A document management system (DMS) is a computer system that stores and tracks electronic documents and scanned paper documents.

Why is a DMS important to business?

A DMS is crucial to modern businesses because document management is a significant undertaking even for the smallest businesses. A DMS organizes data and makes it more accessible. More importantly, it saves a considerable amount of money. Conventional document management is resource intensive.

DMS Components

• Metadata allows for date and time stamps, identities, and annotations.
• Integration facilitates connection between the DMS and other applications.
• Capture accepts and processes scanned paper documents.
• Indexing tracks the documents in the system, making them easier and faster to query.
• Storage stores the documents in as efficient a manner as possible.
• Retrieval retrieves documents quickly, directly and through queries.
• Distribution produces a version of a document suitable for consumption.
• Security accounts for compliance requirements.
• Workflow allows administrators to dictate the flow of documents through an organization.
• Collaboration facilitates the write access to a document by multiple users.
• Versioning allows for multiple versions of the same document.
• Searching allows users to find documents by text and document attribute searches.
• Publishing facilitates proofreading, review, authorization, approval and printing.
• Reproduction governs the printing of specific types of documents.

Main Benefits of a DMS

• Reduced Storage — A DMS reduces the need for physical storage space, and it optimizes the usage of disk space. For even medium-sized businesses, a DMS pays for itself through this benefit due to how expensive commercial space is.

• Flexible Retrieval — Retrieving physical or microfilm-based documents consumes a great deal of time. The cost of that time can be exponential when it becomes a bottleneck. With a DMS, significantly less time is spent locating and retrieving documents.

• Flexible Index and Search — Documents in a DMS can be indexed multiple ways quickly and simultaneously. Searches are fast and can be quite complex. One of the greatest benefits is being able to search without knowing precisely what document is needed.

• Security — A DMS provides greatly improved control over documents, especially sensitive ones. Documents cannot be lost or stolen. A DMS can integrate with a redundancy system for easy disaster recovery, and a DMS makes it easy to archive documents digitally.

Conclusion
A document management system, such as one provided by Doxim is a crucial tool for any business, including small ones. Above we listed fourteen DMS components. Not every DMS has all fourteen. An enterprise-level DMS would be overkill for the sole proprietorship. The key to choosing a DMS is twofold: Choose a DMS that meets the businesses’ needs now, and choose a DMS that can grow with the business at minimal cost.