Defining Document Management
By Bill Thomas
From my “DocuBLOG” column
Bill works for USA-ONE Interactive
What exactly is document management?
A document management system also known as DMS is a system of computers that is used to store and track documents of an electronic nature. These could either be documents created on a computer or images of existing paper documents. Today document management systems are becoming more and more viable especially for small and medium businesses as it cuts down back office costs to a large extent and it also improves the efficiency of its staff.
Areas of functioning for Document Management systems
The concept of document management is pretty much the same whether it is done in an informal or formal manner. The informal manner would refer to a paper based method and the formal manner to a structured and computer aided system. Any document management system would need to address the following areas:
Location: Location would involve aspects like document storage.
Filing: Filing as the name suggest involves the method in which the documents are filed – the organizing and the indexing to make the documents easily available to the end user.
Retrieving: Defining how the documents will be found.
Security: Making sure that the stored documents are only accessed by authorized users.
Disaster recovery: Recovery of data and documents incase of a disaster.
Document retention: The time period for which the document needs to be kept and how these records and documents can be managed.
Archiving: Preserving documents so that they can be used at a later date.
Distribution: Making sure that the people who need to access the documents have hassle free access.
Workflow: Establishing rules and formats for passing documents from employee to employee or employee to client.
Authentication: And most importantly making sure that the documents being stored are authentic.
Components of a document management system
All document management systems have certain fixed components that are an integral part of its structure. Here are the list of essential components that every document management system should have:
Metadata
Integration
Capture
Indexing
Storage
Retrieval
Distribution
Security
Workflow
Collaboration
Versioning and
Publishing
From my “DocuBLOG” column
Bill works for USA-ONE Interactive
What exactly is document management?
A document management system also known as DMS is a system of computers that is used to store and track documents of an electronic nature. These could either be documents created on a computer or images of existing paper documents. Today document management systems are becoming more and more viable especially for small and medium businesses as it cuts down back office costs to a large extent and it also improves the efficiency of its staff.
Areas of functioning for Document Management systems
The concept of document management is pretty much the same whether it is done in an informal or formal manner. The informal manner would refer to a paper based method and the formal manner to a structured and computer aided system. Any document management system would need to address the following areas:
Location: Location would involve aspects like document storage.
Filing: Filing as the name suggest involves the method in which the documents are filed – the organizing and the indexing to make the documents easily available to the end user.
Retrieving: Defining how the documents will be found.
Security: Making sure that the stored documents are only accessed by authorized users.
Disaster recovery: Recovery of data and documents incase of a disaster.
Document retention: The time period for which the document needs to be kept and how these records and documents can be managed.
Archiving: Preserving documents so that they can be used at a later date.
Distribution: Making sure that the people who need to access the documents have hassle free access.
Workflow: Establishing rules and formats for passing documents from employee to employee or employee to client.
Authentication: And most importantly making sure that the documents being stored are authentic.
Components of a document management system
All document management systems have certain fixed components that are an integral part of its structure. Here are the list of essential components that every document management system should have:
Metadata
Integration
Capture
Indexing
Storage
Retrieval
Distribution
Security
Workflow
Collaboration
Versioning and
Publishing