Document Management is the control of an organization's documents and their lifecycle, including how and when documents are created, reviewed, published, utilized, retained and destroyed.
Document Management Software For Smaller Businesses
In the past, document management was a challenge most likely tackled by larger organizations due to the sheer volume of documents they were required to manage. Document Management Software was also priced to fit larger organizations budgets.
Smaller organizations and teams are however increasingly requiring better control of their document lifecycle. Global compliance requirements, geographically dispersed teams and a desire to more effectively manage knowledge, are all challenges faced by large and small organizations alike.
As a result, the Document Management Software you choose to utilize needs to fit your organization's goals, culture, technology capabilities, and budget.
Ensuring Fit With Your Document Management Needs
A well-designed document management system is flexible enough to support both rigid workflows around document and other record creation, retention and destruction, thus ensuring that you meet your legal obligations, as well as a more loosely structured environment that may better support collaboration.
The document management system will not only store your documents but will also importantly provide you with easy access to your documents, whether this be via a powerful search mechanism, tagging and tag clouds, or an easy to use document browse interface.
A modern document management software system will allow you to share documents within your repository via email, direct web links or RSS feeds.
The software will support the easy mapping of your organization or industry's standard document types and metadata (information about the documents) into the repository.
The system will also provide you with a powerful but easy to use mechanism to control who accesses which documents, whether they are allowed to edit the documents and whether the documents may be emailed out of the document repository. The system will also provide your organization with access to your documents via familiar interfaces, be they web-based or from within common office productivity applications.
