ECM system: key features, how to choose one, and CONTMAN Archive

What is an ECM system?

ECM stands for enterprise content management. An ECM system takes a company's documents through their whole life cycle: from capture, through description, search and teamwork, to retention and deletion once their time is up. In practice, it is your company's electronic archive combined with rules: who can see what, what has happened to each document and how long it has to stay.

How is an ECM system different from a network drive or a cloud folder? A drive stores files. An ECM system knows what a document is: that it is an invoice from a particular supplier, with a number and an amount, that someone in accounting has opened it, and that the contract next to it has three versions and is waiting for a signature. That is why you find a document by what you know about it, not by its file name and folder.

Alongside ECM you will also come across DMS, short for document management system. The line between the two is blurred. A DMS usually means storing, describing and searching documents, while ECM also covers workflows, signatures and retention rules.

Key features of an ECM system

A mature ECM system brings together several capabilities, each serving a different stage in a document's life:

• Capture. Files from your drive, scans, phone photos and documents from other systems end up in one place, with no retyping.
• Description, or metadata. Each type of document has its own set of fields: an invoice has its number, issuer and amount; a contract, its parties and signing date. A consistent description is what keeps an archive in order and makes search work.
• Search. You find a document by its description fields, by date and by any word in the file, including scanned files if the system recognises text (OCR).
• Versions and history. Changing a file does not destroy its previous content, and the history shows who created, changed, opened or downloaded the document, and when.
• Access control and security. Permissions decide who sees which documents, changes to permissions leave a trail, and the most valuable data is encrypted.
• Collaboration and sharing. The team works on a single copy of a document, and someone outside the company gets access to one document rather than the whole archive.
• Workflows and signatures. A document goes through approvals and signatures inside the system instead of bouncing around in e-mails.
• Retention. Retention rules make sure a document stays as long as it has to and disappears once its period ends.
• Integration. The system connects to the software your company already uses, such as your ERP, CRM or HR system.

How to choose an ECM system: 10 questions to ask a vendor

A list of features in a proposal tells you little, because almost every vendor puts the same buzzwords on it. You learn far more by asking how exactly each feature works. Here are the questions worth asking before you choose:

1. Can we set up the archive's structure ourselves? Document types and description fields should be set up by an administrator on your side, without a developer, and changed even once the archive is live.
2. Does the system enforce the quality of descriptions? Required fields, lists of allowed values and duplicate protection keep things in order more reliably than instructions to the team.
3. Can we find a document by its content, even in a scan? Ask which languages the text recognition works in and whether search results respect the permissions of the person searching.
4. What happens to a file when it changes? The right answer is: nothing is overwritten, and every change creates a new version.
5. How fine-grained are permissions, and do changes to them leave a trail? Permissions per document type are the minimum, and a change log that cannot be edited will help in every audit.
6. How is the data protected? Ask what is encrypted and what someone who gets hold of a copy of the database would see.
7. How does retention work? Check whether periods are calculated automatically, whether deletion leaves a trail, and whether you can stop a particular document from being deleted, for example during a dispute.
8. How does the system connect to others? A documented API is what lets your ERP or CRM use the archive without workarounds.
9. Will the system grow with the company? Workflows, electronic signatures, HR files, a mobile app: it is better to add them later in the same ecosystem than to glue together several products from different vendors.
10. What does implementation look like? A good implementation starts with an analysis: which documents the company has, who uses them and how long they must be kept. Read more in our post on the benefits of pre-implementation analysis.

Why CONTMAN Archive

CONTMAN Archive is an electronic document archive and the foundation of the CONTMAN product family. Here is how it answers the questions above.

A structure your company sets up itself

• An administrator sets up the archive's structure in the Administration area. A document category is a named type of document, such as sales contracts, together with the list of fields that describe every document in that category.
• A field holds text, a whole number, a decimal number, a date and time, a date or a yes/no value, and one field definition can serve many categories.
• Fields can be added, renamed, reordered and removed even when the category already holds documents, so the archive changes along with your company.
• The same document can be described in several categories at once, and each person sees it through the categories they have access to.

