CMS vs. DMS: Understanding the Key Differences – CMSWire
CMSWire's customer experience (CXM) channel gathers the latest news, advice and analysis about the evolving landscape of customer-first marketing, commerce and digital experience design.
The IDC projected in a 2020 report that enterprise data will grow at a 42.2% annual rate over the next two years.
Enterprises have many software systems that manage this data. Two of them that often intersect are document management systems (DMS) and content management systems (CMS). Your enterprise’s greatest needs will naturally determine the type of system it invests in to manage documents and content, and it’s important to recognize some key differences between these two systems.
“Organizations that are researching options should be driven by the type of challenge they are trying to address and secondly focus on technologies to address these challenges,” said Edwin Elmendorp, information architect with Kinsmen Group. “If the core challenge is around the long-term preservation of electronic files, some form of a DMS would be a likely candidate. On the other hand, if the content is more fluid, typically presented on the web, then a CMS is the more likely candidate.”
Document management systems capture, store and retain documents and include functions such as document intake, drafting, generation templates, versioning, collaboration, security, metadata, access rights, approvals, distribution, search, repository organization, archiving and retention policy management, along with reporting and auditing on these functions.
Some of the more advanced capabilities in a Document Management System can include object linking, workflow, external sharing, auditing, record retention capabilities, co-authoring and more. Your IT team, information management champions and those tasked with storing and managing sensitive business information will be the owners of such systems.
“In reviewing different DMS systems, your industry and the context of its use are extremely important,” Elmendorp said. “For example, in highly regulated industries such as pharmaceutical, specialized systems such as Accruent Meridian will support regulatory compliance such as 21 CFR Part 11 from the FDA — where such a system would be too complicated for a small consultancy firm.”
In short, a DMS is used for collaborative or transactional purposes. It captures digital documents but can also be used to store paper documents.
“These systems may involve transactional processes where the paper documents drive, or are secondary, to a business process — accounts receivables, payables, permitting, etc.,” said John Phelan, EVP, chief product officer at Hyland, which offers such software. “But, (a DMS) is often more suited toward collaboration and retention. An example here could be SharePoint or more broadly Office 365.”
Related Article: How Document Management and Content Management Differ
With a Content Management System (CMS), you're likely not thinking of SharePoint, but it's possible. A CMS, commonly offered by vendors like Adobe, Sitecore and Episerver, helps brands store, manage, personalize and publish content in digital formats such as websites and other digital media. These are also called Web Content Management (WCM) systems and have been said to be the digital centerpiece of a company’s digital experience management software.
However, analysts and those charged with producing digital customer experiences are lately seeing a CMS as one of the digital components among a wide range of software that manages customer experiences — alongside systems like digital asset management, customer data platforms, ecommerce, social media management and listening, marketing automation and CRM, along with others. Many vendors call the amalgamation of such technologies digital experience platforms.
Content management systems offer control over storage, access and distribution of key content asset pieces like logos, videos, audio file and documents.
“I first heard the term content management with people talking about what we now call Web Content Management,” Phelan said. “It was a time in our industry where the born digital information was meeting the born physical information. Since that time the term has morphed into what we see today. Content Management Systems are similar to a document management system but are more inclusive of other types of content including audio, video and other born digital formats, like XML, HTML and JSON as examples.”
Related Article: DXP? Web CMS? Content Services Platform? Navigating the Chaos of Vendor Categories
CMSWire author Sergey Golubenko noted some key differences when the two software systems are matched together:
“The differences between document and content management systems are nuanced and depend on the scale to which you are using them,” Phelan said.
Where a DMS excels is at the preservation and organization of company documents (records), a CMS is often focused at content presented at websites, which is not specifically locked in individual documents, according to Elmendorp. A good example, he said, is the difference between a contract and a company web page. Where the contract has legally binding consequences and becomes a static record upon agreement, the company webpage is constantly changing with new content authored by many different individuals. “Where a DMS can help a company to track the contract from cradle to grave,” Elmendorp said, “the CMS offers web-based tools to collaboratively edit and maintain content.”
Although this article is focusing on the differences between Document Management Systems and Content Management Systems, it’s worth noting the rise of Content Services Platforms over the last five years.
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is "a set of services and microservices, embodied either as an integrated product suite or as separate applications that share common APIs and repositories, to exploit diverse content types, and serve multiple constituencies and numerous use cases across an organization,” according to Gartner.
Although the term ECM may still be used by some, Gartner changed those systems in its reporting in 2016 to “Content Services Platforms,” citing a shift “from self-contained systems and repositories to open services.”
Content Services Platforms are for enterprise information management leaders and used for international content management, and not usually for external digital customer experiences (like a CMS does). “The industry has primarily settled on content services to describe the set of functionality required to manage the lifecycle of documents,” Phelan said. “Content services has replaced the term ECM to reflect the changes brought about by cloud technologies.”
Related Article: The Advantages of Putting Content Services Platforms in the Cloud
Enterprise Content Management (ECM) is not entirely dead as a term despite the Gartner name-change. It has a broader scope and has the ability to manage content and documents across the whole lifecycle of that content, according to Elmendorp. A CMS can be a part of an ECM, but also stand-alone systems.
“More important than the products or categories purchased are a customers’ plans and purposes for use and the ongoing commitment to use the capabilities that those purposes require,” said Mason White, vice president of product management for Conga, which provides document management capabilities. “When implemented and used well they become systems of control, coordination and leverage. When not used well they are candidates to become digital content compost heaps.”
For most of the 2000s and part of the 2010s, ECM, Phelan noted, became the standard term and encompassed all document and content-related technologies available. In the same timespan, technologies focused on automating business processes emerged as business process management (BPM), a market focused on intelligent data capture. Optical character recognition also emerged.
“Through vendor consolidation and other market shifts both eventually became incorporated into the commonly understood definition of ECM,” Phelan said. “Over recent years, with the emergence of cloud technologies even more related technology markets appeared, the discipline of handling data-centric scenarios emerged under the term Case Management.”
Then came multi-repository search tools known as Enterprise Search. Then video storage (multimedia), cloud-based sharing and collaboration (Electronic File Sync and Share or EFSS), Customer Communications Management (CCM) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA).
On a similar technology traject, Content Management Systems has morphed into Digital Experience Platforms for some. And there is some banter in the digital customer experience/digital marketing software industry of this vendor market merging into "Content Hubs."
“Due to the relationship all these technologies have with the discipline of content management, the term ECM became outdated and limiting,” Phelan said. “Gartner coined the term Content Services in the past few years as a way to articulate the combined value of all these capabilities under one technology umbrella. Content Services is the current term which best encompasses all of these technologies today. What will the next term be as additional technologies such as AI and blockchain enter the fray? Only time will tell.”
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Document Management Software Technology Market Growing CAGR of 13.69%, Industry Size, Future Trends and – EIN News
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Document Management Software Technology Market
Data Bridge Market Research offers comprehensive insights and detailed research on the Document Management Software Technology Market Trend and Forecast to 2029
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, August 24, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ — Data Bridge Market Research analyses that the Global Document Management Software Technology Market will exhibit a CAGR of 13.69% for the forecast period of 2022-2029. Market Research report on this market provides analysis and insights regarding the various factors expected to be prevalent throughout the forecasted period while providing their impacts on the market’s growth.
Document Management Software Technology Market survey report reveals analysis and discussion of important industry trends, market size, and market share. The report encompasses graphs, TOC, and tables which help understand the market size, share, trends, growth drivers and market opportunities and challenges. This market report guides to know how patents, licensing agreements and other legal restrictions affect the manufacture and sale of the firm’s products. An influential Document Management Software Technology business report provides key statistics on the market status of global and regional manufacturers and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the industry.
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Document Management Software Technology Market Analysis:
The market is expected to grow due to rising demand for Big Data analytics to manage large databases and increased digitization across industries. Rising awareness about document management systems in banking sectors to maintain customer records and accounts as well as control unauthorised file access is expected to drive market growth. During the forecast period, increasing adoption of document management systems in various industries is expected to generate revenue opportunities for solution providers.
This document management software technology market report provides details of new recent developments, trade regulations, import export analysis, production analysis, value chain optimization, market share, impact of domestic and localised market players, analyses opportunities in terms of emerging revenue pockets, changes in market regulations, strategic market growth analysis, market size, category market growths, application niches and dominance, product approvals, product launches, geographical expansions, technological innovations in the market. To gain more info on document management software technology market contact Data Bridge Market Research for an Analyst Brief, our team will help you take an informed market decision to achieve market growth.
