EDM, for electronic document management (also referred to as ECM for enterprise content management, and known in French as GED), refers to all the processes and software used to digitise and manage an organisation's documents: contracts, invoices, correspondence, drawings, quality procedures, datasheets, and so on. It covers the entire document lifecycle — capture (scanning or import), indexing, classification, consultation, sharing, then archiving or destruction once the retention period ends.
The core functions of an EDM system are indexing (assigning metadata and optical character recognition, or OCR, to make content searchable), versioning (keeping the history of a document's changes), full-text search and fine-grained access-rights management. These mechanisms ensure that the right version of a document is found quickly and that only authorised people can view or edit it, with a complete audit trail of actions.
EDM plays a key role in regulatory compliance: access traceability, adherence to legal retention periods, the evidential value of archiving and the protection of personal data under the GDPR. It also makes it easier to import and file standardised documents, such as Factur-X electronic invoices, in a single, secure document repository.
eyeot's document management solution follows this approach of centralising documents and connecting them to the other ERP modules.