Category: Records Management

Solving the Puzzle: DMS, RMS Or ECM

With the growing notion of Green IT and the need to achieve paperless office drives companies to look for an IT system which can help them reduce the paper usage in office, while increasing users productivity by the way of converting and managing papers in electronic form. The job to identify and implement such a system often gets assigned to the IT department, which then reaches out to various IT vendors to evaluate their solutions. Each vendor today refers their solutions using different terminologies confusing the IT managers or the business decision makers and throws a unique challenge in front of them to first decide on what exactly are they looking for, a DMS, RMS or a full-blown ECM? While the first might be dirt cheap, the later might require deep pockets to acquire, implement and maintain.While not one size fits all, its important to first zero down on the type of solution an organization is looking for and then invite the right vendors to demonstrate their product features, implementation capabilities and future support (I’ll talk about the methodology to evaluate vendors in my next article). Here is the list of few common abbreviation used commonly in IT industry to achieve electronic storage and management of papers, which might be helpful for organizations to pick the right title for the solution they require: Few common abbreviations

  • DMS: Document Management System
  • EDMS: Electronic Document Management System
  • RMS: Records Management System
  • CMS: Content Management System
  • ECM: Enterprise Content Management
  • WDMS: Workflow and Document Management System
  • CDMS: Compliance and document management system
  • DCS: Document Control System

Though some of the abbreviations listed above might sound very similar and refer to similar characteristics, it’s important to understand the narrow difference between them and identify the right solution for your business needs. I’ll try to briefly explain the basic characteristics of these terminologies and the narrow difference between them: DMS: A DMS is often referred to a system which manages electronic documents like office documents, pdf and images, having basic library functions like add/edit/delete document, check-in/check-out, versioning, audit trails etc. EDMS: An EDMS is not very different from DMS, though it specifically narrwos down the defination by adding the ‘electronic’ word into it. This terms is more practically used while referring to the need of a basic document management system. RMS: Records Management System is expected to be the enhanced version of DMS, which also offers records management features, wherein users can declare certain documents as ‘formal records’ of the organization, archive them for a period on it for meeting the regulatory and compliance requirements.

The True Meaning of Electronic Archiving (EDMS)

People believed that e-archiving (EDMS) is the process of converting documents, paper documents to electronic documents by scanning through scanners and storage through storage media circulation. According to this belief, many Government and private enterprises believes in no doubt that you archive all of their files and paper documents and are ready to enter the digital world and electronic government waged.

 

The fact that concept – assuming health-contrary- to the modern day full of electronic documents that are already stored on an electronic storage media do not require us to any scan operations, does that mean that it’s archived? If so, since there is no need for content management systems or archiving systems and just saved to the hard drive of your computer and end up.

 

Of course this is illogical, everything we have done here just store information not archived or so-called Imaging. EDMS is primarily responsible for the registration information of value to an enterprise to manage and keep them as long as possible or even forever. This simply means that the electronic archiving of document conversion and documentation at the end of its documentary legal records cannot prejudice or change in the original content for protection and easy access when needed, it is not enough to scan a document to tell him that archived electronically.

 

In fact, archiving in accordance with this concept we practice all process in everyday you when you write a letter to anyone what you are dealing here with a can modify and change but once sent this letter to her had become a record cannot modify because it already sent and here we are talking about an archived log retention period shortened or increased and disagree and conservation and its way of storing.
Therefore, the electronic archiving are simply records management process that ensures protection, maintenance and accessibility and begin from the moment of creating the document and ending
with destroyed or legacy is preserved forever, not only in volume or scanning. Log Record can be defined as information that is recorded and maintained and managed by the person or body or establishment either for legal purposes or for its value for business. Records that are no longer on any establishment kept confined to paper only, but now includes a number of information sources that are no longer as important as paper documents and mail halls and instant messages, Web pages and information sent through social networks, all of this information may be recorded in accordance with their importance.

 

Of course not all registry information must, otherwise it will show us a tremendous amount of records you might not find a place to save. For business to adopt a clear strategy for records management are:

1. Determine what information you have registered and from different sources.

2. Select the necessary categories in which to place those records building.

3. The time taken to keep these records for each classification is selected there is no need to maintain established for records forever without clear justification.

4. Select the required action to destroy records when the retention period expires.

5. Training and education of all staff in established and aware of the importance of the Treaty and what records should be kept.

 

For this to happen it must be for a special regime established to have records management and document management system not only. Records management system is responsible for maintaining information any establishment, registration and management of electronic archives in accordance with the rules and laws and customs in this area. And records management system is an essential part of content management system, because any record was initially content before walking to a legal record. Use a records management system one of the most important fundamentals of electronic government and electronic Commerce alike because electronic movements be provided by the electronic Government or e-commerce needs to define and determine legality and recorded legally and formally.

 

Records management system consists of at least the following essential elements:

1. Tools for classifying records: the heartbeat of the records management system, which is a clear classes and categories only needed records established or depending on the nature of the activity. Is here identifying laws and policies that followed and established in archive each of such categories where the system will automatically apply those policies and laws at every register kept on each category and without interference to end-user system.

 

2. Tools for creating records: including scanning paper documents and link with other systems to retrieve information or movements executed electronically as with resource management systems