List of the leading companies operating in the Document Management Software Technology Market includes:
* Hyland
* Oracle
* Ricoh Company
* M-Files
* Efilecabinet
* Newgen Software
* Alfresco
* Springcm
* Everteam
* Laserfiche
* Fabricated Software
* Office Gemini
* Open Document Management System
* Mastercontrol
* Lucion Technologies
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Global Document Management Software Technology Market Segmentations:
By Offering:
* Solutions
* Services
By Deployment Mode:
* On-Premises
* Cloud-Based
* Hybrid
By Organization:
* Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises
* Large Enterprises
By Application:
* Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI)
* Government
* Education
* Healthcare
* Corporate
* Industrial Manufacturing
* Retail
* Others
Document Management Software Technology Market Country Level Analysis
The countries covered in the document management software technology market report are U.S., Canada and Mexico in North America, Germany, France, U.K., Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Russia, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Rest of Europe in Europe, China, Japan, India, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Rest of Asia-Pacific (APAC) in the Asia-Pacific (APAC), Saudi Arabia, U.A.E, Israel, Egypt, South Africa, Rest of Middle East and Africa (MEA) as a part of Middle East and Africa (MEA), Brazil, Argentina and Rest of South America as part of South America.
The country section of the document management software technology market report also provides individual market impacting factors and changes in regulation in the market domestically that impacts the current and future trends of the market. Data points such as consumption volumes, production sites and volumes, import export analysis, price trend analysis, cost of raw materials, down-stream and upstream value chain analysis are some of the major pointers used to forecast the market scenario for individual countries. Also, presence and availability of global brands and their challenges faced due to large or scarce competition from local and domestic brands, impact of domestic tariffs and trade routes are considered while providing forecast analysis of the country data.
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Reasons to Purchase the Document Management Software Technology Market Report:
* The report includes a plethora of information such as market dynamics scenario and opportunities during the forecast period
* Segments and sub-segments include quantitative, qualitative, value (USD Million,) and volume (Units Million) data.
* Regional, sub-regional, and country level data includes the demand and supply forces along with their influence on the market.
* The competitive landscape comprises share of key players, new developments, and strategies in the last three years.
* Comprehensive companies offering products, relevant financial information, recent developments, SWOT analysis, and strategies by these players.
Table of Content: Global Document Management Software Technology Market
Part 01: Executive Summary
Part 02: Scope of the Document Management Software Technology Market Report
Part 03: Global Document Management Software Technology Market Landscape
Part 04: Global Document Management Software Technology Market Sizing
Part 05: Global Document Management Software Technology Market Segmentation By Product
Part 06: Five Forces Analysis
Part 07: Customer Landscape
Part 08: Geographic Landscape
Part 09: Decision Framework
Part 10: Drivers and Challenges
Part 11: Market Trends
Part 12: Vendor Landscape
Part 13: Vendor Analysis
New Business Strategies, Challenges & Policies are mentioned in Table of Content, Request TOC@ https://www.databridgemarketresearch.com/toc/?dbmr=global-document-management-software-market
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Employee Document Management: Organize Company Records – G2
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October 18, 2021
The human resource department is often home to complex documents that contain sensitive information.
These files can be unorganized inside a filing cabinet filled to the brim with employee records. Or they can be kept safely, securely, and well organized, thanks to an employee document management system.
Employee document management, sometimes called HR document management, is the process of retaining, filing, organizing, or destroying company records and employee information, while remaining compliant.
Effective employee document management through HR service delivery software makes it easy to search, store, and manage all employee data. This way, if you need to access a file or an employee record, you can find it fast without sifting through an endless amount of paperwork.
Creating an employee document management strategy is easy once you know the necessary steps. Here’s how to get started.
First, identify the files and records your business collects. The documents are usually related to the HR functions the department handles.
These necessary HR documents are typically:
Some HR documents are confidential or need restricted access to specific employees. As you organize files, you’ll want to define access needs.
To control access over records, consider whether all employees, managers, or just the HR department needs to access the documents. You can also determine permissions by when and how often these people are likely to need those files. Additionally, consider how you’d like these individuals to gain access to these specific documents.
As a busy HR professional, it’d be helpful to just create one document one time and be done with it.
That usually isn’t the case, as sometimes the data within these files have expiration dates. Additionally, sometimes it’s up to the human resource team to keep documents for a specific amount of time before they become null and void. As you go about setting up employee document management, consider going through which files have expiration dates and set up reminders for when they expire. Case management can also help determine the beginning and end of a specific issue.
To identify expiring files, ask the following:
As you streamline the document management process, you’ll find some records need more security and protection than others. For example, some information in these files may be protected by law, like medical and disability information that needs to be kept separate from employee file folders.
Additionally, if a document has expired or no longer has to be kept by the organization, how can it be discarded? Some files, like out of date training documents, can simply be thrown away. Ones that contain personal information about a past or current employee should be shredded.
Once you have a better understanding of the security your files need, you can move forward with file management. You’ll want to determine which files will remain as paper copies (like ones you’ll eventually need to shred) and which ones can be stored digitally. If you can go completely paperless, this may be the easiest option.
You can then decide how to group files. For instance, employees may have access to a library of resources with key information about insurance or taxes, while managers and team leads can access employee records.
When your organization takes time to find the right HR service delivery software, it’s easy to then utilize this tool to simplify employee document management. All of the files you need will be in one place, making it easy to set parameters, restrictions, and security settings to the records that need it most.
No matter your organization’s or industry, there are many benefits to implementing an employee document management system within your HR team.
One of the main benefits of a document management system for HR files is it allows an organization to remain secure and compliant. These systems make it easy for human resources teams to see what documents are on file, missing, and out of date or compliance. Having a comprehensive document storing system helps ensure your organization complies with all of the relevant requirements.
When it comes to your overall business needs, you always want to remain within the constraints of the law. With numerous federal laws requiring employers to store certain employee records, utilizing software with employee document management is an absolute must. In addition to these federal requirements, you must be able to readily access employee documents to answer certain lawsuits, regulatory audits and inquiries, and employee complaints.
As an example, if an employee files a discimination complaint against your organization, it’s likely HR will need to reference past performance appraisals, compensation data, and attendance records. If the complaint turns into a legal investigation and involves the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the HR team can utilize these records to protect the organization from a lawsuit.
Certain employee records have to be stored securely, while others have specific retention periods, so it’s best to keep all of these in one place. Employers are legally required to secure sensitive employee data, like files pertaining to medical information, details about disabilities, social security numbers, and other personal information.
Having an employee document management system in place will have security protocols that meet these legal requirements.
Features in a document system related to security and privacy typically include:
Increase HR productivity
HR departments are more productive when they can easily search for documents and improve employee file consistency. They’ll be able to spend less time searching through filing cabinets or boxes full of unorganized documents and spend more time doing their day-to-day role, like managing employee relations.
For example, imagine the time and effort that goes into managing employee tasks such as internal transfers or relocations. Ensuring all their files are in one place can help make move management an even simpler process.
Automating the process of turning paper files into electronic documents improves the workflow of the HR department, as well as other managers and C-suite executives. No matter when an important employee record is needed, or when changes must be made to benefits administration policies, doing so can be done quickly and efficiently.
In addition to improving the workflow of the HR team and other managers, having these files safely organized and stored within a cloud-based document management system makes it easy for employees to access the documents they need, without having to ask the HR team for assistance.
On the flipside, implementing an employee document management system comes with some challenges. One of the main challenges is the training process that goes hand-in-hand with utilizing a new process for the first time. In addition to investing in this new software, you’ll also need to invest time and effort into training your staff on how to use it in a compliant and secure fashion.
Depending on the tool your business opts for, it can also take time moving from paper to paperless files. It will take some getting used to and will need to be fully ramped before the benefits can be enjoyed.
Stop spending hours hunting down important employee files and take advantage of employee document management. You’ll find yourself asking, “where did I put that piece of paper?” a lot less and instead have more time to focus on making sure the right processes are in place for success.
Once you have all important files within your employee document management system, see how else you can improve your organization’s HR compliance.
Utilize HR service delivery software to streamline how your organization manages all employee documentation.
Mara Calvello is a Content Marketing Manager at G2 with a focus on Design, Human Resources, and SaaS Management. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Elmhurst College. In addition to working at G2, Mara is a freelance writer for a handful of small- and medium-sized tech companies. In her spare time, Mara is either at the gym, exploring the great outdoors with her rescue dog Zeke, enjoying Italian food, or right in the middle of a Harry Potter binge.
Utilize HR service delivery software to streamline how your organization manages all employee documentation.
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How to Implement a Computerized Filing System – business.com – Business.com
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Keeping your documents organized in today’s super-digitized, speedy world can be difficult and time-consuming. Whether you use local storage on your computers or mobile devices, or the increasingly popular cloud storage option, it’s important to implement a computerized filing system that enables your business to create, store, manage, and share documents and other files with ease.
This article will explain what a computerized filing system is, how it differs from a traditional filing system and how you can create an electronic filing system for your business.
A computerized or electronic filing system organizes and stores your business’s files on a hard drive or network space. The system can be software- or internet-based, or a simple desktop folder/file system on a computer.
The primary reason why people use a computerized filing system is it’s an easy way to safely store and organize files. This organization largely comes in the form of indexing, which categorizes and registers every document entered into the system based on specific properties that you can customize, such as file size or function.
Computerized systems also offer greater options for securing your files and sharing them, making it easier for team members to collaborate on shared documents.
Editor’s note: Looking for document management software for your business? Fill out the questionnaire below to have our vendor partners contact you about your needs.
Traditional systems are generally paper-based and manually organized, whereas electronic systems – as the name suggests – are digital, with documents organized and stored digitally.
