September 22, 2022

What is a Digital Document Management System?

Managing the organizational data is one of the most important use case for any organization today especially if it is operating globally. This article will help you learn digital document management, benefits associated with it, and a plausible solutions.

Organizational data is increasing rapidly with every financial year. To help ease the situation, digital document management systems were introduced in the market.

If you are new to this technology and require a starting point for understanding it, this is the article for you.

What is a Digital Document Management System?

A digital document management system is an upgraded digital version of a document management system. A document management system is the infrastructure that organizations use to store, sort, and organize their documents. 

Previously, this work of storing documents was done using files and cabinets. However, today we have computers for the same purpose.

Therefore, a digital document management system is a software or a digital platform using which companies can store, sort, and organize their digital documents.  

A majority of modern digital document management systems support a cloud-based infrastructure. It allows them to access their documents remotely and offers several advantages such as:

  • Higher transparency
  • Easier and faster searching of documents
  • Security of the data
  • Standardization
  • And many others

Types of Digital Document Management System

Depending upon the use case and the usage, there are several types of document management systems that are available in the market. These are:

Content Management Systems (CMS)

A content management system is a software or platform that allows a user to create, update, publish, sort, and store their digital content in a single space. These can be used for multiple use cases such as public websites, mobile applications, intranet, microsite, HR portal, etc.

Some common examples of a Content Management system are:

  • Wordpress
  • Webflow
  • Hubspot
  • Wix 
  • Drupal

Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

It is a type of content management system that adds time as a parameter and focuses on different aspects such as workflow, business rules, etc. Use cases for which ECMs are utilized are digitization, process management, workflow centralization, big data, etc.

Here are some examples of an Enterprise Content Management System:

  • DocuWare
  • Hyland
  • IBM
  • Laserfiche
  • OpenText
  • Seismic

Record Management System

Record management systems are utilized for frequently maintaining records, updating records, and destroying them when it is time. It is a tool that are used by organizations throughout the record maintenance life-cycle. Use cases of record management system are email archival, social records management, legal hold up, etc.

Here are some of the examples for record management systems:

  • FileHold
  • DocSavy
  • IBM Content Management Enterprise
  • Fluix
  • Acquia

Workflow Management System

Workflow management systems are the kind of software or platforms that standardizes the workflow in an organization to its most optimal efficiency. These provide an infrastructure for the organization to set up and measure the performance of an associated task. Use cases for workflow management systems are accounts payable, purchase order, invoice generation, etc.

Below are some of the most commonly used workflow management systems:

  • Asana
  • ClickUp
  • Quixy
  • Pipefy
  • Karbon

Document Imaging System

Post covid-19, the majority of organizations have turned digital. Yet, there is still some work that is carried out using paper. To aggregate the data from those documents, document imaging systems are utilized. These systems perform functions such as scanning, collecting, organizing, and managing data from paper documents and converting them into digital formats. 

Document imaging uses multiple physical hardware for aggregating data. Also, there are multiple softwares that also provide capability to aggregate data from a digitally converted document. For example Vision IDP (Intelligent Document Processing)

Industries that Use Digital Document Management System

Almost every industry in the modern world is benefitting from digital document management systems. Be it logistics, manufacturing, healthcare, or any other industry, there are high volumes of documents that are being generated on a daily basis. Each of these industries utilizes the benefit of a digital document management system for sorting their digital paperwork.

It became a recognizable reality post covid-19 where the majority of the industries had to turn toward digitization. It meant almost every industry was using digital documents for carrying out their task. While there are multiple different use cases that cater to different industries, accounts payable is something that is omnipresent and has taken the most benefit from it.

Benefits of using Digital Document Management System

There are several benefits of using a digital document management system. These are as follows:

  • Reduced Space for Storage: With the advent of digital paperwork, companies started to switch to a digital infrastructure. It helped them save on the cost of the area in terms of real estate that was previously being utilized for storing paperwork.
  • Better Compliance Standards: There are multiple licenses and standards such as HIPAA that organizations need to fulfill. Using digital document management systems for the same will help organizations to fulfill the requirement using workflow optimization.
  • Better Collaboration Window: Previously, each and every file had to be fetched physically leading to poor collaboration and collaborative performance. With digital document management, the user can access any file using the intranet and the internet.
  • Ease of Disaster Recovery: There were multiple times when records were simply destroyed because of natural disasters or mishappenings such as fire. Digital document management systems store data in cloud infrastructure which means the data is secure in multiple servers that initiate backup functions on a daily basis.
  • Enhanced Security: The data stored in a cloud infrastructure can only be accessed by the organization to which it belongs to. It is because the data is encrypted before storage and only the authorized users can access it.
  • Remote Access: It is probably one of the most useful benefits of a digital document management system. During covid-19, the capability of organizations to access data remotely helped them stay operational even during lockdowns.

What to look for before Procuring a Digital Document Management System?

Here are some things that one should look at in a digital document management system before procuring it for their organization. These are:

  • Use case: The digital document management system should be capable of providing value to the use case that the organization is procuring it for.
  • Flexible: The system should be flexible enough to be molded as per requirements.
  • Scalability: The system provided should be scalable enough to meet the need during surges.
  • Features: The features provided with the digital document management system should boost the productivity and efficiency of the organization.
  • SaaS Based: It should be accessible from a remote location using the internet. This will allow the users to access and aggregate data to it from anywhere.
  • Price: The price should be adequate and in balance with the features the solution brings onboard. It should be capable of providing the necessary ROI and shouldn’t certainly cross the previous threshold budget spent on previous document management practices.

VisionERA as a Digital Document Management System

VisionERA essentially is a lot more than just a digital document management system. It is an intelligent document processing platform that can be used for automating document processing use cases.

It sits in between raw documents (from structured to unstructured) and a digital document management system. It provides automated capability for various document processing operations such as data extraction, validation, triangulation logic, and storage. It also has the capability to extract data from handwritten documents.

The reason for mentioning it as a digital document management system is because it provides the processed sorted and segregated data in formats of spreadsheets (this data can also be stored directly to the DMS system). It provides the capability of custom DIY workflow that allows it to handle an entire use case. It also means better and more standardized processes.

VisionERA is capable of boosting the effectiveness and efficiency of any organization. It makes the document work in any organization more organized and is a complete solution in itself.

Want to learn more about VisionERA and how it can help your organization with organizing data, click on the CTA below or click here.

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