How does your business deal with the information that comes to it, whether digital or not? According to the AIIM (Association for Information and Image Management), the best way to deal with data is to capture it at the first point of contact. In other words, information should be digitally captured as soon as it enters your organization premises.

• What is Electronic Document Management?
• Why Implement Document Management?
  • Workflow organization
  • Paper to digital transformation
  • Access and security control
  • Version control, reviews and approvals
  • Digital signature
  • Content search

A report published by AIIM (Improving Business Operations in 2017: Capturing Vital Content) states that 88% of its respondents are increasing their digital correspondence, while 60% say that their paper letters are decreasing. When it comes to invoices, 64% say that their paper invoices are reducing, while, for 69%, there is an increase in the number of digital invoices.

What does this mean? In general terms, we can say that we are moving towards a paperless business culture. However, if there is a preference for documents in digital format, we need to think about a workflow that deals with its whole pipeline, from the conception to the storage of these documents. That’s where we come into the field of Document Management (Electronic Document Management – EDM).

What is Electronic Document Management?

Electronic Document Management (EDM), refers to the management of different types of documents through software (such as Fusion Platform). With a GED/ECM solution, users in a company can not only create a document or capture a printed copy in electronic format but also store, edit, process, print, and manage documents in image, video, audio, and text formats.

Why to perform Document Management?

A Document Management software brings benefits such as:

1. Workflow organization
2. Transformation of paper into digital information
3. Access control and security
4. Version control, revisions, and approvals
5. Digital signature
6. Content search

Let’s see some examples:

Workflow organization:

GED solutions trigger collaborative workflows involving stakeholders responsible for taking actions on the document, such as signing (with a digital signature), editing, or commenting, while ensuring quality control.

Flip the switch from paper to digital information:

According to research conducted by AIIM, only 37% of respondents prefer paper for handling, reading, and note-taking. Thirty-two percent of them mentioned that their suppliers prefer information in digital format, and 27% cited the lack of senior management support to eliminate paper from their processes.

Paper is still part of an organization’s routine. However, there are some points to consider:

• Paper storage generates costs.
• Paper documents are more prone to getting lost.
• Managing a paper document is time-consuming.

A good EDM software includes capture features. In general, Document Management solutions use various technologies such as semantic web or syntactic pattern recognition, allowing them to extract relevant information (keywords) from scanned documents.

Thanks to Optical Character Recognition (OCR) – 20% of AIIM’s respondents mentioned that this technology is already in use in their companies for data capture – and Barcoding, all documents that have undergone digitization can be recognized. This means that those wasted hours searching for information in paper or desktop folders are eliminated.

The explanation for this is simple: when the content is available to a solution that features data recognition, accessing information becomes much easier, requiring only the use of keywords, for example.

When trying to understand what triggers the transformation of capture processes in businesses, AIIM found that 37% of their respondents cited exercises in cost savings in specific areas such as Accounts Payable, while 33% said it was an initiative to improve customer responsiveness.

Therefore, through an intelligent DMS process, it is possible to automate tasks involving document management without human intervention, bringing costs down and increasing decision-making accuracy .

Access control and security:

A Document Management solution allows assigning access permissions to each document. Access can be granted to an individual user or a group of people.

It is also possible to manage authorized individuals who can interact with documents through the creation of profiles and assignment of permissions. Through integration with file editing tools, a DMS software can lock functions such as Save, Save As, Print-Screen, Printing, and others.

Version control, revisions, and approvals:

With Document Management, it is also possible to configure and control the management of document versions, revisions, and approvals. This way, you can verify who made changes and when they occurred.

Digital signature:

Good DMS software enables electronic documents to be signed with certificates in the ICP-Brasil standard.

Content search:

Document Management through software – such as Fusion ECM – allows documents to be located by creation and editing dates, metadata, keywords, etc. This eliminates the time spent searching for a document in desktop folders, as the solution does all the locating work.

Conclusion

When discussing Document Management and the transformation of paper into digital information, it is common for people to imagine scanners spread throughout the company. However, the concept goes beyond that.

We have previously addressed paperless companies and the importance of a this trend to the environment. Note that the concepts of paperless and DMS are related, as both mean much more than simply scanning documents. Therefore, to conclude, remember that Document Management encompasses both publication and/or digitization, as well as storage, access control, security, but most importantly, the recognition and retrieval of information that is relevant to your business.