Seven key Questions for Assessing an EDMS

There are many moving parts to an EDMS (Electronic Document Management System) and many conditions that it has to satisfy; conditions that change from one enterprise setting to another. Select the wrong specs, and you may end up wasting time and losing your company quite a bit of money.

What should you include in your specifications list?

Which factors should you pay attention to?

Here are seven questions you need to ask before finalising the specification of your new Electronic Document Management System:

 1. DEGREE OF INTEGRATION:

An EDMS does not work in isolation but together with other existing systems and enterprise modules. Will you be able to integrate the EDMS with the existing email platform and office application suites? Would the EDMS support existing integration standards such as WebDAV, SOAP, or LDAP? Higher the number of such modules and protocols the EDMS integrates nicely, the lower will be your long-term transition costs and higher will be your productivity gains and ROI.

 2. SCALABILITY and ROBUSTNESS:

Will the EDMS be scalable, that is, will it be able to accommodate any new productivity demands? If, for example, the company wins a new federal contract and the number of pages it processes jumps from 100,000 to a million pages a month, will your EDMS be able to keep up with such a ten-fold increase in workload? If there is an increase in the number of users, processing hours, or both, will the EDMS buckle under the load? Will it need any extra maintenance and system upgrading to deliver service at an optimal level?

 3. VERSATILE SEARCH AND RETRIEVAL:

Searching and retrieving documents is a core function of any EDMS. How easy it is to tag documents and attach meta information for retrieval purposes? How fast different categories of documents can be searched and retrieved? Does the system allow for advanced searches with multiple criteria and Boolean expressions? What kind of indexing (a must for all fast searches) does the EDMS allow for?

 4. SECURITY:

We are living in an age of world-wide hacking. How secure is the EDMS in protecting documents of vital importance? What safeguards are in place and which security protocols are implemented for safe document handling? Does the security system in question comply with ISO standards? This is another core function that an EDMS should deliver flawlessly.

 5. VERSION CONTROL:

Every corporation generates different versions of the same document on a regular basis. Any EDMS worth its salt should be able to keep track of these different versions, tag them with meta data like date and author of publication, and lock and unlock the documents depending on the authorisation of the users.

 6. COLLABORATION:

A good EDMS should allow maximum collaboration among the corporate personnel for a flexible and effective workflow. The system should be able to enforce various workflow patterns for efficient distribution and processing of documents. The EDMS should support real-time as well as delayed-time handling and markup of paperwork. The system should be able to assign different clearance codes to different actors and authorise different levels of access to retrieve, edit, audit, and distribute documents.

 7. AUDIT TRAILS:

How versatile your EDMS is when it comes to keeping an audit trail of all changes? Can it quickly generate the information needed when you come face to face with an e-discovery request?

Using infoRouter, Document Genetics have helped hundreds of companies achieve cost and efficiency savings by implementing an Electronic Document Management Systems which meet the business requirements in many market sectors, from Banks to SME manufacturers, so why not call us now on 01604 671177 for a free trial.