Understanding Document Management

The term "document management" and "paperless office" is
the subject of countless articles and books. Everyone wants
to achieve this lofty goal but not everyone understands what
the terms really mean. Before you can embark on the journey
of achieving total document management, it's important that
you have a good basic knowledge of the terms and concepts
that go with it.

Once you start investigating the various software solutions
that are available you're going to run into some document
management abbreviations, acronyms, and general terms that
you might not be familiar with. Here is a "cheat sheet" that
will help you to understand the material that you'll
encounter as well as the conversations that you'll be having
with document management solution providers.

Electronic Document Capture (EDC)

This is the generic term that refers to the entire process
of converting paper documents into their electronic
equivalents. It covers concepts such as scanning, text
recognition, image conversion and indexing for later
retrieval. In other words, it is a catchall phrase for the
entire document management process.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

OCR is a process that recognizes the printed words that are
present on a physical document. OCR is generally used when
processing documents that are printed in "normal" printer or
typewriter fonts.

Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR)

This process is similar to OCR but is generally capable of
also processing certain handwritten documents on special
forms. It can also recognize and process "tick marks" and
bar codes.

Electronic Document Management System (EDMS)

Sometimes referred to as Document Management (DM) or
Document Management System (DMS), this term encompasses not
just the electronic conversion of paper documents, but the
management of electronically created documents including
word processing and email. EDMS systems are used to locate
and display documents as well as to maintain different
versions of the source document.

Electronic Record Management System (ERMS)

Also known as Record Management (RM) or Record management
System (RMS), this term refers to systems that are used to
insure that important records such as payroll, human
resources, patient records, contracts, etc, are stored and
available during their useful lifetime.

Web Content Management (WCM)

Also called a Content Management Systems (CMS), this term
refers to software that is used to store and publish content
to a web site. A CMS separates the web content from the
underlying HTML design so that any authorized person can
publish or remove content from a web site without having to
know HTML.

Workflow Management (WFM)

WFM systems are used to management document preparation in a
structured environment where certain preparation, review, or
approval steps have to be done in a defined order. WFM
systems direct the documents to the correct people, in the
correct order, until the entire process has been completed.

Knowledge Management (KM)

These systems are used to make the total legacy "knowledge"
of an organization available to everyone. KM systems
eliminate the need for employees to "reinvent the wheel"
when dealing with questions, processes, or any other issue
that has already been dealt with by someone in the
organization. A Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) system is a
good example of a valuable KM system.

Now that you have an understanding of the basic terms that
you will encounter, your next step is to determine the type
of document management system that best meets your
requirements. After that you can begin the process of
identifying the available solutions and pick the one that
meets your organization's needs.