Document management is the automated control of electronic documents— page images, spreadsheets, word processing documents, and complex, compound documents— through their entire life cycle within an organization, from initial creation to final archiving. Document management allows organizations to exert greater control over the production, storage, and distribution of documents, yielding greater efficiencies in the ability to reuse information, to control a document through a workflow process, and to reduce product cycle times.

Adiance can help you develop various elements of a Document Management System (DMS)

The elements of a DMS include software to perform all functions necessary to manage the document across an organization from cradle to grave. Each element is described below.

Underlying infrastructure

While not part of an application per se, an appropriate underlying infrastructure in nevertheless a prerequisite to supporting a DMS. The infrastructure is the set of desktop computers, workstations, and servers that are interconnected by LANs and/or WANs. It must have characteristics such as network operating system independence, file format independence, location independence, long file names, and link tracking.

Authoring

Authoring tools support document creation. Some more sophisticated tools support structured or guided authoring, where authors are constrained by the system to enter data in specified ways. Typically, they are interfaced with DMSs in order to capture document metadata at the time of creation and revision.

Workflow

Workflow is defined as the coordination of tasks, data, and people to make a business process more efficient, effective, and adaptable to change. It is the control of information throughout all phases of a process. The path of a particular document is determined by the document type (e.g., press releases, manuals, policy papers, memos), the processes governing a document, and organizational roles (i.e., who has the authority to see what?). It supports functions such as authoring, revising, routing, commentary, approval, conditional branching, and the establishment of deadlines and milestones. Workflow is a central aspect of document management because it allows organizations to get control of, and increase the efficiency of, the flow of documents that support their business. Typically, workflow has been implemented in separate software packages, but it is beginning to be incorporated into large integrated DMSs.

Storage

The core of the DMS is the database and search engines supporting storage and retrieval of documents. Traditionally relational, DMSs are moving toward object-oriented databases. However, most vendors are now using mixed databases with relational databases used to point to information objects. Such databases are called Object-Relational Database Management Systems (ORDBMS).

Library services

Not to be confused with what librarians consider to be library services, this is a term used specifically by the document management community to refer to document control mechanisms such as checkin, checkout, audit trail, protection/security, and version control.

Presentation/distribution services

Presentation and distribution concerns the form and manner in which users are provided with information. DMSs should allow "multipurposing" where information can be distributed in different formats, such as viewed on a network (e.g., the Web), distributed on CD-ROM, or printed on paper. Businesses can reuse information, putting it into a format determined by the target market or business function. On-demand printing, where a document is printed when it is needed from a document database, is growing in popularity and importance.


Focus areas

• Quick, user-authenticated access to applications via the desktop
• Scalable and easily deployed to grow with changing system requirements
• Fostering more effective teamwork to accelerate business-critical applications
• Delivering products faster with better customer service (reduce cycle times)
• Allowing rapid response to events
• Extremely transparent and easy to use
• Flexible, customizable (optionally Browser/Web-enabled) user interface
• Electronic Signatures
• Comprehensive Auditing Trails, Approvals
• Optimized Searches
• Security