Gone are the days of dusty filing cabinets bursting with coffee stained papers, these days most documents are stored on hard drives, backed up on hard drives and distributed online.

Although storing your documents on a computer takes less space than physical document storage, it is very important to keep your documents well organised, preferably making use of a document management system.

One of the best document management solutions comes by way of an online document management system (DMS), which is a computer system programmed for tracking and storing of electronic documents. This can include images of paper documents scanned into a computer and submitted into the system. A document management system can be put to good use by corporations, government institutions, medium or small businesses and many other organisations.

By utilising a document management system you will be improving the flexibility of your organisation, with users being able to access documents from the internet, with Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer and Microsoft office. This means that you are able to share and collaborate on documents from around the globe, while reducing the cost and hassle of sending documents by courier or sending multiple large files by e-mail.

Revolutionising Team Projects with Online DMS

Your documents are protected by the document management system, with access being completely under your control, yet you are able to have multiple users from various locations working on a document at any given time, with the changes made by each user being tracked for team members to see. This means that your document need only be seen by those working on it until such a time as you choose to make it public.

Collaborating in this way has various benefits. Sophisticated workflows can be established easily, with notifications issued to alert specific team members when they are required to contribute. This is achieved by making use of work flow triggers which can be assigned to documents or folders, allowing you to manage your team efficiently. Furthermore, built in discussion forums allow your team members to communicate directly with each other while keeping an eye on the work at hand.

The flexibility of online document management systems means that only your imagination can limit the possibilities, for instance, useful document search phrases or terms can be saved, allowing for quick access to specific information, and the DMS can even be set up to automatically notify selected users of changes to the document via RSS feeds. Once documents are ready for wider distribution they can easily be converted to PDF format for ease of distribution and storage.

By utilising online document management systems your business or organisation can increase its efficiency when it comes to the distribution of documents. Whether for internal or external use, an online document management solution will provide many benefits to your business.

Look for flexibility in your DMS

With open source type DMS programs you will be able to adjust and customise your working system, integrating various priority functions as you deem them necessary or useful. PHP and MySQL based architecture is useful to this end, since it provides plenty of room for a developer to customise and extend the application to suit your organisation’s needs.

Your document management system should include portlet and dashlet concepts, allowing for the addition of enhanced features to the interface, thereby keeping the application up to date with the latest DMS developments. With customisable interface templates, making for ease of use, you will ultimately have an application which will suit your needs that much better.

Online Document Management Solutions provide the following benefits

• Knowledge is easily accessed and reusable

• The flow of information can be controlled throughout a project’s duration

• More effective teamwork can be established, thereby speeding up progress

• Faster delivery rates, improving customer service by streamlining distribution of documents

• Online DMS allows for faster reaction to events with quick access to documentation

• You have access to important documents from anywhere, at any time

• Documents can be shared with several people

• Allows for documents to be moved electronically with workflow and status tracking

• Your documents can be backed up with very little storage space required

• Data and information is quickly accessible for reference when working on other tasks

Efficient organisations and profitable enterprises depend upon reliable, yet flexible communication channels. By storing your organisation’s documents in a DMS for easy access and usability, you will realise a tremendous improvement in document distribution, storage and development.

KnowledgeTree™ is document management made simple: easily secure, share, track and manage the documents and records your organization depends on.


Tags: e mail, internet explorer, computer system, hard drives, government institutions, electronic documents, filing cabinets, mozilla firefox, multiple users, microsoft office, work flow, paper documents, document management system, document storage