Traditional filing systems tend to take up a lot of physical space – all of those papers require boxes or filing cabinets to store them – and these systems are susceptible to physical damage like fading, fire, flooding or other damage.
Computerized or electronic filing systems are generally more budget-friendly, they free up physical space, and offer many benefits that help you organize your documents and share them across your company with ease.
Switching from a traditional to a computerized filing system can greatly increase your system’s functionality by automating many aspects of the process, like indexing and tracking.
Here are seven ways that implementing a digital filing system can help your business manage documents more efficiently.
Creating your own computerized filing system takes time, but it is well worth the time and effort. The result is a well-thought-out and organized system.
Here are six steps to creating a computerized filing system for your business.
If you are not overseeing the filing process, assign an administrative staff member to be responsible. Make sure your whole team is aware of what changes are being implemented and who is responsible for overseeing the process. This lets employees know whom they should go to with questions and who is designated as the point person in keeping track of important documents.
Take an inventory of all the documents you have, how big they are, what their function is, how long they need to be stored, etc. Next, loosely organize them accordingly. This is the kick-off of your actual filing process, so think carefully about how you organize documents.
Keep your main goal in mind: to make it as easy as possible for someone to find a document quickly. Folders should have a clear sense of order, they should not be cluttered, and they should not hinder your compnay’s workflow. Be consistent in your labeling and separating.
You don’t need a folder for every small subgroup. For example, you can make one folder for “Medical Records,” and create subfolders within that folder categories by month or by year to keep your system orderly and uncluttered.
Naming your files is a vital part of the filing process. Proper and consistent naming makes it easy for anyone in your organization to quickly find a document, because they have a well-founded assumption of what the file might be named and where it might be stored.
Make sure the file name makes sense and includes the most important information regarding what the document is or says.
If you have important paper documents that must be retained permanently, create a dedicated place within your filing system for those documents. Consider making electronic copies of the paper originals, or if you must store the paper documents, organize them according to your system.
Once your filing is complete, make sure your entire organization is clear on how the system works and how documents must be named, filed and stored going forward. Create a document that outlines all of your filing guidelines. Keep it in your files, and include training on your filing process as part of your onboarding process.
Naming your files effectively is one of the most important aspects of an efficient filing system. Without a consistent file-naming convention in place, finding documents becomes confusing, difficult and frustrating. If you start with good habits, you set your business up for success.
To start, understand that there are two types of files on your computer – the ones you create and the ones you collect.
Create a system that differentiates these two file types in a way that makes sense, whether that’s marking it in the file name or dictating where the file is stored.
Next, decide on a naming system. What works best varies from business to business. You have to determine the best naming system for your organization. Many businesses use a combination of name and date so documents are easy to find according to how old they are.
Here are a few suggestions to follow when naming your files:
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Adobe Sign vs DocuSign: Which tool is best for your business? – TechRepublic
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Adobe Sign vs DocuSign: Which tool is best for your business?
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Compare key features of top digital signature tools Adobe Sign and DocuSign for your company’s operations and documentation needs.
As businesses continue to cut down on their waste and the cost of paper they use for business operations, e-signature software tools have become crucial in the document signing process for many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Adobe Sign and DocuSign are two digital signature tools that have facilitated business management through the creation, automation and signing of digital documents.
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Adobe Sign is a member of the Adobe cloud platforms and is widely regarded as the industry standard for online signatures. Adobe Sign integrates with various corporate software and offers a streamlined user experience.
With Adobe Sign, individuals or business departments can easily create, send, and track digital signature forms. This digital signature software tool sends documents for signatures quickly and securely without asking recipients to print and scan them.
DocuSign is a very popular online signature tool for both individuals and businesses. It features geolocation capture and real-time progress reporting that allows you to develop templates and workflows, have access to comprehensive analytics and obtain secure online signatures.
This e-signature software also works well with Google Drive, Dropbox, Salesforce and several other popular services, allowing users to sign documents on almost any device.
Both digital signature tools offer a good list of integration with powerful companies, making it easy to use other business-related software within their tools. For instance, Adobe Sign has seamless integration with Microsoft and other CRMs and HR software tools. Although, gaining access to these powerful integrations will require that you subscribe to the Adobe Sign Enterprise pricing option.
On the other hand, DocuSign offers more lists of integrations with native software tools, including Microsoft. This means that in addition to offering all the integrations within Adobe Sign, DocuSign offers more. By browsing through the extensive integration library in DocuSign, you’re more likely to find your preferred native integration solution than in Adobe Sign. What’s more, you can also access some of these integrations at a lower cost than Adobe Sign.
Businesses will always want to maintain and project their brand regardless of the adoption they make. Both DocuSign and Adobe Sign offer businesses the flexibility to customize their documents and brand them effortlessly within their tool. However, this business branding option is open to business-level subscribers.
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Each solution’s customization options include business taglines, logos and other custom business messages in addition to the ability to create a company profile that will allow businesses to set up their company details, colors and other necessary brand information. This feature gives businesses absolute control over their documents and how they should appear. This difference is that Adobe Sign offers better menu options for its customization and at a lower price, while DocuSign is more complicated in its customization offerings.
Information security is crucial for business management, as a compromise in information could lead to fatal consequences. Hence, both digital signature tools adhere to standard security policies in handling your documents and information.
Although both tools ensure the secure handling of documents, DocuSign is more transparent in how they do this. For example, they have a security brief that details how they secure your document to prevent information leaks and tampering, while Adobe Sign does not.
Choosing between Adobe Sign and DocuSign will depend on individual preferences, as both tools offer adequate e-signature solutions.
Adobe Sign fits better for smaller business organizations and individuals looking for a simple document signing solution. From the simple menu layout to the drag-and-drop interfaces, Adobe Sign is easy to handle for basic digital document signing operations without the need for many native software integrations. Moreover, Adobe Sign offers payment solution integrations for a small fee, unlike DocuSign, which offers this solution at a higher rate.
On the other hand, for larger business organizations that use many software tools, DocuSign will be a better fit. You should also choose DocuSign if your organization signs many digital documents frequently. With powerful analytics features, DocuSign will help you track the progress of your document with detailed analytics. This enhances productivity as you can easily monitor where all your documents are and hasten your employees to act on them.
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Document Management vs. Content Management: How They Differ – TechTarget
Document management system and content management system sound like interchangeable terms, but they are not.
A document management system (DMS) and content management system (CMS) can certainly perform similar functions, and there is overlap. It is important, however, to understand the differences between the two technologies.
A document management system stores, manages and tracks electronic documents, including emails, images and voice files. It can also track scanned images of paper documents.
Document management systems typically have the following capabilities:
Another related term is enterprise document management (EDM), which refers to the strategy of overseeing paper and electronic documents within an organization for easy retrieval in the event of a compliance audit or other legal incident. This strategy focuses on regulatory compliance from a document perspective. It should answer questions such as, “How long should a business keep documents for?” and, “How will the business recover documents in the event of a disaster?”
Document management systems are sometimes sold as standalone systems, but, today, they have been largely incorporated into the broader category of enterprise content management (ECM). Most ECM vendors, such as Alfresco, M-Files and Microsoft SharePoint, offer a DMS component.
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A CMS is an application that enables users to create, manage and publish digital content on a website. CMSes feature a graphical user interface (GUI) so that nontechnical users can edit, publish and manage content without knowing how to code.
A CMS has two key components:
A related term is web content management system (WCMS). WCMS and CMS are nearly interchangeable terms; the only difference is that a WCMS is a type of CMS that is specifically dedicated to website content.
A CMS is used within the larger scope of ECM. Therefore, CMS can be considered a subcategory of ECM software.
Popular CMS vendors include WordPress, Joomla and Drupal.
DMSes and CMSes overlap in the sense that they are both components of an overall ECM strategy. They both perform the following functions:
Additionally, both DMSes and CMSes are available as cloud-based SaaS subscriptions.
While there is overlap between the functions of a CMS and a DMS, they are not interchangeable. Here are the key differences:
Leadership teams may wonder how to sort through the alphabet soup of DMS, ECM, EDM and CMS, and how to choose the right technology for their organization.
EDM or DMS is a component of ECM. ECM is the convergence of a variety of technologies, including:
Therefore, large enterprises that need all of the above components should purchase an ECM platform. Companies that focus less on external publication and content marketing may want a standalone DMS to track their records and documents.
There are also content services. In 2016, Gartner declared that ECM was being replaced by content services. A content services platform (CSP) is an emerging technology that refers to the capabilities of ECM combined with RESTful APIs. It’s a set of microservices and applications that can come in the form of a single product suite or a collection of applications that share common APIs. CSPs can include both document management and ECM.
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Document Management Systems Market – Growth, Trends, and Forecast (2020 – 2025) – GlobeNewswire
May 07, 2020 08:41 ET | Source: ReportLinker ReportLinker
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New York, May 07, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report “Document Management Systems Market – Growth, Trends, and Forecast (2020 – 2025)” – https://www.reportlinker.com/p05891592/?utm_source=GNW
05% during the period of 2020-2025. As unorganized content makes it difficult for larger organizations to extract business related information and use available data, DMS proves to be very effective in order to overcome these challenges.
