About 60% of the documents in an organization are unstructured information. Organizations need Document Management System in order to manage this unstructured information in a well-formatted central storage system.
Organizations today are piling up a virtual mountain of documents. With Regulatory measures such as HIPAA and 21 CFR P11, organizations have a further burden of producing more documents and managing them more methodologically. Document management is in demand in large companies and is also important and viable for smaller businesses and nonprofit organizations. While free tools like Google Desktop and Windows Desktop Search helps increase your document management efficiency, more sophisticated and secure document management tools offer an ideal way to create a structured information environment for your organization. Such DMS are affordable and likely within your reach.
Dealing with documents and information can be one of the most challenging aspects of the business. The document management solution will improve how you process this information. Simplify your office by routing paper documents, e-mails, and other files directly into DMS. Eliminate wasted time searching for paper and replacing lost documents. Access your information the moment you need it, wherever you need it—and manage it all from the convenience of a Web browser.
Benefits of having a Document Management System
- Measurable Return of Investment
- Increased Efficiency
- Process agility through continuous improvement
- Ease of Use
- Better Reporting
- Improved Management Insight
- Improved Security
- Improved Regulatory Compliance
- Improved cash flow
- More Effective Departmental Communication
- Integrated Systems across the Corporation
- Secure Data Shared with the Right Users when they need it
- Faster Product Approval from Regulatory Agencies
- Elimination or minimization of regulatory risks
- Enforcement of best practices
- Paper cost reduction
- Efficient Collaboration with the ability to eliminate time delays and reduce costs
- Highly scalable solution with the ability to define multiple volumes across different machines for storing data across machines
Business Benefits of Using a Document Management System
The benefits achieved by a DMS system are classified into two parts – tangible and nontangible. Tangible benefits are those that can be measured. The benefits are quantified. Intangible benefits are those that are hard to measure but yet benefits are known.
These Benefits include:
- Reduced storage
- Faster retrieval
- Better indexing
- Improved and flexible search
- Supports document-intensive business processes
- The lower ongoing cost of acquisition and operation
- Robust and Scalable architecture to handle terabytes of data
- Enhances work practices by automating key document management functions
- Increases productivity by providing single-point access to documents
- Adheres to information management compliance regulations
- Provides efficient of access and saves storage space
- Improved document access results in rapid approvals and significantly decreases time in information sharing.
Features of Document Management System to look for:
A list of basic features needed in a DMS system includes
Document Capture
An interface that helps capture documents using a scanner, email, fax or local computers and uploads it into the central server system.
Document Indexing
Once the document is captured by the system, an interface to allow attribute/keyword tagging is important. This helps easy and quick search of documents.
Document Storage
This feature enables the storage of documents in the central storage system which could be a back-end database or a repository system such as NAS or SAN.
Document Search
Search documents using attributes or search text within the contents of the document.
Document Check-in and Check-out
Edit documents stored in the central storage system without redundancy using Check-in and Check-out features.
Document Versioning
Versioning of documents helps maintain them efficiently. It allows document collaboration and revisions using annotations, which can be placed over documents as a part of the revision cycle.
Web Publishing
Documents can be categorized and organized into appropriate folders using configurable templates based on business rules unique to the organization. User-Defined attributes and indexes can be attached to these documents and folders for easy search and retrieval.
Workflow automation
Route documents through the workflow in a business process.
- Hierarchical Workflow: Resembles a top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top flow and routing
- Queue-based Workflow: Allows multiple users’ participation. It allows users to route documents or folders containing documents through pre-defined routes/steps based on business rules
- Free Flow: This is a preferred mode of collaboration amongst cross groups. The document and folder sharing flow is not restricted by rules and hierarchy. Hence, can be routed from any user to any user.
Email Integration
It allows the fetching of emails and attachments as documents within the DMS System. Mails can be sent from DMS and tracked at the same time.
Alerts and Escalations
The feature of alerts and escalations help efficient and prompt implementation of business processes in a workflow.
Rich Administration
A user-friendly UI, that can be configured as per business rules and processes. The Administrative module with extensive features for management of the DMS, enables the administrator to organize the system for their precise business needs.
