How to choose the right document management system – TechTarget
Getty Images/iStockphoto
The rise in remote workforces has prompted many organizations to search for a viable document management system.
But to justify its adoption, an organization must study the DMS tools and ensure that they meet the organization’s needs. With more options becoming available due to improved technology and awareness, it can be difficult to know what to look for.
Document management systems help teams go beyond the limits of paper-based workflows to bring all their business systems online. They also provide a more structured alternative to simple file management systems that improve security, sharing and connectivity across workflows and applications.
A document is the universal API of business information exchange. Every business document, including invoices, contracts, bills of materials and purchase orders, is packaged into universal-sized pieces of paper. Document management systems bring order and consistency to these manual processes.
The need of every enterprise is different. Smaller companies might appreciate the opportunity to digitize manual and physical processes. Larger firms may appreciate new capabilities for integrating document data across various customer, financial, legal and compliance workflows more efficiently and with a higher level of granularity. And these more sophisticated capabilities are becoming more accessible and cost-effective thanks to improvements in AI, robotic process automation (RPA) and the cloud.
A document management system is a critical step in automating business processes. Timeshatter, a timeshare negotiations consultancy, turned to a document management system to improve complex workflows around timeshare contracts.
Implementing a document management system helped eliminate human error, according to Timeshatter CEO Brian Donovan. It also improved access and reduced the time spent ruffling through filing cabinets to find documents.
Companies with a high volume of critical documents will likely see the most significant gains from deploying a DMS platform.
Ephesoft, an intelligent document management system vendor, sees significant adoption among financial services companies, healthcare organizations, government agencies, education institutions and manufacturing firms, according to Dave Beery, data science team lead at the company.
Intelligent document processing (IDP) is an emerging capability for further automating DMS capabilities. Key IDP enhancements apply optical character recognition to identify text, AI to interpret the layout and meaning of the text and RPA to automate document workflows. Along with that, the cloud improves document workflows and data exchange with other applications through more sophisticated APIs.
The combination of IDP and cloud can help organizations build more sophisticated AI and machine learning models. For example, financial companies can use IDP to automatically extract more granular data from bank statements, pay stubs, tax documents and other essential documents. This capability leads to more accurate models to predict credit risks, identify fraud and improve planning, said Sam Bobley, CEO and co-founder of Ocrolus, a financial document automation platform.
It is important to look for certain document management system tools to determine if a platform is the right choice.
Cloud access is crucial because it allows users to access all documents from any device. It also helps mitigate the risk that data cannot be lost or deleted, while permissions are a great way to enable and restrict document access to different people.
It is vital to ensure various ways to bring documents into the platform, said Eric McGee, senior network engineer at TRG Datacenters. It’s best to ensure that a document management system allows for documents’ input through different sources such as email, scanners, apps and bulk uploads, he said. And if it’s an essential source in an organization, the organization should investigate how seamlessly it works with the necessary workflows. For example, does email upload require an extra step, or could the accounts receivable team kick off an invoice payment process with a single click, or better yet, no clicks?
Document version control features can help teams coordinate changes for communicating about complex products, particularly in manufacturing, said Maximilian zur Muehlen, business strategy manager at VEM Tooling Group, an injection molding company in China. For example, teams may work on different documents, such as a bill of material or a procurement request. Robust version control features have helped zur Muehlen’s team identify and avoid communication hiccups when documents get out of step.
Security should be a top priority in any newly integrated software or technology. Things to look for include in-transit and at-rest encryption, support for role-based access, comprehensive audit trails and revision indexing abilities. These are all valuable for their own sake and to simplify compliance.
The more documents users add to the database, the more complex, in theory, it becomes to manage. Pay close attention to the tagging, rating and other categorization capabilities as these will help users locate the necessary files more efficiently.
Research the tools’ advanced document indexing capabilities. Proper document indexing improves document retrieval, access controls and reporting. Some of the most popular DMS document indexing features include metadata indexing, content recognition and indexing, version and revision indexing and automatic document numbering.
Tightly regulated firms may also want to consider pull printing support, which keeps documents from printing until users have authenticated themselves at the device, suggested Bob Burnett, director of B2B solutions deployment and planning for Brother International Corporation. This protects documents from being taken by unauthorized personnel and can help avoid large crowds around the machine, aiding employees in feeling more comfortable being back in the office after the pandemic.
RPA can help automate DMS workflows, but someone has to create the RPA bots manually. Hyper-automation is an emerging capability for automating the process of creating automation. Look for human-in-the-loop capabilities that can “watch” how people process documents. This can accelerate efforts to combine the benefits of AI, RPA and cloud initiatives, Bobley said.
The top 5 content management trends in 2022
E-Handbook: Automated document management system tools transform workflows
Up Next
Advanced technologies, e-signature proliferation and COVID-19’s impact are speeding the transformation from paper-based to automated document management processes.
With numerous options to choose from, picking the right document management system for your organization depends on a careful examination of its tools and features.
Companies in the throes of digital transformation find the e-signature process to be a major catalyst in automating their document management systems and smoothing workflows.
Document management plays a key role in aiding hybrid workforces, so organizations must ensure their document management strategies enable safe and accessible hybrid collaboration.
The collaboration between the data cloud vendor and robotic process automation vendor will enable joint customers to automate …
As the volume and complexity of data grows, organizations need AI and ML capabilities to surface insights and augment the …
Coming after the addition of natural language processing capabilities, the new embedded analytics tool strengthens the BI …
The open source Apache Kafka streaming technology and commercial vendor Confluent have grown over the last decade as …
Data quality is essential to operate a successful data pipeline and enable data-driven decision-making. These seven data quality …
The Facebook parent company, along with multiple contributors, including Ahana, Voltron Data and Intel, are developing a new open…
Both RFID and barcodes are valuable in the supply chain, but each is more useful for particular scenarios. Learn what to consider…
Lack of communication between a company’s finance and IT departments can cause problems with organizational goals and decisions. …
Navrina Singh, CEO of Credo AI, discusses the limits of MLOps and algorithmic auditing in providing governance for responsible AI.
With its Cerner acquisition, Oracle sets its sights on creating a national, anonymized patient database — a road filled with …
Oracle plans to acquire Cerner in a deal valued at about $30B. The second-largest EHR vendor in the U.S. could inject new life …
The Supreme Court ruled 6-2 that Java APIs used in Android phones are not subject to American copyright law, ending a …
SAP Multi-Bank Connectivity has added Santander Bank to its partner list to help companies reduce the complexity of embedding …
Over its 50-year history, SAP rode business and technology trends to the top of the ERP industry, but it now is at a crossroads …
Third-party support providers make a pitch that they can provide greater flexibility at a lower cost, but customers should think …
All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2011 – 2022, TechTarget
Privacy Policy
Cookie Preferences
Do Not Sell My Personal Info