– The document management system (DMS) market is ever-changing, which is driven by the need for increasing efficiency in the workplace. The improving technologies and efficient execution of the DMS are expected to gradually eliminate the traditional paper files concept. ?
– DMS systems can be implemented and incorporated across business and functional units. Additionally, document management provides extensive tools and techniques for data retrieval. Storing data in a structured way allows the end users to use it for gaining insights.
– The growing emphasis on retaining historical company records, coupled with the sustained increase in adoption of paperless solutions, has been the major factors driving the growth of the document management industry. Cloud-based computing solutions have emerged as the key enablers of the document management system (DMS).
– Some companies have further security issues, such as company that deals with medical data must comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requirements. Thus, the ability to manage who can and cannot view and use documents is attained by DMS. eFileCabinet is a DMS, which is fully compliant with standards set forth by HIPAA, FINRA, and the SEC.
Key Market Trends
Healthcare to Register the Highest Market Growth
– The healthcare industry involves significant amounts of data being collected manually through contrasting internal IT systems, and numerous collections of documents, databases, and forms. Adoption of document management systems enable these players to create electronic patient records, thus, minimizing the risk of important documentation being misplaced and increasing security access.?
– Healthcare business involves a wide range of applications, such as electronic health record management, drug discovery, health insurance claims, patient appointment scheduling, stimulating account settlements, implementing post-discharge guidelines, and healthcare workflows management. These applications involve enormous paper trail.
– Additionally, the open source tools are gaining traction in the healthcare industry that propelled many practitioners to adopt open-source technologies, for establishing a dynamic Document Management Systems (DMS). Moreover, Big data and AI are further revolutionizing the healthcare sector. The players are also integrating these technologies within the RPA platform that enables them to improve efficiency and patient care, while reducing costly administrative errors.
– In September 2019, the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust selected IMMJ Systems Mediviewer, an electronic document management system (EDMS), that allows hospitals to scan, index, and archive paper medical records and access them through a user interface.
Asia Pacific to Register Highest Market Growth
– The increasing need to adopt document management system to curtail the illegal logging in trade and transport sectors is expected to boost the DMS market, over the forecast period.?
– For instance, the China National Forest Products Industry Association (CNFPIA) developed the timber legality verification standard, which has been envisaged as an important element of CTLVS. CNFPIA released the standard that sets out the requirements for legality at the forest management level and throughout the chain of custody, which covers timber legality requirements for document management, transport and sales, legality verification for domestic and imported timber, development of a timber legality management system, and for processing and trading.?
– The region encounters a heavy chunk of students entering the universities for studies, which makes it imperative for the universities to keep a document trail of every student. The number is increasing every year, thereby, creating an opportunity for the DMS providers to tap the market studied.
– Document management is a priority in the Asia-Pacific region. In 2019, Citi Bank launched digital onboarding for institutional clients in the Asia-Pacific region. The new digital solution is helping to replace manual legacy paper-driven and courier-based documentation process and comes off the back of a global documentation rationalization program that reduced over 70% of service agreements and forms.
Competitive Landscape
The document management systems market is gained a competitive edge in recent years and consists of several major players. In terms of market share, few of the major players currently dominate the market. However, with the increasing demand to maintain the rapidly growing patient records has enabled the company to innovate and provide strategic document management systems. Many of the companies are increasing their market presence by securing new contracts by tapping new markets.
– March 2020 – Hyland has released new capabilities to its Document Filters product offering, launching three separate updates in the last six months. Each release aims to add additional file formats – pursuing its goal of providing the most complete filtering toolkit that can process all the files an organization encounters in a typical day. With the recent releases, Hyland now supports more than 550 file formats, of which over 75 are supported for high-definition renditions.
– Feb 2020 – Agiloft announced the addition of its new Agiloft AI Engine, complete with prebuilt AI Capabilities for contract management and an open AI integration that allows customers to incorporate custom-built AI tools into the no-code-platform.
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30 startups that show how open source ate the world in 2021 – VentureBeat
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It has been a busy year in the open source software sphere, from high-profile license changes to critical zero-day vulnerabilities that sent businesses into meltdown. But in among all the usual excitement that permeates the open source world, countless open source startups launched new products, attracted venture capitalist’s (VC) money, and generally reminded us of the role that open source plays in today’s technological landscape — including the data sovereignty and digital autonomy it promises companies of all sizes.
Here, we take a look at some of the fledgling commercial open source companies that gained traction in the past year, revealing where enterprises and investors are betting on the power of community-driven software.
Continuous profiling belongs to the software monitoring category known as observability. It’s chiefly concerned with monitoring the resources that an application is using, such as CPU or memory, to give engineers deeper insights into what code — down to the line number — is consuming the most resources. This can help companies reduce their cloud bill, given that most of the major cloud platform providers charge on a consumption basis.
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While there are a few continuous profiling products on the market already, Polar Signals officially went to market in October 2021 with the launch of an open source project called Parca. At the same time, Polar Signals raised $4 million in seed funding from Alphabet’s venture capital arm GV and Lightspeed, as it gears up to launch a commercial hosted product in 2022.
Above: Unleash: An open source feature flag platform
Feature management is an important part of the continuous release/continuous deployment (CI/CD) process, one that allows developers to test new features incrementally with a small subset of users, turn features on or off, and A/B test alternatives to gain insights into what works best — without having to ship a whole new version.
Unleash is an open source platform that promises companies greater flexibility and control over their data and feature management deployment. The company raised $2.5 million last year to build on its recent growth, which has seen it secure customers such as Lenovo and U.S. manufacturing giant Generac.
Above: Conduktor founders Stéphane Maarek (CMO), Stéphane Derosiaux (CTO), and Nicolas Orban (CEO)
Companies that need real-time data in their applications often use Kafka, an event streaming platform built to handle common business use-cases such as processing ecommerce payments, managing signups, matching passengers with drivers in ride-hailing apps. Around 80% of Fortune 100 companies use Kafka to store, process, and connect all their disparate data streams — but Kafka requires significant technical nous and resources to fully leverage, which is where Conduktor is setting out to help with an all-in-one graphical user interface (GUI) that makes it easier to work with Kafka via a desktop client.
Conduktor last year raised $20 million in a series A round of funding led by Accel, as it looks to “simplify working with real-time data” on the Kafka platform.
Above: Scarf: Example dashboard
While open source software may well have eaten the world, the developers and companies behind open source projects often lack meaningful insights into their project’s use and distribution, something that Scarf has set out to solve.
The company’s core Scarf Gateway product serves as a central access point to all open source components and packages wherever they are hosted, and provides key usage data that the registry provider typically doesn’t offer. This includes which companies are installing a particular package; which regions a project is most popular in; and what platforms or cloud providers the package is most commonly installed on — it’s similar to Google Analytics, but for open source software.
After emerging from stealth back in March with $2 million in seed funding, the company went on to raise a further $5.3 million.
Above: Rudderstack: Integrations
Customer data platforms (CDPs) bring the utility of customer analytics to non-technical personnel such as marketers, allowing them to derive key insights from vast swathes of data — CDPs serve as a unified customer database built on real-time data such as behavioral, transactional, and demographic, drawn from myriad sources.
While there are many CDPs to choose from, RudderStack is a developer-centric, open source alternative that affords companies more flexibility in terms of how they deploy their CDP. Indeed, it’s pitched as “data warehouse-first,” which means that users can retain full control over all their data in their own warehouse.
To accelerate its growth, RudderStack last year announced a $21 million series A round of funding led by Kleiner Perkins.
AtomicJar is setting out to commercialize Testcontainers, a popular open source integration testing framework used at major companies including Google, Oracle, and Uber.
While unit testing is all about testing individual software components in isolation, integration testing is concerned with checking that all the components operate as they should when connected together as part of an application.
Founded last March, AtomicJar has invited a number of enterprises to participate in a private beta to trial various enhancements and extensions that it’s adding to Testcontainers. To help, the company last year raised $4 million in seed funding.
Above: Bit: How a hotel booking website might look when broken down into multiple components
Microservices is a familiar concept in backend engineering, but it has been gaining steam in the frontend sphere too as companies explore ways to leverage a flexible, component-based architecture across the entire development process. And this is where Bit is hoping to carve its niche.
Bit provides open source tools and a cloud platform to help frontend developers collaborate and build component-driven software. At its core, Bit makes it easier for companies to split frontend development into smaller features and codebases, allowing teams to develop features independently, while continuously integrating as part of a unified application.
The company announced a $25 million series B round of funding back in November, as it prepares to launch new products such as Ripple CI, which continuously integrates component changes from across all applications and teams in an organization. Ripple CI is scheduled to launch later in 2022.
Companies often need to enable different user permissions in their software, so some employees can only submit expense reports, for example, while others can “approve” the expenses or mark them as “paid.” These various permissions might vary by team, department, and geographic location — and companies need to be able to set their own user permission rules.
There are plenty of tools in the identity and access management (IAM) space that allows for this already, but a young company called Cerbos is setting out to streamline how software developers and engineers manage user permissions, while also addressing the myriad access control compliance requirements driven by regulations and standards such as GDPR and ISO-27001.
