Let’s break this into 3 parts.
Content
Content describes nearly anything that passes through an organization and contains information. Most people might imagine these content in paper form, but ECM was built to create a paperless world. Therefore, the “content” in ECM is digital.
Management
How is your content organized, and how does it move through all the necessary channels? ECM aims to reduce all the paper-based complications, but just converting paper documents into electronic ones doesn’t give you a blueprint for better management. There are only two ways to simplify content management: manage less content (and say goodbye to business growth) or standardize the way you manage content.
Enterprise
Enterprise is what turns a short-term content management strategy into a long-term business strategy. It’s a collection of departments, goals, budgets and processes into one cooperative. Without enterprise, content management is just different departments satisfying their own needs, instead of considering what would benefit the organization overall.
In short, content is the “what” of your organization—the information that it uses to accomplish larger goals. Management represents the “how,” or the methods used to handle that information. Enterprise answers “why”—why manage your content this way or that way.

Different ECM tools and products can be combined depending on your needs, but these four elements make up the backbone of any ECM system. Let’s look at them individually.
Storage
Every document that is important for business is stored in a digital repository.
Capture
Some documents start off in a digital format but many others originate on paper. The common goal is to digitize every document so it can be stored easily.
Automation
Automation does what a traditional office administrator does: it knows every step of a business process, routes documents