DMS & Process Optimisation - Dreher Consulting

DMS and process optimisation - what you should pay attention to?

When designing a document management system DMS, it is necessary that the project implementation and the implementation model focus on the process functions and not so much on the content conception and the creation of the documents.

Why is the Process View so Important?

A functioning and effective document management system includes all processes, procedures and defines all activities related to the management of documents via responsibilities (roles).

The main points of document administration are: -

• The labelling and description of documents (metadata).
• The updating and history management as well as all requirements for the versioning of documents
• The storage and archiving of documents
• The distribution and workflow of documents (distribution process)
• Searching, finding and categorising documents
• The protection of documents against manipulation, misuse and their accidental deletion (e.g.: GDPdU - principles of data access and verifiability of digital documents in a DMS).
• Ensuring the long-term access and readability of documents (taking into account the technical progress of I.T. and the associated problems of old data structures that are no longer readable)
• Regulate the life cycle and deletion of documents
• The responsibilities for the management of the data and the contents

We recommend from the experience of the project work that an organisational model is created for a DMS and the management of documents. The most efficient way to do this is to use methods of process optimisation and to build the organisational scheme as a process model. It makes sense to enrich this process model with information on the document life cycle.

Search criteria, processes, rights management and all information that lead to quality assurance of the documents and information that are posted and later archived in the DMS are defined and presented in this process model and are then binding.

What Should be Considered When Introducing a DMS?

Document Management DMS is often reduced to the purely electronic administration of documents. We consider this approach to be too limited.

The reasons for this are:

1. The management of previous documents is also done today, so it has always been a central task to manage documents.
2. The additional benefit from the capabilities of modern IT, such as a full-text search, must not be limited to this function, but must be built into a task or project as part of a workflow and context.
3. The capabilities of a document management system DMS - with the help of the defined process organisation - can be used, for example, for contract management, resubmission functions, version management when enriching or changing texts.

It is precisely these process functions that are an essential component of a competitive advantage and can also be used when calculating the project ROI for the investment.

The Archiving of Documents as a Challenge ...

An archive is a real or electronic place where documents that are no longer needed for the ongoing fulfilment of tasks (process or project work) are stored. In an archive, access to the stored information is regulated.

Today, documents are often archived shortly after they are created. If the document then changes, the document is immediately archived again. In this way, the entire life cycle of a document can be documented and evaluated in its creation and change.

Under the term Information Lifecycle Management, the requirements for complex archiving systems are summarised and defined with information on optimal storage, storage location and the process landscape in order to transfer the data and documents into a DMS.