Cerbos is adopting a self-hosted, open source approach to the user permissions problem, one that works across languages and frameworks — and one that gives companies full visibility into how it’s handling user data. To help build a commercial product on top of the open source platform, Cerbos recently announced it had raised $3.5 million in a seed round of funding.
Above: Chatwoot: Shared inbox
Chatwoot has built an open source platform to challenge some of the major players in the customer engagement software space, including the multi-billion dollar publicly-traded company Zendesk.
The core Chatwoot platform constitutes a shared inbox that allows companies to connect all their various communication channels in a single, centralized location, while it also offers a live chat tool, native mobile apps, and myriad out-of-the-box integrations. As with other open source companies, Chatwoot promises greater data control and extensibility versus the proprietary incumbents.
The Y Combinator (YC) alum announced a $1.6 million seed round of funding back in September.
With Calendly now a $3 billion company, this has shone a light on the broader meeting scheduling space as companies search for new tools to cut down on needless, repetitive admin.
With that in mind, Cal.com last year launched what it calls “scheduling infrastructure for everyone,” aimed at anyone from yoga instructors and SMEs all the way through to enterprises. Similar to Calendly, meeting organizers use Cal.com to share a scheduling link with invitees, who are then asked to choose from a set of time slots — the slot that everyone can make is then added to everyone’s calendar.
Above: Cal.com in action
As an open source product available via GitHub, however, companies using Cal.com can also retain full control of all their data through self-hosting. Moreover, they can manage the entire look-and-feel of their Cal.com deployment via its white-label offering. If users don’t want the hassle of self-hosting, Cal.com is available as a fully-hosted service too.
Cal.com recently announced that it has raised $7.4 million in seed funding from a slew of angel investors and institutional backers, including YouTube cofounder and former CEO Chad Hurley.
Above: PostHog: Feature flags
PostHog is an open source alternative to popular product analytics platforms such as Amplitude, serving companies with data on how people are using their products, insights into notable trends, and — ultimately — removing bottlenecks and reducing churn.
The company last year raised $15 million in a series B round of funding from notable backers including Alphabet’s venture capital arm GV, while it also launched a new self-hosted plan that lets companies track their product engagements on their own infrastructure for free.
Above: Hoppscotch for teams
APIs (application programming interfaces) are the glue that holds most modern software together — they are what bring data to sales and marketing teams; privacy to banking and health care apps; and maps to your fitness-tracking app. And that is why Hoppscotch is striving to build what it calls an “API development ecosystem,” with open source at its core.
The Hoppscotch platform includes several integrated API development tools, aimed at engineers, software developers, quality assurance (QA) testers, and product managers. In pursuit of commercialization, Hoppscotch recently announced it had raised $3 million in a seed round of funding from a slew of investors including WordPress.com parent company Automattic and OSS Capital.
Above: Element: An instant message app built on Matrix
There are several open source Slack alternatives out there, one of which is Element — the company behind an end-to-end encrypted team messaging platform powered by the Matrix protocol. Matrix is something akin to a telephone network or email, insofar as it’s an interoperable communication system that doesn’t lock people into a closed ecosystem.
Because Element is built on Matrix, it essentially serves as a catalyst for the growth of the broader Matrix network. And to help it push further into the commercial sphere, Element last year raised $30 million in a series B round of funding.
MindsDB enables companies to make machine learning-powered predictions directly from their database using standard SQL commands, and visualize them in their application or analytics platform of choice. In the company’s own words, it wants to “democratize machine learning by giving enterprise databases a brain.”
There are many use cases for MindsDB, such as predicting customer behavior, improving employee retention, credit-risk scoring, and predicting inventory demand — it’s all about using existing data to figure out what that data might look like at a later date.
MindsDB ships in three broad variations, including a free and open source incarnation that can be deployed anywhere. To further develop and commercialize its product, MindsDB recently announced it had raised $3.75 million in seed funding and unveiled partnerships with major database brands, including Snowflake, SingleStore, and DataStax.
Knowledge graphs enable businesses to extract new information by aggregating and analyzing connections between large volumes of internal data. Music streaming services, search engines, fraud detection software, and more can all be aligned through their use of knowledge graphs to derive insights from disparate data that may not seem closely related.
While several larger established graph database companies raised sizable sums in 2021, some newer players also raised VC cash, suggesting that the graph database space has room for growth. One of those was TerminusDB, which raised $4.3 million in seed funding to build what it calls a “knowledge collaboration infrastructure” for the internet, combining an open source graph database and document store with the commercial, cloud-based collaboration TerminusHub built on top of TerminusDB. The company is also working on a cloud-based version of TerminusDB.
Above: Nhost founders Johan Eliasson and Nuno Pato.
The burgeoning backend-as-a-service (BaaS) market was pegged at $1.6 billion in 2020, a figure that’s predicted to grow to nearly $8 billion within six years. The value for companies and developers is that BaaS enables them to forget about infrastructure and put all their efforts into the front end, while open source can also help ensure that they are not locked into any specific ecosystem.
With that in mind, a handful of young open source upstarts have emerged to challenge the big incumbents such as Google’s Firebase.
Nhost
With Nhost, companies can automate their entire backend development and cloud infrastructure spanning file storage, databases, user authentication, APIs, and more. The company last year raised $3 million from a slew of notable investors, including GitHub founders Scott Chacon and Tom Preston-Werner.
Appwrite
Similarly, Appwrite is a self-hosted BaaS solution for web and mobile app development — it includes user authentication, file storage, a database for storing and querying data, API management, security and privacy, and more. The company last year announced $10 million in funding as it prepares to launch its cloud product in 2022.
Supabase
Much like Nhost and Appwrite, Supabase pitches itself as an open source Firebase alternative, one that allows developers to create an entire backend in minutes. The company announced a $30 million series A round of funding back in September.
Above: Airbyte: Data replication
Businesses often have a wealth of data spread across tools such as CRM, marketing, customer support, and product analytics. While accessing the data isn’t the problem, deriving meaningful insights from data stored in different locations and formats is — this means that businesses have to combine it in a centralized location and transform it into a common format that makes it easier to analyze.
A typical process for achieving this is what’s known as “extract, transform, load” (ETL), which involves transforming the data before it arrives in a central data warehouse. Though a more modern alternative — “extract, load, transform” (ELT) — allows companies to transform the raw data on-demand when it’s already in the warehouse. While there are pros and cons to both methods, we’re seeing countless companies emerge to tackle the broader data integration problem, with open source serving as a common theme throughout.
Airbyte
It was a rollercoaster of 12 months for open source data integration platform Airbyte, which announced its $5.2 million seed fundraise in March and then swiftly followed this up with a $26 million series A and $150 million series B which valued the company at $1.5 billion. In the midst of all this, Airbyte — which was only founded in 2020 — announced its first data lake integration, starting with Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3).
Dbt Labs
Fishtown Analytics, the company behind an open source “analytics engineering” tool called dbt (data build tool), rebranded as Dbt Labs and raised $150 million in a series C round of funding at a $1.5 billion valuation. Analytics engineering refers to the process of taking raw data after it enters a data warehouse and preparing it for analysis, meaning that dbt effectively serves as the “T” in ELT.
Estuary
Combining data from SaaS applications and other sources to unlock insights is a major undertaking, one made all the more difficult when it comes to real-time, low-latency data streaming. And this is where Estuary enters the fray, with a fully-managed ELT service — built on top of the open source Gazette project — that combines the benefits of both “batch” and “stream” data processing pipelines. The company raised a $7 million seed round of funding last year.
Meltano
GitLab had initially debuted Meltano back in 2018, and through various iterations, it ended up as an open source platform for data integration and transformation. Last year, however, GitLab spun out Meltano as a standalone business, with backing from major investors including Alphabet’s GV.
Preset
Preset was founded by Apache Superset (and Airflow) creator Maxime Beauchemin. Superset is a data exploration and visualization platform, upon which Preset offers enterprise hosting, security, compliance, governance, and more. The company last year launched its fully-managed cloud service out of beta and raised $35.9 million in series B funding.
Treeverse
Data lakes that constitute petabytes of different datasets can become unwieldy and difficult to manage. This is where young startup Treeverse is setting out to help, with an open source platform called LakeFS that enables enterprises to manage their data lake in a way similar to how they manage their code — this includes version control and other Git-like operations such as branch, commit, merge, revert, and full reproducibility of all data and code. The company last year raised $23 million in a series A round of funding.
Cube Dev
Once a company has combined and transformed all its data, how do they actually leverage this data to create internal business intelligence dashboards or add analytics to existing customer applications? This is something that Cube Dev is setting out to solve.
Cube Dev is the company and core developer behind the open source “analytical API platform” Cube.js, which gives developers the backend infrastructure to connect their aggregated and transformed data to end-user visualizations. It helps circumvent many of the technical barriers — such as SQL generation, caching, API design, and security — that are involved in making data useful.
Back in July, Cube Dev announced it had raised $15.5 million in a series A round of funding to commercialize Cube.js, which included launching a cloud-hosted SaaS version of the open source project.
