Making your Document Management System a Success

There are several document management systems (DMS) available in the market that offers a variety of features rendering your office into a paperless environment. The key to a successful DMS is not in the product selection but rather its implementation. Most of the DMS solutions available offer the same (or similar) suite of functionality with differing pricing models. However, before selecting any particular system it is paramount that you have an adequate document management plan to assist your product selection process and eventually your implementation.

The document management plan needs to be simple, executable, and practical. Any basic plan would have to address the below issues at a minimum.

Documents to be Managed

This might sound trivial but is a fundamental aspect that needs to be agreed upfront. You will have to define as to what pieces of information and data make a document in your organization and will be managed within the DMS. For example, are you only going to consider official and business documents or even personal documents owned by individuals. This decision will help you in capacity planning for the system. Needless to say that the larger the volume of documents you chose to manage the more complex the implementation.

Business Process for Managing the Documents

You need to identify all the approval cycles involved in handling the documents. For complex approval and communication cycles, the underlying product will have to support such customizations. You also need to address the Records Management and Retention Cycle of the documents managed by the DMS. All of your policy compliance will be handled in this section of your plan.

Users, Groups, and Roles

In this section of your plan you will have to list the potential users of the DMS and the logical categorization of groups. This will be entirely dependent on the organization structure followed in your business. Additionally you also need to identify the various roles that will be defined on the system. Some examples of roles include Reader, Writer, Publisher, Manager, Administrator, Reviewer, etc. Your users and groups will be given access to various sections of your DMS based on these pre-defined roles. You will also need to address the system administration here. Will the system be managed by a single administrator or will each department have a dedicated administrator. Based on that, the groups and roles defined on the system will have to be adjusted.

Folder Hierarchy

You will have to define the folder structure for organizing your files. Options could vary from a highly structured one with multiple levels of folder directories to a shallow single folder strategy.

Permission Hierarchy

The Groups, Roles, and Folder Hierarchy defined in the previous sections will have to be combined here to give a detailed permission hierarchy defining which user has what access on which folder. A lot will depend on the granularity of the groups and folder hierarchy outlined earlier. For example, the more levels of folders you have the more detailed is your security assignment. Having a very detailed security control might not always be the best thing since it will significantly increase your administrative maintenance.

Metadata

According to me this is the most important aspect and value-add for a DMS. A DMS without adequate metadata is nothing more than an access-controlled FTP server. The true benefit from a well implemented DMS is apparent from the ease with which documents can be searched and retrieved. Metadata (information about information) adds the relevant categories, keywords, and tags that assist in optimized indexing and retrieval of documents.  It is possible to capture the smallest detail about a document making it very easy for searching however the process must be sustainable and practical. It won’t make any sense to frustrate your end users while asking for more that 20 metadata attributes for every document they upload. Hence, in this section of your document management plan you concisely identify the key 5-8 attributes that will assist in the indexing and document retrieval process.

Having defined each of the above elements of your document management plan you can then proceed with the product selection phase identifying any system that caters to all your requirements. Having an effective document management plan is the first step of the process. The next steps are to execute the plan and to follow through regularly.