The relevance of Document Management for a company

What is Document Management?

With Document Management System (DMS) we refer to the set of softwares that makes it easier and faster to manage, organize, share, and store files, and ensures accessibility to documents from any device. In other words, document management is the proper administration of a document from its origin to its preservation.

A good reference for the DMS are the Guidelines by the Agency for Digital Italy (AGID), which describe it as a process in three phases: formation, management and preservation. Each phase comprises a series of activities that differ in complexity, impact, nature, purpose and/or effect (even on a legal level), to which correspond different methods and practices.

Enterprise Content Management: the DMS within companies

When Document Management is applied to companies or structured organization it takes the name Enterprise Content Management (ECM). We can define it as the set of tools that enable the management of produced and received documents regardless of their format.

In the business context, document workflow – the standardized procedure by which a document can be acquired, authenticated, logged, modified, shared, archived and eventually deleted – is particularly relevant.

Thanks to it,  a company or organization can track the lifecycle of a document efficiently, ensuring its proper administration from production to preservation.

DMS: the 7 benefits of digital document management

A good Document Management software improves productivity and competitiveness. Moreover, it increases the quality of work and makes the exchange of information smoother. It also encourage and immediate sharing of documents that results in time savings.

Here are the seven benefits of a document management software:

1. Document dematerialization reduces paper consumption and promotes environmental friendliness;
2. It cuts costs associated with physically storing paper documents;
3. It streamlines document workflow and reduces document search and transmission time;
4. A good software makes documents unalterable and available anywhere via Internet;
5. It allows different users to consult the same document at the same time;
6. Confidentiality of information is guaranteed by personal access;
7. It reduces management costs, streamlines internal processes and increases efficiency and competitiveness by reducing errors.