An effective document management system can improve workflow.
A document management system controls how documents are created, reviewed, printed, stored and how they are ultimately deleted or archived. An effective document system reflects the culture and needs of your organization and increases efficiency and productivity. The system and computer tools you use for document management need to be flexible and every employee must understand and use the tools appropriately.
Instructions
1. Create a team to undertake a survey of past and current documents. Specify what types of documents and other content can be created within your company's system. Use your findings to prepare a template for each type of document, such as standard letter formats, commonly used report formats and multimedia presentation formats. Always make it possible for employees to create documents that don't fit any of the standard formats.
2. Plan how your system moves documents within the company as employees contribute to the documents' creation, review, approval and dissemination. Recognize that some documents will be prepared by several people. A report may require review and modification by all the personnel in a department. Eventually members of other departments receive the report without the ability to make changes. Your system must control who can access a document at various stages of its development, how they gain that access and what they can do to the document.
3. Organize documents into recognizable folders that make sense to your personnel. You can keep all documents arranged in an order that can include the date initiated or completed, department, topic, individual or type. You might instead arrange documents by a coding system with a code look-up feature. The organizational patterns you use must make finding and manipulating the documents convenient, consistent and efficient.
4. Arrange the movement of a document between formats and folder locations when the nature of a document changes. A document moving from a storage folder to a public Internet site may require conversion from one format to another.
5. Letters or other documents that require confidential status need specialized control features within the system. You can require check-in and check-out procedures to determine who is accessing a document. Protect documents from unauthorized handling by limiting who has the ability to distribute them.
6. Use the development team to monitor the system for changes that will correct problems or make it easier and more efficient to use. Initiate a plan for backing up the system at frequent, regular intervals. Train all current and new personnel in the use of the system. Work individually or in small groups with employees who are resistant to the change or need extra help to understand use it.
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