Electronic Report Management

(storage)

Electronic Report Management - (ERM, Enterprise Report Management) The capture, archiving and publishing, in digital form, of (typically mainframe generated) documents such as accounting and financial reports. ERM often replaces systems based on paper or microfilm. ERM usually captures data from print streams and stores it on hard drives, storage area networks or optical disk drives. The data is indexed and can be retreived at the desktop with a web browser or a fat client. ERM systems are part of enterprise content management or electronic document management. An example application is PearlDoc QuickFile Information Management System (IMS). An early replacement for greenbar printed reports was Computer Output on Microfilm (COM, not to be confused with Microsoft's Component Object Model). This was superseded by Computer Output to Laser Disk (or Disc - COLD) which used optical media. In 1999 the AIIM renamed COLD to ERM/COLD to reflect the variety of media in use. This was promoted, in 2002, by Mason Grigsby - widely reputed as "The Father of COLD" for his seminal work with INSCI in the late 1980s. Judging from their web site, AIIM don't seem too sure whether ERM is "Electronic", "Enterprise" or both.