This guide contains:

Background on document management
Features and functions of document management products
How to find the right document management system for your organization

This independent guide was written to help you understand the basics of document management, and how to help you find the best document management system for your environment. We do not sell any document managements products or services, so you can be confident that all of the information in this guide is independent and unbiased.

Background on document management
Whether your company is a small organization or on the Fortune 500 list, today's highly dynamic and competitive environment demands that your company efficiently organizes and manages the flow of information- both internally and externally. In this digitized information age, a common challenge for many companies is how to manage its paper and electronic documents. One of the tools available to help almost any business address this challenge is known as a 'document management system'.

A document management system takes many forms, but it's core function is to provide a systematic method for creating, categorizing, storing, locating and retrieving documents. A good document management system can benefit a company because it facilitates collaboration, sharing and secure distribution of documents, and helps the organization reduce filing and distribution costs, improve and protect access to information, comply with government regulations, and improve operational efficiencies.

Features and functions of document management products
Document management systems were created to convert paper documents into digital form, and a typical document management system uses a scanner to create and store the image of the document. The electronic version of the document is often given a name containing the date of that the document was created, as well as additional 'tags' that can be used to retrieve the document later. As an example, a document about environmental compliance issues at an assembly plant might include the tags 'environmental, compliance, and factory'.

Some document management systems have an advanced function called 'optical character recognition' (OCR) built into the scanning process. As the document is scanned, the OCR software 'reads' the page (by recognizing the shape of the individual letters and translating them into words) and stores the text as 'tags' for future retrieval. Once a document has been scanned, the document management system will store it in some organized fashion by associating the stored image with the tags. When someone wants to retrieve a particular document, they can find it by performing a search on one of the tags.