Electronic Document Management System

You could store paper records or paper documents electronically and manage those documents electronically. An Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) drives the thought process of enabling provision of content through the network with the help of communication interface. Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) signifies managing the documents and records electronically, thus alleviating the need of maintaining paper based records.

The various theories of Electronic Document Management System…

Many professionals have come up with their theories on Electronic Document Management System.

  • Sprague in 1995, introduced the thought that documents could be managed through the effective use of Information Technology. As per Sprague, if you create, store, organize, transmit, retrieve, manipulate, update and dispose the documents, to meet an organizational objective, you are said to be following the EDM practice. Sprague emphasized the need of an EDMS to improve communication amongst groups of people.

  • Hansen and Haas, elaborated that suppliers and users play a very important role in the maintenance of these documents. Hansen believed that the suppliers and the users are the primary users of the information in the documents. This thought process led them to believe that managing an EDM should be the initiative of the supplier. The supplier should ensure and follow up with the client regards the usage of the system.

  • In 2001, Thorpe and Mead proved that usage of EDMS changes the way how communication happens and flows in an organization. They studied two projects conclusively to arrive at this conclusion.

  • In 2005, Rene Brohm through her revolutionary case study, indicated that managing documents through an EDMS is almost similar to an interaction in a theater play.

  • Finally, one of the core principles of EDMS was attested by Marin and Poulter in 2004.

They said that if information is accessed easily, it would flow well in the organization. Hence, if information is stored in a central intranet or a repository which employees could access to view the information, it could be disseminated as a flow to employees.

There are many ongoing theories to an Electronic Document Management System with the same principles. If the EDMS are revolutionized to the way they are today, it is because of the thoughts suggested by these popular analysts. Today, many companies have come up with their own EDMS solutions which caters to the need of almost every customer. With flexibility of managing documents provided over the internet provided by some EDMS solutions, managing documents has never been so easy.

People are slowly getting used to concepts like Metadata, Storage , Indexing and Retrieval of documents and all this points towards the news that the day would not be too far where all the companies start managing their documents through an Electronic Document Management System.