Document & Content Management
Over the last few years most Imaging software vendors have redeveloped their software into more encompassing Document & Content Management solutions. This change has been driven by the requirement to store documents in their native format (Word, Excel, PDF, Outlook, etc.), by the increase in electronic communication (email), for data protection (deleted or misfiled information due to malicious or error prone employees), for risk mitigation and Disaster Recovery.
What is Document Management
In the simplest terms, Document Management is the process of storing and tracking the volumes of information you handle each day. These vital resources may consist of emails, faxes, forms, invoices, contracts, deeds and other documents. As information expands, the ability to access specific documents quickly and easily becomes increasingly more complex. Document Management provides a way to ensure that the information you need is always available on demand.
Structured and Unstructured Information
The information in your organisation can split into two basic types. Structured data is that held in your line of business application, probably with some form of SQL database to manage the information. Unstructured data is the documents you create using Office packages (letters, spreadsheets, incoming paper, etc.)
Most organisations invest in a system that will help to run their business, but often rely on the standard filing tools within Windows for managing the unstructured data. Depending on the organisation, up to 80% of data can be unstructured. Is it safe to leave the management of this information to luck?
Document and Content Management provides structure to his unstructured data. As users save information they are prompted to provide the structure. This combined with the ability to quickly search the content of documents means retrieval is fast.
Why is Document Management better than using folders on a server?
Storing information in folders on a server is a step forward from paper filing. Servers can be configured and accessed by individuals and groups, and with some care they can provide document-level access security. However, several pitfalls appear when organisations try to tailor this approach for larger scale information needs.
When you store documents on a server, you are relying on individuals to file the documents in an organised fashion. To enable this, you must establish a filing system, and then train your staff to follow that system consistently. For example, you might choose to identify invoices with the filename “invoice” and a date, and then save it in the folder named after the company. This approach works fairly well in a small scale environment, where you can easily monitor activities and recover documents that have been misfiled or misnamed. However, this is a labour intensive effort, and there are no controls to assure uniformity. In addition, document security can become a serious concern.
When storing files on a Windows server, you can control who has access to folders; however, to ensure that files are not accidentally deleted or overwritten with new files, you will need to manually set access rights for every new file as “read-only.” This step is necessary due to the limitations of Microsoft’s Windows filing system, which gives users with “write” privileges the ability to create and delete files.
Security
A Document Management solution provides more control over the actions that individuals can take once files have been saved. As with traditional paper filing, access rights can be established at “levels” equivalent to physical filing cabinets, file folders, or documents. However, Document Management system administrators can define access with much finer granularity than a traditional filing system would allow.
Access in a Document Management environment can be defined as restricted (no access), view only, edit, create new, delete, profile only and locked. This enables access privileges to be controlled in groups, such as entire departments, management levels, job types, or individual users. The beauty is that an automated “set and forget” approach, once defined, ensures the same logic and control is applied every time.
Because Document Management systems employ sophisticated security and auditing controls, you can safely store a shared document in its native format and let the security of the system control it, for review, revision, or locked for long-term storage, rather than rely on the format of the document to make control decisions. This enables you to extend the use of your Document Management solution beyond the fixed, final form of “only when we are done with it” to a dynamic solution that encompasses all electronic document formats in use.
In summary, Document Management provides a security solution that:
• Limits access to files and tracks which users have read or modified them
• Is critical to achieving regulatory compliance
• Provides audit trails to report all access to files
• Enables you to enforce control over document access rights at the user, group and document levels
• Facilitates version control, retention policies, and other Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) functions.
• Lets the system control the type of access allowed, rather than relying on the document type, such as PDF, to ensure that files stored as final are not modified.
Finding information
Finding information in a paper filing system is very difficult. In a Windows filing structure it is easier, provided it is well managed, you know what you are looking for and the document has not been misfiled. If the document has been misfiled it will take a very long time to find it. You can you the Windows search facility, but even in a modest store of documents this could take hours.
By adding metadata to documents as they are saved you are creating an index that is very quick and easy to search. You can search on any part of the document name, the type of document, client, entity, application, author, typist, dates and any other criteria you use to save the document.
In addition the full content of the document is indexed so you can search on that content with results displayed in seconds.
Version Control
Creating complex documents such as agreements, contracts, trust deeds, etc. often requires many iterations of a document. Using normal Windows file structures and naming regime needs to be put in place and enforced that allows users to maintain previous versions so they can be referred to if necessary.
Document Management overcomes this by controlling versions and subversions of documents. A search finds the document and then you can choose which version you want to retrieve.
Regulatory Compliance
Do you know when your files were stored? In many jurisdictions documents are routinely kept for seven years and then they are destroyed, however, you may have varying document retention requirements. A Document Management system enables you to establish and enforce retention policies.
It will also give you a full audit trail of the document. Find out who has viewed, opened and edited a document throughout.
The information in your organisation can split into two basic types. Structured data is that held in your line of business application, probably with some form of SQL database to manage the information. Unstructured data is the documents you create using Office packages (letters, spreadsheets, etc.) Most organisations create some form of file structure to organise this data, but implementation of the rules is very difficult. Finding information in those file structures is even harder.
Depending on your company, up to 80% of data could be unstructured. Is it safe to leave the management of all of this business critical information to luck?
Document and Content Management provides structure to his unstructured data. As users save information they are prompted to provide the structure. This combined with the ability to quickly search the content of documents means retrieval is fast.
Additional features that can add value include, version control, full document level security, audit trails (who has opened, edited or viewed a document) and the ability to integrate to your line of business application.
