What is Document Management (DMS)?
A document management system (DMS) is a software application or system that is used to create, edit, manage, and control electronic documents of different types – images, text documents, etc. – with the use of a PC. Document management as business practice refers to how you use and store documents inside
According to ISO 12651-2, a document is “recorded information or object which can be treated as a unit.” To avoid those difficult theoretical definitions, let’s say that any piece of information you use, create, or edit is a document.
Without document management, it would be impossible to create content management systems. Document management alone is a basic form of document management as it provides some basic features. Some of the basic features document management software provides include:
- Access management which means you can set different permissions for other people to edit, see, or even delete documents;
- History of changes, which means you can see the changes that were done to the document and its previous versions, and you can also download those versions;
- Audit trail, so you can see who made the changes to the document
- Comments – you can leave comments and tag needed colleagues and coworkers.
Document management software now differs by size, features, infrastructure location, prices, and so on. There are also many free document management software tools. Main features include:
- Storage location
- Security and access control
- Version control
- Audit trails
- Check-in/check-out and document lockdown.
