updated Jul 21, 2014 9:00 am | 8,738 views
Document Management, or DM, can often be confused with Content Management, but they are quite different disciplines. DM is a knowledge management term which has become increasingly familiar as requirements for maintaining information increase, most notably with the establishment of the Sabanes-Oxley ruling. When multiple, related documents are managed together, it can be referred to as document management. Every company needs a method of organizing its documents; whether an individual can find the appropriate document in a timely fashion will be greatly increase if these documents have been managed properly from the start. Retrofitting or recreating a system can be almost as time consuming as starting one from scratch.
Document management is defined as a way to produce, store, control, and track documents in a work-group environment. There are as many procedures and methods for managing documents as there are organizations. However, as more organizations apply computer technology to their once paper-based systems, they have found they can reduce operating costs, increase productivity, improve customer service, and even generate new business opportunities by making new products and services available to their customers.
The application of computer technology to document management lets organizations take any document, whether it is a photograph, manuscript, video tape, or computer-generated text, and store it electronically as an image. Documents can be located quickly and reconstructed either as computer images, printed texts, or as facsimiles.
Electronic management of images and text files can be applied to any administrative, manufacturing or service function that requires quick access to records or information files, long-term storage of vast quantities of data and images, or compressed storage that can maintain the integrity of the original image or document.
As a group of documents are managed by an organization, it evolves into a document management system. A well-designed and implemented system takes many issues into consideration, including:
With the introduction by the federal government (United States) of the Sarbanes-Oxley ruling, document management has become a critical compliance issue, especially for publicly-traded corporations. Organizations must begin to take this into consideration when creating or amplifying their DM system.
Wikipedia: Document management system <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Document_management_system>
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