Document Management Solutions
From Manual to Desktop, on to Networks and the Web
Half a century ago, everything important was on paper. Project reports, drawings, process charts, project execution schedules, contracts, delivery notes, bills, attendance and bin cards, payrolls, cash vouchers, transaction registers, ledgers, trial balance, and so it proliferated.
You sorted the accumulating documents into meaningful categories and filed them in appropriately titled cardboard folders. For unwieldy or special kinds of documents, such as drawings and photographs, you used other kinds of suitable repositories. You had secretaries and filing clerks to attend to the dreary work.
You also hired an army of clerks and assistants to prepare all these documents by hand, transcribe the transaction documents into registers and ledgers, total up the ledgers and carry the balances in stages to the profit & loss account and balance sheet.
The folders and other document repositories were arranged in filing cabinets or table or box drawers or even strong, securely lockable, safes. As more and more documents and repositories were added, you arranged big rooms to store these.
These practices began to change rather dramatically after the arrival of computers.
The Desktop Computer Era
Text editors made writing and revising easy, and then became word processors with many formatting options. Spreadsheets speeded up work involving computations. Presentation programs enhanced the effectiveness of sales and other kinds of presentations.
Documents so created could now reside on the computers, occupying tiny spaces compared to the filing cabinets, drawers, and other documents storage paraphernalia.
Accounting and different kinds of management control programs also began to appear. You could now enter business transaction details into the computer and immediately get different kinds of analytical reports. Costs and profitability could be monitored in a timely manner to take appropriate decisions.
The degrees of elaboration in analysing different aspects of business operations were impossible with the earlier hand-written records.
Arrival of Networks
Networked computers could access a central server computer. This made collaborative working much easier. You could sit at your workstation and work with others who might be a few floors down or up. Networking also introduced rigorous security practices, such as password protection and read-write permissions.
It was now possible for an administrator at a central computer to monitor the work done at different workstations. Trails could be created to show who did what. Access and other kinds of permissions could be withdrawn if necessary. Using network printers administrators could monitor even printouts.
DMS and the World Wide Web
Using the Web protocol for communications, and a secure Intranet, it became possible to extend collaborative working across geographical boundaries. Authorized field persons could access their headquarters computer from across the globe.
Emails and instant messengers added a new dimension to speedy communications, at a fraction of the cost of long-distance telephone calls. With IP telephones, even telephone calls became inexpensive.
Digital signatures are making even long-distance authentication of documents possible. SSL servers allow safe transmittal of confidential information across the Internet.
Search technologies perfected by Google and others are now entering desktops and networks to enable finding a particular document (from among the huge volumes stored on the systems) at extremely fast speeds.
Another dimension to the emerging scenario was added by Web-based applications. You could pay a fee to third party providers of specialized applications and work with these remote applications to do your work. The costs of this option compared favorably with purchasing the applications outright.
Conclusion
From unwieldy hand operated document creation, updating, processing and storage systems, DMS has progressed through Desktop systems that dramatically speeded up document processing and lowered storage costs, and Networks that introduced new dimensions of collaborative working and security, to Web-based systems that expanded the geographic reach of DMS, as well as lowering long-distance communication costs.