For those of us who have been preaching the potential benefits of document management for many years, we are currently moving into interesting times.
A product has finally arrived on the scene which not only promises capability across the complete document, records, workflow and email management spectrum, and at a reasonable enough cost per seat that it could be rolled out across a small business, but it is also from Microsoft.
The same Microsoft that initially gave us just eight upper-case characters to name a document file, then gave us long (but not too long) filenames, added a hierarchical directory structure, later renamed as a "folder tree" rather than a "filing cabinet", and finally encouraged us to store all those documents that might potentially be useful to our co-workers, into that keep-out place called "My Documents".
Indeed, the same Microsoft whose email client Outlook offers us folder filing options to which only we have the key, and an "archive" function that creates mini-stores all over our networks, desktops, laptops and even PDAs.
So what can SharePoint offer a small business to make amends for scattering such vital information and important company records all over the network? Two things really: collaboration and control.
Documents in electronic format, whether created that way, or scanned from paper copies, can move around and between businesses with no physical limitations or time delay.
But as we know from all those endlessly circulating email attachments, it can be extremely difficult to nail down a "final" version, stored in just one place, which can be retrieved on-demand, and over time, by permitted persons only, as the official company record.
While this is true of a massive number of day-to-day business documents, it is particularly true of project documents, which may be spreadsheets, letters, charts, faxes or drawings. They generally need to be shared with members of the project team both within the business, and as external partners.
This is a great place to start with SharePoint. The ability to set up document-sharing mini-websites, with controlled access both within the organisation and external to it, can produce genuine productivity improvements as well as reduced travel and less errors due to better version control of shared documents.
Project emails can be selectively declared as records within Outlook and added to the project repository. At the end of a project, SharePoint allows you to wrap up the documentation as a single-stored company record set. It even lets you set a legal hold at any time if you should become involved in litigation or disputes.
As a next step, take a look at your network file share or "X-drive". If it's clean and tidy, with a well understood and enforced hierarchy, then you are well on the way to implementing a content management scheme for your organisation. SharePoint can import this scheme into its database, providing a much better cross-search capability, and a more robust system, not prone to those occasional drag-and-drop or delete disasters.
If your file share looks more like digital landfill than a thought-through filing scheme, then now is the time to fix it by encapsulating an agreed corporate filing scheme into SharePoint.
A few words of warning, though. Don't expect SharePoint to work the way your business needs straight out of the box. You will need some configuration help; indeed, there may well be more suitable document management products or SharePoint add-ons dedicated to your industry type or size of operation. And don't expect to come up with an organisation-wide information strategy without any training or previous experience.
Doug Miles is managing director of AIIM Europe, a non-profit organisation focused on helping users to understand the challenges associated with managing documents, content, records and business processes. For more information visit www.aiim.org.uk
AIIM Certificate training courses in enterprise content management and electronic records management are available online, in-house and in public classes, and can be taken at two-day practitioner, two-day specialist and four-day master qualification levels. For full details see www.aiim.org.uk/training