Order the system enforces

• The archive accepts only values that match the field's data type, its value list and its format. A text field can have a value list of up to 50 allowed values, and a field with the NIP format accepts a Polish tax identification number (NIP) as well as an EU VAT number and stores every number in one form, always with its country code.
• A field marked as required must have a value in every new or edited description.
• A unique key made up of several fields, such as the invoice number, issuer and date, means the same combination of values can occur only once in a category across the whole organisation.

Search by description and content

• Search covers phrases, category fields and the creation date and, in categories with content processing switched on, the text of the files as well.
• The OCR module recognises text in TIFF scans and in PDF files without a text layer, in Polish and English.
• In the default search language, search ignores letter case and Polish diacritics.
• Results include only documents from the categories the person may read.
• When you open a document from the results, the phrase you searched for is highlighted in the preview of a PDF file (including a PDF copy) or an e-mail message.
• You can save the criteria you have put together for yourself or for the whole organisation and run them again with one click.

Versions, preview and document history

• CONTMAN Archive never overwrites a file: every upload, replacement and restore creates a new, unchangeable version, and version numbers never change.
• You view a file and its versions in the browser without saving it to disk, including TIFF scans and, with conversion switched on, Office documents, which the archive converts to PDF for the preview.
• The history shows who created, changed, opened or downloaded the document and when, and for previews and downloads it also records the number of the version that was accessed.

Access for authorised people only

• Access is based on roles, and permissions are granted for each document category separately. HR can work on contracts and accounting on invoices, without seeing each other's documents.
• Saving changes in administration requires confirming your identity again, and the history of permission changes is recorded with no way to edit it.
• Values of fields flagged as sensitive and the files of selected categories are stored so that a copy of the database or file storage made without the installation's keys is unreadable.
• You can pass a document to someone without permissions via a link that works until a date you set and that you can revoke at any time. The document stays in the archive, and every time it is opened goes into its history.

There is more on protecting documents in our post on secure document storage.

Retention with legal hold

• You attach a retention rule to a category: you decide what the period runs from, how long it lasts and what should be removed: selected fields, notes, the file or the whole document.
• Once a day, the archive itself finds documents whose period has ended and carries out the rule's actions, and each action leaves a trail in the document's history.
• Between the end of the period and the actions there is a grace period, 7 days by default. During that time you can place a legal hold, and while it lasts no rule will change or delete the document.
• Your company sets the periods: the system applies the rules but does not judge whether they meet legal requirements.

Integration and the AI assistant

• The archive offers a REST API described by an OpenAPI specification that both the server and the applications connecting to it follow. The API has its own manual.
• An AI assistant, such as Claude, Copilot or your company's own agent, works with the archive on behalf of the person who connected it, and only within that person's permissions. Without further consent it only reads, and it changes the archive only in the areas that person agrees to: documents, the archive's structure, workflow definitions and workflow tasks. We show how this works in practice in our post on AI document search.

One ecosystem instead of several systems

• CONTMAN Workflow takes a document through approvals, branches, automated steps and signatures. A process is tied to a specific version of the file, so nobody approves content other than what they were shown.
• CONTMAN Sign lets you sign PDF documents within a workflow: a person signs with their own certificate or with a qualified signature from an external provider, and the organisation applies its seal. Every signature is checked straight away.
• CONTMAN HR keeps employee files in the archive following the Polish standard, divided into parts, and CONTMAN Mobile sends photos of a document taken with a phone straight to the archive.
• We design and write the archive, workflows, signatures, HR and scanning ourselves, from the first line of code to the last, so you get the archive, workflows, signatures and HR from one partner.
• One installation serves one or many organisations. Organisations are kept apart: each has its own archive and roles.
• The licence sets the organisation's modules, the number of people and integrations working at the same time, and the number of pages and files that can be added to the archive, so you can match it to today's needs and extend it as your company grows.

Summary

You choose an ECM system for years, so look past the list of buzzwords at how each feature actually works. CONTMAN Archive lets your company set up its archive itself, enforces order with every save, finds documents by description and content, never overwrites a file, keeps each document's history and gives access only to the people you allow. When your company is ready for the next step, it can add workflows, signatures, HR files and a mobile app in the same ecosystem.

Book a demo of CONTMAN Archive, and we will show you how these features work on examples of invoices and contracts.