The amount of information that companies currently handle is enormous and using traditional storage systems is not enough, since they offer shortcomings to do it efficiently and to facilitate immediate access to data.
The best way to guarantee proper management of all this information is by using document management systems that guarantee the flow of information and its effective storage and access.
There are different solutions on the market for the document management of a company, highlighting among them the Microsoft SharePoint tool.
What Is a Document Management System?
A DMS or document management system aims to manage, store and control the flow of documents within a company. When we talk about company documents we are not only referring to text documents (office documents, emails or PDF files), but to all types of files that contain information such as images and videos.
What Is A Document Management System For?
In a digitized environment like the current one, the paper has taken second place and information is stored and shared digitally, so having a document management system is vital to be able to organize all that information, share it with members, collaborators and clients of the company, and facilitate the workflow ( workflow ).
What Are The Advantages Of Using A Document Management System?
There are many benefits that a company or organization obtains from having a document management system. We can highlight as main advantages:
Centralized Storage and Access
As we have already mentioned, the amount of data that the company currently handles is very large, and it also comes through multiple communication channels (telephone, emails, web forms, social networks, and other digital media). A document management system allows storing, organize and providing access to all this information efficiently, centralizing and granting personalized access permissions to each user.
Document Digitalization
A document management system involves digitizing all documents that reach the company in paper format. There are still many companies that continue to use this type of medium for their documents, such as invoices, delivery notes and the like. In order to work efficiently, it is important to scan them and pass them into a digital format, so that they can be stored and organized by the document management system.
Workflow Improvement
Having access in real-time to all the documentation of the company provides a global and real vision of the same, facilitating the workflow and knowing the status of the tasks and processes in progress or completed. These types of systems are tools designed to share information and facilitate collaborative work by company members, and even with clients and collaborators.
Increased security
It is the best way to keep information safe, avoiding loss, theft or damage to documents. With the digital copies and backups of the information, all the information will always be available in a safe place.
SharePoint as a Document Management System
SharePoint is a Microsoft solution that includes a series of tools to build an agile, flexible and scalable business intranet. Its applications are very broad, as it serves, among many other functions, as a quality control system, employee portal or as a project manager.
SharePoint as a document management system provides a series of advantages to having total control over the information handled by the company. We highlight some of them:
Version Control
Being able to control the different versions of a document is one of the main advantages of using SharePoint as a document management system. Each file shows its version number, modification date, the person who modified it, and other useful information about it.
Document Protection System
SharePoint allows to provide accesses customized to each file individually, so it is possible to protect files so they can not be modified by certain users, giving them full access to other users.
Categorize Documents
With SharePoint, documents can be tagged to facilitate their organization, so it is possible to sort them by year, creation date, product or any other tag that is created. To perform this function, the tool makes use of metadata, offering a very powerful system for classifying and categorizing information.
Collaborative Work
SharePoint facilitates collaborative work allowing the co-authoring of documents, where it is possible that several people can work in real-time on a document, each user having access to the changes made by the others. As SharePoint integrates with Office, it is possible to use this collaboration in the documents of the tools of this office suite such as Word, Excel, OneNote or PowerPoint.
Documentary Organization
The different views that SharePoint provides allow you to access the information in an orderly manner. These views are customizable with filters, allowing you to sort and organize documents as desired. In addition, each user can configure and save their own views to access the files in the way they like best.
Access to Information
SharePoint offers an advanced search tool to efficiently find any stored file, using metadata filters, categories, and other refiner panels.
Alert Methods
Another very interesting function of SharePoint as a document management system is the possibility of activating alerts that warn if a file has been modified. These notifications are very useful to know if a project is progressing or any file created is modified, and they are a tool that helps improve workflow.
How to Integrate Workflows in SharePoint?
SharePoint allows you to model and automate business processes to facilitate workflow automation. Business processes can be simple, such as document approval, or more complex processes, such as creating a product catalogue or managing all the steps in a sales process.
From SharePoint itself, workflows can be created with Microsoft Power Automate (formerly Microsoft Flow), although there are also specific third-party tools for creating workflows that integrate with SharePoint.
Power Automate is an improved redesign of SharePoint Designer for workflow integration. These workflows can now be connected with SharePoint information as well as with other applications such as Office 365 or third parties.
This application is for the creation of workflows to connect applications including for automating actions in different ways, with triggers (start workflow), actions (automation process within workflow) and connections (the secure connection between two applications).
A document management system is an essential tool to have control and secure access to all the information that a company currently manages. SharePoint is a Microsoft solution for businesses that provides these types of advantages when it comes to managing documents and facilitating workflows.
