An electronic document management system (EDMS) uses digital technology to manage the creation, organization, and storage of documents. A central platform or software holds all of an organization’s documents and can automate parts of a document’s lifecycle.
This means that an EDMS is more than just a paperless document management system – it’s a foundation. With an EMDS up and running, organizations have the support they need to digitize elsewhere in their operations or dedicate more resources to big-picture problem-solving or process improvement.
Electronic Document Management Systems vs. Enterprise Content Management Systems
An EDMS is similar to an enterprise content management (ECM) system, and the two are sometimes confused. While electronic document management systems have many goals in common with ECMs – like simplifying the document management process – the two are different in terms of scope.
An ECM system may be considered an EDMS system, but not the other way around. That’s because many ECM systems have additional capabilities, such as advanced process automation features, that a basic EDMS does not.
However, this doesn’t necessarily mean an ECM system is always the best option to pursue. For many organizations, an EDMS is a comprehensive enough solution to help workers save time, efficiently organize materials, and seamlessly distribute documents.
Who Should Use an Electronic Document Management System?
Any organization that has well-defined workflows or business processes that also have heavy resource demands can benefit from an EDMS. In other words, if the work you do follows the same processes over and over but still takes a lot of time or energy to complete, it’s likely that electronic document management can help.
A simple change like implementing an e-document management system can be the catalyst that sparks significant changes in staff availability, productivity, and satisfaction.
Digital Document Management Across Industries
Nearly any industry can leverage an EDMS to make work faster and easier. However, there are some industries where juggling several types of document management systems or traditional paper documentation can be especially impactful.
- Government – Managing permit requests, collaborating with other departments, and archiving documents are just a few examples of tasks that an EDMS can simplify. Local government offices, which generally have fewer resources compared to state and federal bodies, can especially benefit from document management software.
- Financial Services – Digital technology makes it a breeze to maintain detailed audit trails for all document interactions, send and receive paperwork from members, and protect sensitive customer data.
- Education – Administrative documents and student or employee records, lesson plans, and more can all be streamlined with an EDMS.
- Human Resources (HR) – Digitally store and manage documents to simplify onboarding and other HR processes.
Why Make the Switch? Benefits of Electronic Document Management
If you’re completely new to using digital solutions to manage documents, the premise of relying on a technology stack to complete essential tasks might seem daunting. But the benefits of making the switch far outweigh the challenges.
With the right tech, you can address document management and workflow automation in one swoop, bringing perks like those below to your entire organization.
- Create a single point of information access. No more hours wasted digging through multiple storage rooms or software systems to find the information you need. With document workflow management software, all employees can find exactly what they need when they need it.
- Process requests faster. Secure internal and external file sharing enables you to offer customers and clients instant access to information and documents.
- Improve security and transparency. With the ability to control who accesses what information – and see exactly what activity has taken place on the document – you ensure your work stays in compliance with institutional regulations or requirements.
- Enable cross-team collaboration. Workers from across teams or departments can work together on documents with markup options and live document editing.
While change can take some time to adjust to, it’s likely that you’ll see the difference an EDMS makes within just a few days or weeks of using one.
Key Features of an EDMS
So, you’ve decided you’d like to explore electronic document management – but how can you sort through your options? What should you look for in an electronic document management system? What should you avoid?
The answers to these questions will likely depend on your industry. Across the board, though, the best electronic document management systems should give you access to key capabilities such as:
- Centralized and scalable document storage
- Full-text search, which allows you to search based on results within document text or metadata
- Internal and external file sharing
- Cloud-based document management, which automatically stores and saves materials
- Document markup features (adding annotations, highlights, etc.)
- Seamless records management and automated record storage
- Security features and audit trails to monitor how and when content is accessed
- Federated searches, which allow you to browse multiple data stores from the same interface
These are just some examples of features to look for – there are many other ways that an EDMS can support your team, especially as you learn to incorporate it into more and more of your work processes.
How to Choose an Electronic Document Management System
Clearly, there are more reasons to pursue an EDMS than not. However, cost and accessibility are two barriers that frequently prevent organizations from accessing the tech they need to get the ball rolling.
CDP uses Laserfiche, a leading document management tool, to help businesses and organizations of any size centralize information and save time on work processes.
But we don’t adopt a “one size fits all” approach to building a system – we work with you to create one that makes sense for your needs. Whether you need simple document and workflow management or e-signature integration and support for printing materials, our team is here to help.
CDP helps you access top document management features that typically are inaccessible to small- or medium-sized organizations for a price that makes sense.
If you’re ready to discover the best software for document management and see how we can help you create a system that can grow with your organization, reach out to us today to schedule a demo.
