What is Document Management?
Document Management (often called ECM — Enterprise Content Management) is technology that addresses the lifecycle of enterprise content. This content is most commonly in various forms of electronic documents, and typically such systems manage millions or even billions of documents at any one time.
In practical terms, these systems provide functionality to ingest documents via imaging and capture software; once ingested, the documents are then ‘managed’ via associated tags (metadata) that define how long they need to be kept for, who can access the document (or not) and other audit-trail types of information. In most systems (though not all), there is also an associated workflow capability (sometimes known as BPM — Business Process Management) that can be programmed to move documents according to rules and processes. Finally, there is the functionality to manage the longer-term life of the document through to its ultimate destruction (disposition).
Most document management systems on sale today fall into one of two broad camps:
Transactional Document Management Systems – Typified by high volumes of simple documents (scanned documents usually in TIFF format) that then pass through formal and pre-defined workflows. For example: insurance or medical claims processing.
Collaborative Document Management Systems – Typified by a relatively smaller number of highly complex documents (or sets of documents) that are worked on and accessed by multiple people, sometimes simultaneously. For example: legal matter or regulatory submission documents.
