What is Document Management?

Let’s step back say 40 years! As school children we were initiated to “document management” by that nice old lady in the library. She called it “the Dewey Decimal System.” The funny numbers were intended to help us find the book or document we wanted. In essence, a very manual way of categorizing and storing (for later retrieval) anything printed. Don’t you just miss the ‘card catalog’!
 
In today’s corporate world it seems as though document management is not adhered to as much as that little old lady in the library did years ago. But in order to maintain sanity within the organization, we might consider implementing a document management function within our respective companies.
 
Everyone has their own system
 
As we manage our client relationships, i.e. sales, marketing, services, and email (just to name a few), documents are generated and named by many different individuals; each with their unique naming convention – rarely are two alike, as well as storage location (typically the Desktop or My Documents folder or the network share)!
 
So what’s the problem with all of that you ask – it’s worked for years?
 
Imagine that you are working for a sales organization and “Joe” has just quoted a prospect – a very important prospect with a very valuable project to undertake. Along comes Mary, CFO of the new prospect, and calls your sales office looking for another copy of the proposal. No problem, you say!
 
Now Joe just left on vacation, so where do you start to look? He’s unreachable and even if you could, he might have just left his laptop (with the proposal on his Desktop) on the plane, and he won’t be calling you any time soon to let you know. Are you beginning to appreciate even what a limited document management system might provide?

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