ECM vs EDRM

The industry is full of acronyms:

• KM
  
• DM 
  
• EDRM
  
• EDM
• RM
  
• ECM
  

What I find lately is that people use these names to the exclusion of each other.  The fact is that each of these terms are not to the exclusion and are more inclusive than we think.  Let's take a look at some of these

ECM - Electronic Content Management, the catch all phrase for each of acronyms above.  The name is as it implies, that it covers all Electronic Content.   So what is content. Content is considered the individual elements that are stored in the ECM system.  The content can be 

• A document (i.e. word, spreadsheet, presentation, etc)
  
• A record 
  
• A physical object (i.e. a box)
  
• A web page / part
  
• A workflow
  
• An email message
  

KM / DM - These are the terms that started a while back and refer to the basic document managment controls (versioning, audits, etc) and the ability to search the contents for information.  

EDRM - This is a term that I see pop up in a few cases, mostly where organizations don't want all the bells and whistles of a larger ECM package.  The EDRM, Electronic Document and Records Management are generally packages that only offer Document Management and Records Management functionality as the name implies. 

EDM - This term is not frequenly used, it refers to the Electronic Document Management packages that exist on the market.  This is basic content management functionality, which allows for the check-in/out, version control and auditing of information. 

RM or ERM - This term is used for those packages that are pure Records Managment functions. There are only a couple of vendors on the market that have pure RM functionality (Trim and MDY) and generally cover the physical object management vs the electronic content management.