ECM and document management
A document follows one path: registration, route, signing, storage, search — together with access rights, a change log and retention periods, rather than simply "files in a system".
What document management consists of
Each item below is a decision made during the survey, not an automatic part of a box product.
Registration and classification
Document types, numbering, mandatory attributes. This is where it is decided whether anything can later be found by search rather than by browsing folders.
Routes and approvals
Who approves, in what order, what happens on rejection and on return for rework. Shared ground with BPM.
Signing
Qualified electronic signature and work with external counterparties. Legal validity is settled before implementation, not after.
Access rights
A role model and document-level access: a contract is visible to the parties in the process and to controllers, not to the whole organisation.
Storage and filing schedule
Retention periods, files, scheduled destruction. For public institutions it is a requirement; for everyone else it is a way not to keep an archive forever.
Search and audit trail
Full-text and attribute search plus a log that answers "who changed this and when" in a minute.
What makes document management die
A system used only halfway is worse than none: two parallel flows have to be maintained.
A parallel paper flow
If a paper signature is still required, the electronic route becomes an extra step. The decision to drop the duplicate is made before go-live.
Scanning instead of document flow
A scan without attributes and a route is a file, not a document. Search over such an archive does not work, and within a year people stop using it.
No naming rules or types
Arbitrary document names make both search and reporting impossible. Reference data is cleaned up before migration, not after.
Migrating the whole archive
Moving twenty years of documents "just in case" is expensive and usually unnecessary. Migration depth is defined during the survey.
"Everyone sees everything" rights
It is the easy way to launch and an impossible way to pass an audit. Access segregation is designed in from the start, not "in phase two".
Training as a single webinar
A records clerk, an approver and an administrator work with different screens. A general presentation makes none of them a confident user.
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The order of work is on the How We Work page. The finance subsystems that document flow connects to are on the Solutions page.