Traditionally Document Management is about documents - documents that are scanned or OCR-ed that have to be stored in a system by following workflows and business processes. Access to these documents is controlled based on rights and roles. These documents are typically shared using Shared Network Drives, Email and other Document Management systems. These documents are mostly structured and have to be saved in a particular format to follow regulatory compliance.
But most of the content that needs to managed, shared and made accessible are unstructured documents like to-do lists, meeting notes, press clippings, conversations, working papers, proposals, personal observations, marketing collateral, partner collateral, sales reports, finance reports and other documents that are needed for daily working. A collaboration system liberates this content from the tyranny of structured systems and encourages people to use it for actual working materials. It allows files to be stored in central area, where users can engage in an iterative, real-time collaboration process. Locking technology prevents users from accessing a file that is in use by another user to manage version control conflicts and ensures that the same final version of a file is available to any user at any time.
File Repository Usage
Stop Emailing documents to each other
A major contributor to e-mail overload is broken business processes. When an environment changes, business processes fail to adapt, and this causes exceptions. For example, when a customer requests information that isn't provided by a standard support process, it can kick off a chain of e-mails hunting for information--and what is found isn't easily captured into the redesign of the process. According to Gartner Group, 30% of e-mail is "occupational spam," characterized by excessive CC, BCC and Reply-All use. By using a centralized file repository, user can commonly decrease e-mail volume by 30% and moving e-mails to collaborative workspaces that are designed for one-to-many or many-to-many communication.Files are more searchable and easily accessible from a centralized repository, increasing productivity and decision making.
Secure document library
Documents stored in a centralized location and accessible by every one is the key advantage of File repositories in a collaboration system. Organizing, tagging and applying access rights to the documents stored can enable a secure document library for companies.
