Most businesses today have a composite document collection they have to deal with.
There is still lots of paper around and a way to organize this and file it is important.
There are data base files which are most commonly found in ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software packages. Frequently built on relational data base software like SAP, Oracle or SQL these line of business packages become core to most operations.
The third common type of file is general electronic files which are generated through business correspondence (Word files are a good exampley), data analysis files (think Excel) and marketing files (think Publisher, photo, video).
Finally, there is a general category of files that are downloaded, linked or received through email or other communcations programs. Many of these will be in pdf format as it is a pretty universal format which spans differing computer operating systems.
Figuring out how to manage these varied files starts to become a challenge. Of course many offices still have paper filing cabinets for the paper ones but what do you do with all of the electronic forms and any paper converted to electronic through fax or scanning?
Some companies try to deal with this situation by creating a series of shared folders on the company file server. This structure is ok when the file quantities are small and are short lived in nature, Over the long haul and as the quantity of material grows it becomes more problematic to manage and to search for records. The Windows file structure just does not cut it when the structure gets more complicated and a number of users need to access the records.
A good solution which will deal with all of the records except the true data base driven records is a file focused document management system (DMS). Using a combination of file name and index data (commonly called metadata) which more exactly identifies the records being stored a structured DMS will permit thousands and tens of thousands of varied documents to be stored and easily searched and found.
How does this work?
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