Document management systems: Everything you need to know

explanation

How does a digital document management system work?

Documents or generally speaking: Information is available in two different forms in companies: Already electronic or still in paper form. This information must first be entered into the document management system – yet how does that work and what happens in the DMS as a result?

Entry of information into the document management system

According to the media type, recording documents can take on different forms in the DMS. If the information is already available in electronic form, contemporary document management systems are able to transfer this information to the DMS largely automatically. To record paper based documents, as a rule, a DMS uses a scanner with optical character recognition (OCR) for digital document capture.

According to the document type – or more generally: Information type – certain formats exist. For example information which has been transferred with one of the many formats of Electronic Data Interchance (EDI). For example: Sales invoices, bills of lading, orders, shipping notifications, account statements, design specifications, insurance claims etc.

Document management systems and structured data – a perfect duo

The advantage of such structured data for a DMS is obvious – because the data are stored in a fixed location, forever.

As long as the creator of the invoice complies with the agreed specification, it is easy to process the structured information of the incoming invoice automatically in the document management system. It is also clear, that a workflow started via such media, is the be all and end all for flawless business processes.

Weakly structured data for document management – OCR-Technology is key

It looks very different for documents and information in paper form. The common way in the document management system is via so called scanning. I.e. The documents must first be digitised via a scanner. What is important at this point: The scanning software of the scanner or a downstream software must have optical character recognition (OCR). In this way, the textual elements of the document are entered, and ideally allocated accordingly – and that is the most important source of information for a DMS using this medium. As a rule, these processes for the entry of content are developed and improved over the years, and consequently very precise – always with the requirement and assumption that the data featured in the document remains consistent. Unfortunately, this is not always the case, and therefore a stumbling block for the subsequent workflow of the relevant business processes.

Distribution of information in the document management system

From now on, everything will remain digital, and media disruptions will no longer happen. A great advantage of a DMS is that all documents and information is automatically directed to the relevant company departments.

Where the documents and/or information are ultimately transported, is primarily dealt with by the DMS using the categorisation made. Via recognised and selected information, the document management system can determine for example: A document is a bill of lading, an incoming invoice or a contract etc.

It is at this point that a DMS has an important advantage: Because now, a contemporary document management system can engage with so-called workflows.