Ten Considerations for Implementing a Document Management System

A document management system helps you tap the immense power of modern information technology for managing the huge volume of documents that businesses generate. You will be able to find the drawing of some rarely used part, or a letter from a particular client received some two years ago and such hard-to-retrieve document in a few minutes if not seconds. Even paper documents can be scanned into electronic versions and made part of the DMS document repository.

To derive the full benefits of your DMS, you do need to implement it paying due consideration to different issues that can affect the success of the implementation. Below, we look at 10 important considerations you should handle:

1. How should the DMS be structured? Depending on how you plan to use it, the DMS can be structured along departmental lines (departments in the organization), vendor names or client names, for example. The document workflow also needs to be configured to suit the business and approval processes in force. The DMS vendor’s engineers will need to map these requirements before they can implement the system to meet your particular requirements.
2. Who will be using the DMS and what will be their roles? Based on the list of users and their roles, the vendor can create user accounts, add them to applicable work groups and workflows, and include all needed details such as email addresses for any notifications.
3. Where should the DMS reside? The DMS can be installed on the customer’s own servers or as a service available over the Web.  While the former option provides greater control to the customer the latter option enables the customer and their personnel to access the DMS from anywhere with a secure Internet connection. The same vendor might offer both the options.
4. If the DMS is to be located on the customer’s servers, what will be the server requirements? This will depend on the pattern of DMS use. For example, if there is heavy scanning of paper documents into the system, a dedicated server with adequate processing power will be needed for the DMS. Using the same server as an e-mail and/or CRM server also can degrade system performance. If the DMS is used heavily for vendor processing, Internet and e-mail server access will be required for efficient operation.
5. What are the minimum Operating System and hardware requirements? This needs to be checked in advance. It might then be found that a Windows Server 2003 installed on a Quad-core Intel Xeon machine with 4GB RAM is the minimum requirement.
6. What other applications need to be installed? For example, the DMS will need a database and a Microsoft SQL Server might be the best option. These applications will need to be installed on the same server machine.
7. How heavy will be the scanning involved? If it is going to be heavy, you will need dedicated heavy duty scanners to handle the work volume as standard Multi-Function Peripherals might prove inadequate.
8. Will the DMS need to acquire data and be integrated with other applications? If so, DMS implementers will need to be able to access those other applications.
9. Will the DMS be implemented on site or remotely? If remote implementation is required, engineers will need to know how to access the servers. Tools such as Remote Desktop can enable such remote access.
10. Has the customer staff that will be affected by the DMS implementation been notified? DMS implementers will need to work with one or more members of this group and the best results occur when the latter know about it in advance.