Information is the most valuable asset of every organization, and managing this information is important. The volume of data and information within an organization increases dramatically. Effective information management can lead to improved customer service, improved internal communication, improved decision making and increased productivity.
Information management systems provide the foundation for turning corporate data into intelligent shared information by providing a central source of information that is accessible to all. These systems have changed and evolved over time to meet various business requirements, such as telecommuting.
Document management Definition : “Document management is the process of managing documents through their life cycle. Exception through creation, viewing, storage and distribution up to their destruction ”(Document Management Avenue).
Document management systems began to emerge in the mid-1980s. The initial goal was to develop a system that provides a paperless office. Scanning all paper documents and searching them electronically was about as difficult as his. These early file and search engines were just electronic filing cabinets.
Over the past 10 years, the document management market has been revolutionized thanks to technological advances. Currently, document management systems capture virtually any type of document, not just documents, electronic documents, HTML, e-mail, EDI, XML, etc. They still allow you to store, search and retrieve documents, but the search is now instant from any place and search options are much broader.
Another significant improvement in document management was the introduction of workflow. A workflow is defined as “IT technology that uses electronic systems to manage and monitor business processes, which allows it to identify and track the flow of work between individuals and / or departments” (Document Management Avenue). It became an integral part of many document management solutions and meant that one could go from simple files and find systems to a solution that could manage & documents; tracking the distribution of documents, as well as monitoring and control of work. The Internet is transforming how to use the workflow and led to a new term: eProcess. The Ovum research team defines eProcess as a “workflow for e-business”. E-Process extends the concept of automating processes, including partners, suppliers and customers. ” Instead of controlling the system-wide processes, eProcess is extended to any external organization. For document management, this means the ability to effectively integrate documents with your partners, suppliers and customers. This increases collaboration between organizations and improves the efficiency of the supply chain.
Version control
The definition of document management includes the ability to manage a document through its life cycle from creation to archive. Although the document is alive, it may have to be processed and modified by any number of people. Version control ensures that you do not have conflicting document versions. Version control gives “control over who can edit documents and introduce new documents into the system and avoid any update conflicts” (Cimtech). This includes checking any documents that are being edited and blocking, allowing users to either save as new versions or rewrite old versions.
“In the future, document management will be a fundamental business tool for all organizations that want to share information on a corporate basis.” (“Document Management Update”)
Document Management Summary:
- Manage all types of documents
- Workflow and eProcess
- Version control
- Developed technology that forms the basis for content and knowledge management
- Quickly becoming a must for a competitive business
Content management and knowledge management systems are basically an extension of the concept of document management, and there is a lot of confusion.
Content management
Definition : “A set of tasks and processes for managing content explicitly intended for publication on the Internet through its life from creation to archive” (Ovum).
Content management solutions are essentially an extension of document management, which includes web content management. Some vendors simply reprinted their products without actually adding any features, but these content management providers have added valuable features that continue to work on managing documents outside of the same organization.
Currently, the subject of much discussion in the market is the personalization of content. The productive use of the Internet and the growth of customer relationship management (CRM) have made it much easier for companies to provide personalized customer service. Content management systems often include personalization features, although the degree of personalization can vary greatly: from referring to each user by name, offering the same content to a specific group of users. The technology used today allows organizations to replicate the dialogue that a local store owner may have with their customers, although they may have many millions. A content management system can also be used as a document management system for collecting, distributing and retrieving information. Enterprise Content Management is a new term that applies to a system that includes both content management capabilities and document management capabilities. Content management solutions collect data or information from all necessary sources, organize them for easy retrieval and deliver them using a web-compatible system. This can be via the Internet or Intranet.
A content management solution is typically used to update a website; it will likely include web page publishing, format management, version control, indexing, search and search. The content management solution captures paper, media, graphics, email, voice, video, etc. And, although it is usually associated with management for the Internet, it can be expanded to include any structured and unstructured content for anyone. channel.
Another significant difference between document management and content management is the way documents are classified. Document management is related to the external classification of the document, the index fields and the keywords used to refer to it. However, content management concerns internal classification methods such as author, date and time of creation and context.
Content management systems have become an integral part of the company's IT infrastructure, and it looks like this:
“The growth of content management has slowed down, and the IT recession has not stopped, while a significant part of the IT industry is in a recession, Strategy Partners analysis shows that the CM market continues to show a strong growth of 34.5% for software and services in Europe in 1999–2003 after what amounts to September 11 and the current crisis factors. ” This is faster than the global market (29.5%) ”(Strategy Partners, 2001).
Content Management Summary:
- Manages all content, but usually focuses on managing web content.
- Web publishing
- embodiment
- A growing market that is becoming increasingly
Knowledge management
Definition : “The process of capturing the value, knowledge, and understanding of corporate information using IT systems to maintain, reuse, and redeploy that knowledge” (Document Management Avenue).
Knowledge management aims to encompass all knowledge in organizations, paper documents, web-based information, electronic reports, employee knowledge or knowledge gained from informal meetings and discussions. Content or document management systems are often the basis of knowledge management, but there is a huge difference in the amount of information captured.
Knowledge management allows employees to access intellectual information and includes functions such as collaboration, business intelligence, timely e-learning and CRM. At the enterprise level, knowledge management brings about the biggest change in the practice of an organization. IT solutions of this kind almost always require changes in the work environment. Knowledge management is very complex and implements a knowledge management solution for a significant cultural change at all levels of the organization.
Interest in knowledge management has recently grown for several reasons; Internet has raised users. waiting for immediate access to relevant information; organizations recognize the value of their corporate knowledge; a shift in employment patterns, when people who spend much less time on a company increase the likelihood of employee losing knowledge - it was said that NASA could not put a man on the moon now because knowledge was not captured at that time.
Knowledge management has a strong relationship with CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and a knowledge management system that contains all customer data that can be used as a CRM system. This made these systems especially popular in call centers. Being able to respond to a customer’s request for an initial call not only saves the time and cost of a call back, but also improves customer relationships.
Knowledge management systems are expensive and, as you know, it is difficult to justify the costs. The main reason for this is that many of the benefits are intangible. Improving efficiency, productivity, employee access to information and customer satisfaction is difficult to calculate. The benefits can be huge, but financial costs and cultural changes can be reversed, and the market is slowly growing:
“The KM market is programmed at between 1,500 and 4,000 million dollars in one to two years based on in-depth user surveys” (Strategy Partners).
In addition to the largest of the organizations, there was no implementation of knowledge management systems to match the hype.
Knowledge management summary:
- Manages all knowledge in the organization
- Often think more about the concept, and then about the system
- Strong CRM connections
- Hard to justify the costs
- A new market that is growing but slowly
Resume document, content, knowledge management
Document management systems are now the final answer to effective document management. The introduction of content management systems has provided the ability to manage web content. While knowledge management extends this concept to manage all the knowledge that exists in an organization. Thus, although all three manage information using similar methods, the scope and objectives remain very distinct.
