Any document management system needs to be able to manage the creation, organisation, storage, transmission, retrieval, update, manipulation and, finally, the disposal of a company’s documents.  The documents may originally have been in paper format, but they will have been scanned and digitised in order to enable electronic tracking.

The majority of commercial document management systems will address a number of key requirements.  For documents to be easy to share, a central location for storing the documents will have to be established.  A filing system will need to be created for indexing and storing the documents.  A way of retrieving the documents quickly and efficiently will need to be established, both for browsing the documents and for retrieving a specific document.  Security must be a consideration too as a company’s documents can hold important confidential information.   A period needs to be established both for the retention of documents and for the archiving of documents that are no longer needed for the day-to-day running of the business.  Documents will need to be available to employees and if a document must pass through multiple users then workflow rules need to be established.  Methods for the creation and control of versions have to be implemented and there must be a way of authenticating and approving documents.  Finally, a disaster recovery strategy must be in place so that documents can be recovered in the event of a disaster.

Scanning documents so that they can be stored electronically reduces the amount of space required to hold them and makes their management much simpler.  Many companies offer this service.