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Follow UsIf you're planning to implement a document management system, then start by identifying what type of documents you want to manage. Prioritize on which documents are the most important for your business and list down the challenges you face by leaving them unmanaged. For instance, an engineering firm needs to manage all the engineering drawings and blueprints it creates for its customers.
Passing around paper blueprints is very time consuming, because every change has to be marked on the paper. If this is digitized and collaboration done online, think of the time saving one would get. Therefore for this engineering company, it's essential to get the process of managing its blueprints right. All other documents are not as critical in this case. Similarly, a public services govt department like a transport authority needs to track all application forms it gets from citizens. Even a bank needs to retain all records for its customers, so they need to be managed.
Once the documents have been identified and challenges for managing them understood, work out the flow of this document. Who all will see it, what action would they take on it, and what will they be allowed to do, etc. So essentially a document management system is not just something that stores and retrieves documents, but a solution that helps you collaborate better, improve internal efficiencies, and reduce incremental costs. In such Document Management System, control and security will go hand in hand, and not to mention editing rights management or tracking the changes throughout a document's flow. Let's look at each of these concerns in more detail.
Access control, security and verification
Access control is an integral part of any document management solution. For instance, using the document management system, you can create users and groups in the system with permissions on folders as well as documents and data classes. These would help decide which user can access what documents. On the other hand if you want a more rugged solution, then you can use a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) based solution, which would not only provide access control facilities, but also ensure that the right person gets the right file. It would also be a digital signature solution that verifies the identity of the creator of the document and makes sure that the document doesn't get changed before it reaches the intended recipient. This is even more important in today's world where the verification of the sender is emerging as one of the biggest faced problems.
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Editing rights management
But, you may not actually want the recipient to edit or change all parts of the document. For instance in a form distribution you may want the person from the dispatch department to just enter the airway bill number. Thus, only that field should be made editable in the whole form for that person. The same form going to another person could have some other field editable.
Change Tracking or versioning
Another important facet is versioning, which goes hand in hand with editing rights management. Versioning can be supported in various ways depending on upon the order of business.
This not only reduces the amount of paper used but also reduces the ambiguity on the processes being followed and made sure that the right people had the latest version of the document available at all times.
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Output management
As the documents come into the business system they need to be outputted in a particular format, be it Web, fax, archive, or print, all the outputs are needed. Your document-management system should be geared to handle the type of output needed by your organization.
Solutions are also available to professionally manage your print jobs. These kinds of products can be helpful especially for financial organizations that are using a lot more of the print medium than other organizations.
Both Adobe and Newgen have specialized modules for output management.¨