Above: Nirmata dashboard
The rise of Kubernetes since Google open-sourced the project back in 2014 highlight’s a broader industry push toward containerized applications. This was a trend that continued into last year, with the recently-published State of Cloud Native Development report indicating that 31% of all backend developers use Kubernetes today, representing a 67% year-over-year increase. And as with just about every other hot open source project out there, Kubernetes is giving rise to a slew of commercial companies.
Nirmata
Nirmata is setting out to “conquer Kubernetes complexity” with a unified management platform for Kubernetes clusters. The company is the creator of and chief contributor to Kyverno, an open source policy engine for Kubernetes, and last year it raised $3.6 million in pre-series A funding to “capitalize on the full potential of Kubernetes-native policy management.”
Rafay Systems
Rafay Systems is a platform that unifies the lifecycle management for Kubernetes infrastructure and apps, bringing together capabilities spanning automation, security, visibility, and governance — the company last year raised $25 million in a series B round of funding.
Loft Labs
Loft Labs promises self-service Kubernetes access for all developers in a company. The company, which raised a $4.6 million seed round of funding last year, has open-sourced several Kubernetes projects, on top of which sits its commercial product known as Loft, which enables enterprises to “scale self-service access” to Kubernetes across the engineering workforce.
Kubermatic
Similar to Loft Labs, Kubermatic targets developers with a self-service Kubernetes platform for deploying their clusters across any infrastructure, and enabling them to centrally manage all their workloads from a single dashboard. The company last year raised $6 million in a seed round of funding.
Akuity
Akuity emerged from stealth last year with $4.5 million in seed funding to be the “Argo enterprise company for Kubernetes app delivery.” Akuity was founded by the co-creators of Argo, a popular open source project for orchestrating Kubernetes-native application delivery, and is used at major companies including Google, Tesla, GitHub, and Intuit.
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Why You Should Use Microsoft's OneDrive Personal Cloud Storage – MUO – MakeUseOf
If you’re a Windows user, you have a powerful storage package right at your fingertips.
OneDrive is a file storage and sharing application that lets you save your documents, images, and other files online; and access them at any time on a device you want. All you need to access its storage features is a Microsoft account.
The powerful online storage program was formerly known as Skydrive. As its new name implies, OneDrive operates similarly to a hard drive, storing files you can put on a regular hard drive. But unlike its predecessor, it is primarily online, and data stored on it can be accessed from any device, anywhere you are around the world.
Owning or setting up a Microsoft 365 account will give you immediate and unrestricted access to OneDrive. If you own a Microsoft account, you already have access to OneDrive. All you need to do is sign in with your Microsoft login details to use OneDrive.
If you do not have an account, log on to Microsoft, click Create an Account and follow the steps to create your account.
If you intend to use OneDrive occasionally, you can access your account from the OneDrive website to upload, view, and download files without downloading the application. This has shortcomings as you must constantly open the OneDrive webpage to access your files.
Also, the Auto-sync feature available on the application will not be available to you, alongside some other features available to users who access OneDrive via the application.
Suppose you intend to use OneDrive more often. In that case, we advise you to download the application onto the primary device you will be modifying, uploading, or viewing your files for easy access and comfort.
You can download the OneDrive application from the app store of your mobile device or PC, or you can visit the appropriate Microsoft web page and then download the OneDrive version suitable for your device. Once the installation is complete, sign in using your Microsoft account details.
If you use a PC that runs on either Windows 10 or 11, you do not need to be bothered about downloading or installing OneDrive. This is because it comes embedded within the operating system.
So why should you bother with OneDrive? Here are some good reasons:
OneDrive is compatible with various operating systems, including Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. It also has extensive support for different types of multimedia, including photos, videos, sound recordings, and documents saved in various formats.
In addition to this, you can access your photos, videos, and other files stored in OneDrive on any laptop, phone, or tablet from anywhere in the world. You can even use OneDrive with your Xbox console.
OneDrive is easy to navigate, as you can easily alternate between multiple document libraries without much fuss. The Quick Access option also lets you pin files or folders frequently used for easy access whenever required.
OneDrive supports work and personal use integration. As such, you can easily set up and alternate between work and private files seamlessly by setting up and switching between your personal and professional accounts.
The interface also enables easy navigation of team files. Workers with access to the account do not have to waste time searching through individual folders but only browse through the Teams folder to access work files.
This feature makes it convenient for you to make changes to a file even when you’re offline. Once you are back online, the new file or the changes you have made on an existing file will automatically be stored on your OneDrive and will become available on any of the devices that have access to your account.
This feature is so handy because it uploads files automatically as the synchronization process works in the background. Unlike other storage providers, it does not require you to manually upload files to the cloud, eliminating the need for browsers.
You may want to disable synchronization for different reasons, such as when you have a metered connection. Or maybe you just want to retain the version of a file stored on OneDrive without enabling version history. To do this, you should learn how to control OneDrive sync on your PC.
This feature is one of the major benefits of OneDrive. The app gives you the ability to periodically back up specific files and documents that are available offline on your PC.
If you enable file history, the periodic updating of your files to OneDrive means that if the original files are damaged or lost, you can restore them easily. What's more, you get access to the different file versions and explore them to decide which version you want to restore.
Due to Office365 being the preferred choice for many organizations worldwide, OneDrive is privacy conscious. As such, Microsoft has taken steps to ensure your files are under protection at all times, from storage to sharing.
Through the OneDrive Admin Center, Microsoft has provided you with various ways of configuring your preferred sharing options when sharing within an organization. For example, you can decide the default extent to which you can share links in three ways.
For external sharing, you can decide to share your file in four ways ranging from most permissive to least permissive.
In addition to the above, you can further secure the sharing process by clicking the Advanced Settings for External Sharing button to open a dropdown list and configure your sharing preferences.
Another way OneDrive securely stores your files is through the OneDrive Personal Vault feature. In addition to standard privacy protocol, it allows you to protect your most confidential files. Consequently, we advise that you learn how to use the Personal Vault in OneDrive and get the best out of this handy privacy-protecting feature.
Yes, it is. Once you create a Microsoft account, you gain free access to 5GB of OneDrive storage. You can use your storage space on any device of your choice as there is no limit to the number of devices it works with. However, if you want more storage, you have to join a paid plan.
There are a variety of plans to select from. This includes the OneDrive Standalone 100GB plan priced at $19.99 annually (or $9.99 per month), which gives you access to 100GB of storage without any extra perks. There is also the Microsoft 365 Personal plan priced at $69.99 annually (or $6.99 per month). This gives 1TB of storage space and grants you access to the premium features of OneDrive.
However, this route isn’t befitting for everyone. If you want to weigh your options before committing to a cloud storage platform, you should check out some of the cheapest cloud storage providers.
All major cloud storage platforms have a major reason for their attraction. For example, the main calling point for Google Drive is that it offers up to 15GB of free storage for all users. The major allure of OneDrive is that it seamlessly integrates with other applications in Microsoft Office 365.
This makes it easy to share folders and files with individuals inside and outside a professional setting simply by right-clicking on the folder/file and clicking Share. Moreover, you can share files as large as 250GB through OneDrive.
If you're looking for a storage provider, OneDrive may be the one you've been looking for. With all of its features and its affordable plan, why not give it a try?
Tayo Sogbesan is a professional writer with over 3 years of experience writing, editing, and optimizing web content. She’s been a lover of the technology scene for the better part of the last decade. As such, Tayo has owned, used, and explored the depths of Windows and macOS devices for about 5 years. Tayo is currently a Windows section writer at MakeUseOf, and looks forward to exploring the nuances of the tech space. If she’s not typing away on her computer, she is probably catching up on The Office.
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Audit Committee Annual Report 2020-2021 – Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada – Commissariat à la protection de la vie privée du Canada
Foreword from the External Members of the Audit Committee (AC)
1.0 Introduction
2.0 Role and Membership of the Committee
3.0 Summary of 2020-2021 Audit Committee Activities
3.1 Meetings
3.2 Transparency
4.0 Core Areas of Responsibility
4.1 Values and Ethics
4.2 Risk Management
4.3 Management Control Framework (MCF)
4.4 Internal Audit Function
4.5 External Assurance Providers
4.6 Follow-up on Management Action Plans
4.7 Financial Statements
4.8 Accountability Reports
5.0 Looking Ahead
Footnote
We are pleased to submit the Annual Report of the external members of the Audit Committee to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC), for the year ended March 31, 2021. The report reflects a summary of the oversight work carried out by the Committee.
It is the practice of he Audit Committee’s external members to table an annual report on the AC’s activities, as it provides useful information on the work of the committee and their independent perspective on the OPC’s risk management, control and governance processes. The views expressed in this report are entirely those of the external AC members.
As it has observed over the past several years, the AC noted the Office’s continued focus on results, performance and sound organizational practices. Notably, the importance of the Office’s focus on strong and responsive governance and risk management practices became even more evident as the COVID-19 outbreak unfolded during the year. In response, the AC adapted the format and frequency of its meetings, as the organization put enhanced risk, control, and governance processes in place to navigate through this unprecedented time.
