As the economy continues its topsy-turvy ride, budgets are still tighter than ever, forcing IT leaders to justify every penny they spend. How can you equate the business benefits of enterprise content management (ECM), like productivity and space savings, into dollars and cents?

Xerox recently gathered a group of industry experts* to identify better ways to showcase the return on investment (ROI) of an ECM system. It turns out, measuring the ROI of ECM isn't as difficult as some may think:

• Increased efficiency and productivity – organizations that effectively use their workforce, technology and innovation can improve customer service, decision making and quality of goods. Leveraging an ECM system drastically cuts the time needed to get work done, freeing employees to focus on more important, revenue-generating activities.

• Better use of office equipment – transform multifunction printers (MFPs) into a cornerstone of business processes. MFPs can automate office activities, such as invoice handling, by scanning documents directly to an ECM workflow that routes the document to specific departments or colleagues. The process saves on employee time and postage fees.

• Supporting the mobile worker – with ECM, employees have instant access to information from anywhere. Virtual teaming is significantly easier as ECM allows colleagues across the hallway or around the world to share business-critical information.

• Compliance – in regulated industries, staying compliant is a cost of doing business. ECM solutions that help meet this requirement through features like permissions, digital signatures and auditable workflows make annual audits easier and help companies avoid the risk of potential fines.

Convinced your ready to implement an ECM system? To find one that best meets your company's needs, take a critical look at:
• Content types: Understand what the most important content types are for your company and how they are used.
• Extensibility: Many ECM solutions must support application-specific business processes, such as human resources and accounts payable.
• Content storage and relocation: Assess how documents move through the file storage systems and how to best manage content to ensure efficiency and compliance.