The growing businesses have growing volumes of documents as well which need proper document management policy. Depending on whether the documents are in the form of the papers or in the form of electronic data sheets or the web based documents, the organizations draw up suitable
document management system.
This system is a computerised system in which the e-documents are created, stored and tracked electronically. Some of the main components of this system are the capture of the data, indexing of the same, storage, retrieval and even the distribution of the documents. The organizations make use of the effective and efficient document management system to ensure that the documents are stored in the best possible way for the longest period of time. This also ensures that the documents are made available to the people who require them, with due authorisations and approvals. This means that the ease of retriveability of these documents does not ignore the importance of the documents lending the right hands.
Document storage is an important part of this system. The documents can be stored in the different type of media based of the frequency of its usage, the nature of the documents and the ease and convenience in using the same. The web document management requires storage on the servers or the databases. The storage can also be done on the optical media like the CDs or the DVDs, the magnetic media like the microfilms and others. For storing in these media, the documents require conversion from one form to another. This is achieved by the imaging and scanning of these documents. There are document imaging software which can be used separately for this purpose. The modern imaging software comes integrated with the full document management solutions and these can be used for converting the files to the ones which can be used with the different storage media.
Records management is not about document storage only. It is also about ensuring that the workflow or the operations of the companies are not affected by the unavailability of the documents or too much time is lost in finding the ones which you require. The electronic processing of the documents shall be done in accordance with the work flow requirements of the business processes. The biggest advantage of the computer based online document management is that the documents are there for the next person who has to use them without any time lag. This considerably improves the functional efficiency of the organisation.
The online document management ensures that not only the intra-organizational connectivity is good but also the inter-branch document workflow is smooth and well managed. This has considerably reduced the wastage of time and money and brought about quicker and convenient work operations. The organizations which are spread over remote locations and require the exchange of documents among the authorised people, the same can be done conveniently by logging in to the online data-base of the records of the documents and using the same.