Document Management Best Practices

Content Management is very complex and is best understood by breaking it down into the major stages involved in managing the lifecycle of content.

Most content management books describe varying numbers of stages but are essentially pointing the same steps. The steps outlined below were developed from these pieces:

• Bob Boiko's Content Management Bible
  
• Gerry McGovern's Content Critical
  
• JoAnn Hackos' Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery
  
• Ann Rockley's Managing Enterprise Content

While differing on names and specifics, the above mentioned authors include the tools of access control, version control, editing, workflow, staging, personalization, and localization. From these I believe their are 7 primary phases in the Content Management Lifecycle.

Organization
While the primary sources I mention above are terrific, they miss a stage for organizing information and structuring it where possible which allows for vital metadata to be added to any information element. Professionals in knowledge management are well aware of this step's importance as the organization of data often determines its usefulness and value. This phase is also vital for retrieval of data/info and allows for reuse or repurposing.

This is where categories are created, vocabularies are controlled, taxonomic hierarchies are designed, and faceted classification schemes are developed. Without careful structuring, information will be collected haphazardly and put in the wrong places, perhaps never to be found by workers who may need to recreate it at great expense. Importantly, this is the stage where your content strategy is matched to your business strategy by designing it with your users in mind, to insure that they can and will actually use it.

Workflow
Business Rules/Policies and Procedures/Roles and Responsibilities/Content Owners/Editors and Publishers/Casual Contributors
Many hands and eyes may work on your content, some highly skilled editors and graphic artists, others will be subject matter experts or those with tacit knowledge you captured to inform your business processes. For this to succeed, you must have carefully designed but flexible rules that keep the content moving, consistent with your business requirements and rules, your policies and procedures.

Creation
Whether your information is typed into your system by technical writers or ingested by special programs that reach out via Web service connectors to aggregate vast reams of data, this is the stage that classifies everything into the architectural categories designed in stage one.

Repositories
Will your content reside entirely in relational database structures, in file system objects, or a hybrid of both? Will it be stored as unstructured text and binary graphic images, or as XML elements tagged with the metadata from stage one? Will the system manage documents and records in their original physical form?

Versioning
Content changes and presentation changes. Not everyone can make a change on the same document at the same time. You must work around conflicts and be ready to rollback critical content when inevitable errors creep in.

Publishing
Your finished content will be delivered to users in many ways. Some you will push on a schedule, other information will be pulled by users as needed. Some will be traditional print, most via the Web or email, some over mobile devices like PDAs and cellphones. All of these delivery methods must be tested to insure the quality of user experience that stage one was preparing you for.

Archives
Although publishing is probably your major objective, not all your content is ephemeral. Some must be protected to comply with internal or external requirements, some eliminated for similar reasons. Some may be so valuable you must make it part of your "institutional memory." It captures the business knowledge of your organization, allowing it to be shared with ever-changing generations of workers. It becomes your permanent knowledge base.

These are 8 tips on cost effective document management practices for AIIM (See original source)

1. The workgroup alternative

To the extent possible, replacing personal desktop printers with workgroup MFPs (multifunction peripherals that combine print/copy/scan/fax functionality in one machine) shared by departments can have a strong positive impact. One financial services company replaced 1,100 copiers and printers and 1,000 fax machines with 400 MFPs. The initiative eliminated 1,700 machines that no longer consume resources based on their manufacture, transportation, operation, maintenance, and eventual disposal.

2. Adopt scanning practices

Instead of copying and storing physical documents, organizations can scan and store electronically. Employees can retain digital copies that they can distribute electronically, and at the same time avoid accumulating files filled with paper.

As a conservative estimate, scanning can reduce paper consumption by one to three percent. In a recent industry survey, senior executives involved in document management indicated that document scanning has a high impact across the greatest range of business goals that include reducing costs, increasing competitive advantage, enhancing regulatory compliance, and improving customer service.

3. Default to duplex

Most multi-page documents don't require the text to be printed on one side of the page. Newspapers, magazines and books use both sides (duplex printing). With effective fleet management it is possible to change office practices and make duplex printing of multi-page documents the norm. This can potentially decrease paper use by up to 50 percent.

4. Eliminate printing banner pages

A banner page is the extra page that prints before an employee's file prints with username and machine name information. Gartner's research estimates that organizations can reduce their consumables cost by up to 20 percent by eliminating banner pages from office print jobs. Banner pages can represent up to a quarter of pages printed for some typical office print jobs. A 1,000 person organization could cut up 1.6 million pages and save $33,500 per year by eliminating banner page printing ("Cost Cutting Initiatives for Office Printing," Sharon McNee and Ken Weilerstein, Feb. 2008.)

5. Bulk up

Buying paper and toner in bulk can reduce transportation, packaging, and storage resources. Buying in bulk also often results in cost savings.

6. Leverage "smart" technologies

Enterprises can use MFP "smart" technologies such as Personal Mail Box, Fax-from-Desktop, Scan-to-Email/File Folder, and Document Routing in order to decrease paper and chemicals used in printing. This can reduce paper usage by up to three percent.

7. Implement user authentication

With as many as one in 10 documents sent to the printer and uncollected or sent again before collection to correct user errors, enterprises could reduce ad hoc print costs by up to 10 percent by implementing a PIN authentication system.

8. Put more text on each page

Paper usage can be reduced by changing a few default settings that will result in more text on each page. For example, in MS Word, you can go to "File," then to "Page Setup" and set the margins to accommodate more text. Compared to the normal settings, this could use up to 14 percent less paper. Additionally, when printing, you can reduce font size to 10 point to decrease the amount of paper required.

Content from AIIM 10 Document Management Fast Facts

1. Companies spend $20 in labor to file a document, $120 in labor to find a misfiled document, and $220 in labor to reproduce a lost document.
2. 7.5 percent of all documents get lost; 3 percent of the remainder get misfiled.
3. Professionals spend 5 - 15 percent of their time reading information, but up to 50 percent looking for it.
4. The average document photocopied 19 times.
5. There are over 4 trillion paper documents in the U.S. alone and they are growing at a rate of 22% per year (PricewaterhouseCoopers).
6. Corporate users received an average of 18 megabytes (MB) of e-mail per day in 2007; E-mail is expected to grow to over 28 MB per day by 2011.
7. Users send and receive an average of 133 e-mail messages per day (Radicati Group).
8. A single FAX machine costs $6,200 per year (Captaris); the average time to manually FAX a document is 8 minutes.
9. The average cost to send a package via courier service is between $8 and $15.
10. The cost of office space has increased 19% (Office Space Across the World 2008).