Electronic Document Management

Storing and Tracking Your Valuable Information

What is Document Management

Why you need it?

There are many reasons that organizations need to manage documents. If important information is not accessible to all who need it, mismanagement and reduced productivity can result. Lost or misplaced information can result in chaos and even legal problems. Here are a few benefits of a good Document Management system:

• Access to documents is shared among departments.
• Privacy features allow you to control who has access to information.
• Speed of retrieval gives you on-demand access to client and supplier records.
• Retention of records assists in regulatory compliance.
• Workflow improves through automatic document tracking.

Why is Document Management better than using file 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 all departments, and with some care can provide document-level access security. However, several pitfalls appear when organizations try to tailor this approach for large-scale information needs.

When you store documents on a server, you are relying on individuals to file the documents in an organized 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 for the company, customer name, or job number. Again, 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 labor-intensive effort, and there are no controls to assure uniformity. In addition, document security can become a serious concern.

When storing files on a Window’s server, you can control who has access to folders; however, to ensure that files aren’t 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.

Contrast this with a Document Management solution

Let’s say you decide that saving files to a folder on a server is sufficient for your organization. You deal with one merchant routinely, and file their invoices by customer or job number. Since the invoice has been filed by customer rather than by merchant, there is no way to retrieve invoices by alternate criteria; for example, you cannot search on all invoices for a given merchant or all invoices for more than $100 for a given merchant. In contrast, metadata in a Document Management system allows you to establish relationships with your data, giving you the flexibility to retrieve documents using a wide array of criteria.

Review:

• Metadata creates associations between information; for example, a customer number can be automatically associated with an invoice.
• Metadata enables relationships between types of information; for example, an image can be associated with a transaction.
• Metadata makes it easy to standardize and automate filing methods, reducing filing time and keying on errors.
• Document Management provides a means for indexing information, so you can easily retrieve it using a wide array of structured terms.

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, and locked. Access "classes" simplify and strengthen system deployment for larger organizations. This enables access privileges to be controlled in groups, such as entire departments, management levels, job types, or individual users. These access classes can then be applied to document types, such as invoices. The beauty is that an automated “set and forget” approach, once defined, ensures the same logic and control for that particular filing job every time, without concern for the document format.

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, cabinet, folder, 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.

What additional functionality do I gain?

Not every Document Management program provides the same functionality. Consider your needs in the following areas when you investigate your options:

Unstructured and Structured Search

A search performed on metadata terms that are stored with the file – such as customer number, invoice number, and date – is known as a "structured search." Some systems also index the information contained within the document itself, so you can extend your search to the actual content of the document. Performing a search on indexed information is known as an "unstructured search."
 
Automate Tasks

Document Management systems enable the automation of routine tasks. For example, if you scan in a paper invoice for a merchant or customer, the system should automatically associate fields from its database, such as customer number and job number, without the need to reenter them. You should also have the ability to establish rules that can be applied to specific documents.

Here’s an example. Perhaps you scanned in a delivery ticket. While the system would associate job, customer name, phone numbers, etc., you might also want the user to be prompted to enter the date the delivery occurred or the name that appeared on the delivery ticket.

Document Management systems should make it easy to perform actions such as reading and associating bar codes with specific customers or document types. This speeds up entry and makes retrieval a snap.

Add Workflow / ISO Compliance

When you store documents in a management system, you should be able to assign workflow rules. For example, you might define a process called “Approve Purchase” and route the document through an approval process. You might even want to apply sophisticated rules such as: If the invoice is greater then $100, send to the division manager; if it is less than $100, send it to the department manager.

ISO compliance means documenting processes, ensuring they are repeatable, and then following the process. With workflow rules in place, assurance that procedures will be followed can be built into the workflow.

Data Backup

You may be dutifully backing up all your files now, but a Document Management system extends and enhances the process. A comprehensive Document Management solution will store images of delivery tickets, invoices, and forms, and then file them with the appropriate metadata. This lets you discard paper files that aren't easily backed up or must be transported offsite.

eForms

Forms can be converted to electronic equivalents that can pre-fill account information fields or populate a series of documents. Employment applications are an excellent example, giving you the ability to carry over applicants’ names, addresses, and phone numbers from one form to the next as they go through the process of applying for jobs.

Regulatory Compliance (meeting compliance mandates)

Do you know when your files were stored? If it’s just the IRS that concerns you, then you can probably delete documents that you have held for more than seven years. However, you may have customers with varying document retention requirements. A Document Management system enables you to establish and enforce retention policies to demonstrate that your organization is in compliance with these mandates.

Audit Trails / SOX Compliance

We have already touched on security from a standpoint of who can access what; however, with a Document Management system, you can also track every time a file is accessed and by whom. SOX Compliance refers to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and encompasses requirements of federal financial reporting. A Document Management system ensures that financial professionals can properly store and track all documents related to financial transactions.

Application Integration

Document Management systems can synchronize data between third-party programs such as Sage ACT!^®, Climark Advisor’s Assistant, Microsoft^® Outlook^®, and Intuit QuickBooks^,®to ensure your records are stored and updated uniformly.