Further, the pandemic underscored the importance of compliance with privacy laws in remote work environments, in a landscape where an increase in digitization has created new privacy risks. The 2020-2021 year also saw proposals for public and private sector federal privacy law reform. Going forward, as the Office contributes to the modernization of Canadian privacy laws, it will consider corresponding changes to its operations and structure, to optimize its organizational capacity and agility to focus on results. The OPC’s approach is informed by its results framework in serving the needs of Canadians, as well as by strategic planning and risk management practices that continue to be integrated into various facets of the organization’s work. These remain crucial governance elements as the Office navigates the increasing demands of a dynamic and challenging environment
The Office’s management and financial control frameworks form part of the core areas of oversight by the AC. The soundness of OPC’s accounting and financial reporting practices continued to be evidenced by the results of the testing of the controls over financial reporting and the sixteenth straight unmodified (i.e. ‘clean’) audit opinion the Office of the Auditor General rendered on the 2019-2020 financial statements.
We sincerely appreciate the Commissioner’s continued strong interest and support for the Audit Committee. We would also like to thank OPC’s Executive team, and in particular, the Corporate Management Sector for their continued hard work and assistance to the Audit Committee.
Suzanne Morris, CPA, CA
Elisabeth Nadeau
The external members of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner Audit Committee (AC) prepared this annual report for the Commissioner to summarize the Audit Committee’s activities, observations and advice in the fiscal year 2020-2021, pursuant to the approved AC Terms of Reference.
In carrying out its work, the AC maintains appropriate independent oversight while building relationships with management and the Office of the Auditor General (OAG). Consistent with prior years, our focus has been to identify and assess risk, to oversee control and governance processes as well as best practices across the OPC. Our aim throughout our work has been to provide the Commissioner with objective, clear and constructive input.
The Audit Committee’s review of, and observations on, each of the Committee’s oversight areasFootnote 1 are detailed in Section 4 of this report.
The role of the Audit Committee (AC)’s external members is to provide the Commissioner with independent advice and recommendations about the overall quality and functioning of the OPC’s risk management, control and governance frameworks and processes. The AC also provides the Commissioner with strategic advice on emerging priorities, concerns, risks, opportunities, and accountability reporting.
The AC is composed of the following members:
In addition, the following OPC staff attend AC meetings:
The Audit Committee has documented its role, responsibilities, and operations in a Terms of Reference (TOR) document. These TOR are periodically reviewed, updated as required, and reaffirmed by the Commissioner. To deliver on its approved Terms of Reference, the Audit Committee developed a 2020-2021 Work Plan that was reviewed and approved at the Committee’s June 2020 meeting. Progress against the plan is monitored throughout the year to ensure the Committee delivers on its commitments. Further, given the pandemic situation, the Office’s evolving operating context became a standing item at each AC meeting.
As part of the annual discussion of the Audit Committee’s Annual Report, members review and attest to being free of any real or perceived conflicts of interest that could impede their independence and objectivity. No issues have been noted in this regard. Further, a process for declarations of conflict of interest is in place, whereby members complete a written annual declaration form, which is reviewed by the CAE.
The sections that follow summarize key activities and areas of focus for 2020-2021 to further strengthen management and oversight practices across the OPC.
The AC held four formal meetings during the fiscal year as follows:
At the start of each AC meeting, members engaged in an open discussion of emerging issues facing the organization. During these discussions, the Commissioner briefed members on key developments across the organization since the last meeting as well as emerging issues or opportunities that could impact the organization. This included briefings on the evolving operating context due to COVID and a discussion of corresponding measures put in place by management to manage risks. , Important briefings also included legislative reform developments and their potential organizational and operational significance. In addition to the formal AC meetings, the external members of the Audit Committee held periodic check-in calls throughout the year with the Deputy Commissioner, Corporate Management Sector and CFO/CAE, and the Secretary to the Committee/Director, Business Planning, Performance, Audit and Evaluation. Through these calls, external members received updates regarding the impact of the pandemic on the Office’s plans, priorities and operations; remote working capabilities and cybersecurity; and monitoring of employee wellness. The Deputy Commissioner, Compliance Sector, joined one of these meetings in order to provide additional leadership perspective on key risks and areas of focus as compliance operations pivoted to meet COVID-19 related challenges.
All of these discussions provided members with valuable context and insights that allowed them to stay current on the organization’s key areas of business and to gain a better understanding and appreciation of the swiftly changing operational context within which the organization operates. These discussions also allow an opportunity for AC members to provide the Commissioner and senior management with strategic advice on new or emerging areas or issues facing the OPC.
As part of the Audit Committee meetings, the external Committee members held in-camera discussions with the Commissioner, the Chief Audit Executive who is also the Chief Financial Officer, and officials from the OAG when in attendance. In-camera meetings were also held with external providers of internal audit related services. These in-camera segments provide an opportunity for these officials and representatives to raise and discuss any sensitive issues in confidence. The external members also meet in camera to discuss issues as required.
Again this year, the external members attended the annual Departmental Audit Committee (DAC) Symposium, which in response to the pandemic situation, was organized remotely by the Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) and included sessions in October and December 2020. These enhanced members’ understanding of relevant issues and developments across the public service and fostered the sharing of best practices. The Chair also participated in related meetings of all DAC Chairs.
Audit Committee information is publicly available on the OPC website. This includes biographies of the AC members, the Committee’s Terms of Reference, annual reports and internal audit reports. The Audit Committee believes that the proactive sharing of this information provides Canadians with valuable information and insight into the work of the Committee and its role in the oversight of the management practices of the Office.
The sections that follow provide a summary of the AC’s activities during the year to discharge its responsibilities in providing the Commissioner with input that helps strengthen governance, risk management and control processes and practices across the OPC.
Values and Ethics (V&E) continues to be an area of importance for management and the AC. In June, the Committee received and reviewed the annual report on values and ethics, conflict of interest (COI) and post-employment measures, which summarize the OPC’s activities related to its V&E program. No areas of concern were noted in the annual report.
A key element of OPC’s formalized risk management arrangements continues to be the Corporate Risk Profile (CRP). In 2020-2021, corporate risks were reviewed as part of the Risk Based Audit Plan (RBAP) process. An external professional services firm was retained to update internal audit priorities, and through this exercise completed an update of guiding principles, methodologies, key risks and major sources of risk. These were discussed with the AC at its March 2021 meeting.
As in prior years, as management monitors developments throughout the year, the external members looked to be apprised of any changes to key risks as well as the effectiveness of risk mitigation strategies. As part of its 2020-2021 Audit Committee meetings, the AC received verbal updates on corporate risks, with a particular focus on the evolving COVID-19 situation and legislative reform developments. As previously described, recurring check-in meetings were added during the year to monitor continuing developments with respect to the pandemic, and its impact on OPC’s plans, processes, and operations.
These briefings included updates on consultations with employees during the year. Through all staff meetings, pulse checks and discussions, management surveyed employee wellness and determined the approaches and tools needed for employees to work from home. Employees’ perspectives were also obtained regarding near term and longer term scenarios for what the office of the future could look like.
On a regular basis, management updates the AC on its key management control processes, along with procedures adopted to mitigate any concerns towards achieving results.
As an Agent of Parliament, OPC is not subject to the Management Accountability Framework (MAF) assessment undertaken by Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. Notwithstanding this, the OPC utilizes the TBS tool to carry out a self-assessment of the organization’s management control processes and practices. The external members continued to be pleased with management’s commitment to build on the strengths evidenced through this assessment, and to continually strive to improve in an efficient and effective manner.
During the year, the Committee received updates on management’s implementation of action items resulting from prior years’ MAF self-assessments in the areas of People Management and Information Management & Information Technology (IM/IT).
As the OPC’s operations continue to evolve and as workloads increase, the Office’s 2020-2023 HR Strategy will be particularly important to effectively support people management. AC members were pleased to note that progress continues in the implementation of the Office’s plans in this area. In March, management provided an update on completed and ongoing initiatives designed to strengthen talent management and development, leadership skills, language training, inclusive services and a number of other important areas.
Progress also continues towards the implementation of OPC’s 2020-2022 IM/IT Strategy. Key areas of focus include business process automation, business intelligence, mobility, cloud opportunities, collaboration tools, as well as security and privacy. Updated plans and results to date will be presented to the Audit Committee in 2021-2022.
The AC will follow the progress as well as the development of future initiatives in these critical areas.
A summary of other areas of the MCF examined and input provided by the external members follows.
Using the services of an outside consulting firm, OPC tested key internal controls over financial reporting with respect to payroll processes for the 2019-2020 reporting cycle. At its October meeting, the AC received the results of this work, noting that there were no significant recommendations flowing from the testing and that recommendations focused on process refinements.The AC also noted that payroll monitoring practices continue to be in place, including regular oversight meetings with the CFO.
The Committee noted that for the 2021 reporting period, work will focus on the cyclical testing of entity level controls, which include governance and risk management processes. In addition, there are plans to continue working with the external consultant on the implementation of payroll process refinements coming out of the most recent testing work.
