All About Document Management

by John J Nash

When we talk about our managing our documents, a computer system called Document Management System is there to help us, which is also known as DMS. This computer system contains a set of computer programs that are used in order to find and save electronic documents. It allows you to save your documents with images (even sometimes with no images) of paper documents.

In computer terminologies, there is some overlapping of words, as for Document Management Systems it is sometimes mixed with Content Management Systems. Although there is some correspondence between these two, but both of them contain different sets of characteristics.

Document Management system has a lot of versatility in itself. This system is capable of managing everything from a small shoebox to a whole enterprise. When we talk about document management, it can include a large number of issues. Document management can be informal or paper based too, that can be performed by a single individual. On the other hand, a formal document management can be achieved using a computer.

The dimension of methods used for document management addresses several areas. First, there is the issue of location that answers the question that where the document will be stored or where do people need to go to in order to access the contents of the document. This journey of finding and locating a document is just the same as searching through a file cabinet, only simpler in nature.

This procedure includes the phenomena of browsing through documents and searching for any particular information. Usually Document Management Systems use database in order to save any metadata about documents. As far as an informal environment is concerned, a file system is used in order to perform this job. So this system is as useful and handy as manual filing system in an office.

With that, document management system looks after the security of documents too and prevents any unauthorised personnel from getting access to them. In case of any problem, if you lose your documents, document management can tell you ways through which, your documents can be retrieved.

Then there are areas of retention (that involves the function of maintaining the collection of documents in attribution to an information overload), archiving (future readability concerns), distribution (the proper arrangement of access of documents to the respective people who need them) and workflow (the fluency of the entire process, preventing any hindrances from blocking it). All of these areas are taken care of by document management systems.

Overall, document management is a very complex and detailed procedure that looks into a variety of areas for proper functioning. It is the smooth functioning of the document management system that allows the fulfilment of the purpose, having been conditioned to do so.

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