Enhanced Electronic Document Management Systems
EDMS Platform Integrates with Other Technologies to Add More Value
Jan 15, 2009
Electronic Document Management Systems or Enterprise Content Management Systems have provided a technology platform for other vendors to integrate their products. This provides additional functionality such as document imaging and scanning, document review and approval, search and collaboration.
Core EDMS Technology Platform
The core elements of electronic document management technology platform is enhanced by complementary extensions such as:
- Transformation - transforming one electronic file format into another file format, for example Microsoft Word into Adobe PDF. This is useful to allow a wide array of users to view or read a PDF (unchangeable) version of the document as opposed to being concerned whether the user is able to view the original content
- Collections - collecting together documents into a logical group or list of documents. This is useful to allow the business to maintain logical groups of documents that may need to be used together or be changed together or are related
- Indexing - allowing a classification of index terms into a taxonomy and enhanced searching by using full-text search ideas such as finding synonyms. This enhances the ability of documents to be found by more general searching
Complementary Products
Other vendor products and developed applications may provide additional capabilities such as:
- Document scanning and imaging - scanning paper documents or forms into an electronic image that can be managed in the EDMS. This is useful for a business to save costs associated with the production, storage and management of paper documentation
- Document loader - allowing many documents to be batch imported into an EDMS
- Review - tools that allows users to comment on documents and manage those comments. In many ways these earlier capabilities have been superseded by the later introduction of collaboration tools
- Collaboration - various tools such as digital white-boarding to allow users to collaborate on producing documents
- Electronic signature - allowing documents to receive an electronic signature that would be considered as binding as a paper signature. The document may be digitally signed and if printed a manifestation of the real signature could be printed or a simple statement
- Publishing - allowing documents individually or part of a collection to be formally published
- Web publishing - allowing content held in an EDMS or ECMS to be published to one or more websites
- Search - allowing business users to search one or many EDMS/ECMS repositories
Integration with Other Technology
An EDMS or ECMS will often integrate with other complementary products such as Microsoft Office or email, which led to various approaches to integration such as:
- Windows explorer - where the EDMS appears like another folder location and so the document appears like another file on the file-system
- Office application - where the office application can use the file menu to open and save the document to an EDMS
- Web portal - view into ECMS via a web gadget allowing the user to use their web browser to access a web page where one part of it, the gadget, is devoted to the ECMS
Enhanced EDMS
This technology platform is a significant enhancement of an EDMS and allows a business to exploit the technology capabilities for specified business benefits.
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