers to consider ECM? According to AIIM, an industry trade association, the biggest incentives come from three main areas.

Reducing risk is one top concern. A host of challenges, ranging from increasingly stringent regulatory compliance rules to business continuity concerns, are encouraging companies to investigate ECM to store, manage, and preserve digital documents.

Second is the desire for improved customer service. ECM can help end users locate purchase orders, sales histories, and service records more efficiently. This means customer representatives can respond to end-user questions and concerns more quickly.

The third incentive is cost savings. Improved document management means less staff time spent hunting down documents rather than performing formal job functions.

“When you look at risk-based concerns, that area in particular has gone up significantly in the last two or three years,” says John Mancini, AIIM president.

Mancini says risk has come to the forefront for a number of reasons, some legal some security related.

“One person might worry about the business risk of not managing documents effectively, while another might think about compliance issues, and others are concerned about e-discovery and the new federal rules of civil procedure,” Mancini says.