As part of the governance process, the external members of the AC met in-camera with the representative of the external firm who performed the ICFR testing. The AC was pleased with the overall results of the ICFR testing and management’s commitment to continuous improvement.
In the face of the exponential growth of the digital economy, and with growing workloads and anticipated privacy legislative reform, financial resource management continues to be critical to supporting the organization in effectively managing its resources. The AC received an update on the OPC financial situation at each meeting, as well as a briefing on financial results and the management of funding carry forward/reprofiling requests for 2020-2021 Briefings were also provided regarding the approach to assessing the financial and operational implications of potential legislative reform for the Office. These updates highlighted the due diligence and rigour OPC management undertakes to manage an expanding and evolving mandate.
The AC reviewed and provided feedback on the OPC’s 2020-2021 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Quarterly Financial Reports. Treasury Board Secretariat prescribes the format of these reports, and members did not note any concerns but rather once again commend management for the clarity and conciseness of the reporting.
The Audit Committee plays an active oversight role of the OPC’s internal audit function. The mandate, roles and responsibilities and authority of the internal audit function are detailed in the OPC’s Internal Audit Charter that is periodically reviewed and recommended for approval by the Audit Committee and formally approved by the Commissioner.
The Committee concurs with and continued to monitor the mechanisms in place at the OPC to ensure the independence of the internal audit function. The Office’s model has served the Office well over several years and was reaffirmed by an External Practice Inspection conducted in 2019-2020 as being in conformity with the Institute of Internal Auditors’ International Professional Practices Framework. At its April 2020 meeting, the AC received the results of the External Practice Inspection and action plan, with the OPC Internal Audit function receiving the highest rating of ‘Generally conforms’ in all areas of inspection. The practice reviewers commented on the nimbleness of the function, its effectiveness in carrying out its mandate with limited resources, and on how it is well respected within the organization.
The OPC’s in-house internal audit capacity consists of a Director, Business Planning, Performance, Audit and Evaluation, with oversight by the Chief Audit Executive (CAE). The CAE, who is also the Deputy Commissioner, Corporate Management Sector and Chief Financial Officer, reports directly to the Commissioner. To augment the in-house capacity and support the independence of the audit function, OPC continues to periodically co-source the development of the Risk-based Audit Plan (RBAP). In addition, individual internal audit and ICFR engagements are co-sourced with outside professional services firms. This approach enables OPC to retain oversight of the internal audit function while leveraging the independent expertise and experience of internal audit professionals. The AC Chair, who is a Chartered Professional Accountant, Chartered Accountant (CPA, CA), with significant internal audit expertise, also provides guidance to support the enhancement of this function and its independence and oversight throughout the year. In addition, the external members of the Committee meet in camera with representatives of the outside professional services firms. They also hold quarterly in-camera sessions with the CAE and an annual in-camera discussion with the Commissioner to provide input into the performance appraisal of the CAE.
In 2020-2021, a major RBAP project was completed, consisting of a cybersecurity audit and maturity assessment. The project was scoped and conducted by an expert external professional services firm. The audit was overseen by the Chair of the Audit Committee, supported by internal resources, as it focused on an area that falls within the scope of responsibilities of the CAE in his role as Deputy Commissioner of the Corporate Management Sector. The objectives of the project were to assess the current state of cybersecurity maturity, provide assurance over the effectiveness of existing controls, and provide recommendations to help the OPC reach its desired future state for cyber security maturity. The project also included a workshop with key OPC stakeholders. Results and action plans this were presented and discussed at the June 2020 AC meeting.
In 2020-2021 the RBAP methodology and the guiding principles for the selection of projects were updated with the assistance and expertise of an external professional services provider, informed through an in-depth review of the current process, operational context, key organizational risks and consultations with OPC executives and the AC members. The major orientations of the RBAP and potential assurance and advisory projects were identified and discussed at the AC’s March 2021 meeting. A finalized plan will be presented to the Committee for approval early in 2021-2022.
As in past years, the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) carried out an audit of the OPC’s financial statements with the objective of rendering an audit opinion on these statements.
The OAG Audit Principal and Audit Project Leader attended the AC’s October 2020 meeting to review and discuss the audited Financial Statements and the Management Representation Letter, including the related Annex with respect to internal control over financial reporting. The OAG’s report to the AC highlighting the annual audit results for the year ended March 31, 2020 was also a key document reviewed and discussed at this meeting. For the sixteenth (16th) straight year, the OAG rendered an unmodified audit opinion on the financial statements. No significant internal control weaknesses were noted by the OAG nor did they issue a Management Letter.
Representatives from the OAG attended the Committee’s March 2021 meeting to discuss the status of plans for the annual audit of OPC’s 2020-2021 financial statements. In light of the continuing COVID-19 situation, the OAG representatives will continue to work with OPC management to determine the expected timing of their planned audit procedures.
As part of its 2016 New Direction in Staffing, the Public Service Commission (PSC) introduced a requirement that a cyclical staffing assessment be conducted at least every five years, in order to provide the Deputy Head and the PSC with a robust review of its staffing system. As a small organization, the OPC established an arrangement with PSC for the conduct of this assessment and the work was carried-out during the year. Committee members look forward to engaging with management and the PSC on the results of the assessment in early 2021-2022.
OPC management and the AC periodically look for opportunities to leverage lessons learned from external assurance providers in other areas of government. At the request of the AC, a summary report was prepared and circulated to members, covering relevant system-wide audit engagements performed by external service providers across the federal government in 2020-2021. This is a useful exercise, which provides valuable insights on opportunities to continue enhancing business processes.
The AC monitors management’s progress in implementing management action plans stemming from internal audit reports until all recommendations have been satisfactorily implemented or are no longer relevant. On a semi-annual basis, the Committee receives and reviews a report on management’s progress in implementing outstanding actions. In June 2020, the Committee received and reviewed the results of the cybersecurity audit and maturity assessment, including the management response and action plans. At its March 2021 meeting, the AC received and discussed a progress report and was pleased to note that management was on track in the implementation of action plans resulting from this audit project.
As the Commissioner is an Agent of Parliament, the financial statements of the organization are audited by the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) each year. As noted in section 4.5 of this report, at their October meeting AC members reviewed the OPC’s 2019-2020 audited financial statements, and discussed them with the Deputy CFO, CFO, and representatives from the OAG. Following the discussions, the AC recommended that the Commissioner approve the financial statements.
The external members reviewed the OPC’s draft 2019-2020 Departmental Results Report (DRR) and the draft 2021-2022 Departmental Plan (DP). AC members provided recommendations to management prior to these reports being approved by the Commissioner.
Over the coming year, the Committee looks forward to providing oversight as well as advice to the Commissioner. Ongoing developments in the COVID-19 situation are defining a new reality in the face of which it continues to be imperative for the organization to respond quickly and effectively and to determine what a post-pandemic workplace of the future will look like. In addition, the years ahead are expected to bring important developments in public and private sector federal privacy law reform. Going forward, as the Office contributes to the development and adoption of new Canadian privacy laws, a key area of focus will be the optimization of its organizational capacity to deliver value to Canadians.
The “new normal” will test the organization’s governance, its operational agility and control framework. The Committee will continue to pay attention to how the organization responds to these challenges as well as to impacted key areas such as business critical risk management, decision-making, people management, financial management, program delivery, business continuity, change management and communications.
An important area of focus for the Committee will be to ensure that potential control gaps are quickly and effectively addressed. In that context, the Committee looks forward to discussing how the organization plans to recalibrate both its Corporate Risk Profile (CRP) and Risk Based Audit Plan (RBAP).
In light of the challenging environment, the Committee will encourage the organization to adopt a strategic approach to implementing its HR and IM/IT strategies, as well as plans and initiatives to support the OPC’s evolving mandate, and the rapid evolution of privacy issues in the digital environment. Similarly, the progress in implementing action plans associated with the cyber security audit and maturity assessment will continue to be important priorities.
Finally, the Committee will follow with interest the implementation of new/revised Treasury Board policies and OPC’s compliance with associated requirements; implementation of MAF action plans; and plans to address the Open Government Directive, while recognizing that the timelines of some of these activities may continue to evolve and need to be adjusted.
The 8 areas encompass:
Return to footnote 1
Foreword from the External Members of the Audit Committee (AC)
1.0 Introduction
2.0 Role and Membership of the Committee
3.0 Summary of 2020-2021 Audit Committee Activities
3.1 Meetings
3.2 Transparency
4.0 Core Areas of Responsibility
4.1 Values and Ethics
4.2 Risk Management
4.3 Management Control Framework (MCF)
4.4 Internal Audit Function
4.5 External Assurance Providers
4.6 Follow-up on Management Action Plans
4.7 Financial Statements
4.8 Accountability Reports
5.0 Looking Ahead
Footnote
The Privacy Commissioner of Canada is an Agent of Parliament whose mission is to protect and promote privacy rights.
Get updates about the OPC’s announcements and activities, as well as the events in which we participate.
We respect your privacy
Read our Privacy policy and Terms and conditions of use to find out more about your privacy and rights when using the priv.gc.ca website or contacting the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
If you have a question, concerns about your privacy or want to file a complaint against an organization, we are here to help.
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