The 5 most valued features of a document management system

When it comes to choosing a Document Management System there are many variables to take into account: which features it has, whether it fits your use case, or which one to pick given the variety of offerings on the market.

Today we are going to give you a list drawn up by the American consultancy Gartner that you will find very useful. We are talking about what companies that already use this type of software genuinely value: those characteristics they would not be willing to give up after years of using a Document Management System.

The Gartner study shows which 5 features of a Document Management System have become indispensable for their users.

Below we will go through each of them and then comment on others that also scored highly even though they are not in the top 5.

If you are comparing options, our document management software comparison analyses eight tools by process, regulation, price and G2 rating.

Top 5 Document Management System features most valued by companies

1. Platform

This characteristic refers to centralising each type of information in a single place that everybody knows about. It is perhaps one of the greatest advantages a Document Management System can offer. By preventing information from being scattered across email attachments and shared folders, you minimise the risk of losing information, the unwanted creation of duplicates, and the time users spend finding what they need.

The most valued feature is the creation of “sources of truth” for all the important information in the business.

Thanks to this capability, everyone will know where to store and find information according to its type. We call this concept the Source of Truth. It is a single point of reference agreed on by the whole team as the place to look: “What is here is the latest and the only valid version; if it is somewhere else, it is in the wrong place“.

2. Capture

Thanks to this feature, you can collect all the information from external sources and store it in an orderly way in your Document Management System. There are different ways of carrying out the capture or data collection process:

1. Typing the information in by hand (the most rudimentary).
2. Importing it from Excel, CSV or other formats.
3. Using Web Forms that can be filled in by any user from their device.
4. Using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) from scanned images or PDF documents.
5. Monitoring email inboxes automatically.
6. Collecting files from a corporate web portal intended for file exchange.
7. Receiving it via API from other tools and programs.

The information ends up collected in a database that you can query as you please and exploit in a number of ways.

3. Compliance

Another feature that is indispensable for your peace of mind is, without a doubt, compliance. Essentially, by using a Document Management System that complies with the regulations of your country and your line of business, you are making sure your organisation complies with them too, whether nationally or internationally.

From the GDPR to sector-specific regulations in fields such as engineering or pharmaceuticals, ISO standards, and so on.

The way a Document Management System ensures compliance comes down to several more specific features:

1. Security: making sure each user can only see what they need to see.
2. Integrity: making sure nobody can modify information without authorisation.
3. Traceability: knowing what actions each user performed on which document.
4. Retention policies: keeping information only for as long as necessary.

The benefits of compliance, beyond the legal ones, translate into information security.

4. Collaboration

Building good collaboration with your team, your suppliers and your customers is perhaps one of the biggest challenges in any organisation. Thanks to this capability, achieving it will be far easier.

1. With automated workflows you can notify the people involved when they need to start a task, or simply improve coordination by letting them know the status of processes instantly.
2. Users can leave comments on the different items, just as they would on a social network.
3. Beyond email, many of the alerts the Document Management System sends can be published in Microsoft Teams or Slack, which makes team collaboration easier.

With a Document Management System, your team will be able to centralise communication in one place, freeing up the email inbox as far as possible. A much more agile and immediate way of managing work.

5. Accessibility

In fifth place we find accessibility as one of the most valued features of a Document Management System. Here, what counts is the ability to access and use data and documents wherever and whenever you need them.

1. Cloud architecture, allowing access from anywhere without compromising security.
2. Native mobile apps for Android and iOS.

The software you choose must let you access it from the office or outside it, through your mobile device. The benefit you get is convenience and speed in your work, since you will not need to be in a particular place or have a computer to hand to reach the information you need.

Other features that also matter

Automation (Position 7)

Increasing productivity is one of the key objectives when implementing a Document Management System, which is why the tool should be able to perform repetitive tasks for you.

A Document Management System with this feature can cut up to 70% of the time users spend on repetitive manual administrative tasks:

1. Sending similar email replies.
2. Creating documents from templates.
3. Sending alerts and notifications.
4. Signing documents electronically (or sending them out for signature).

The arrival of Artificial Intelligence has multiplied the number of things a Document Management System can do for you, and it will do so even more over the coming years.

Workflows (Position 11)

Establishing standardised workflows is one of the challenges you will face when organising a team. It is about designing a series of specific steps that cover the different cases in the workflow. That way, you make sure those flows always happen the same way, that they can be measured, and that they genuinely work.

1. Designing the steps of the workflow using a diagram that reflects every option in the flow.
2. Configuring automatic actions when a state is reached, or when something stays in a state for a certain time.
3. Visualisation through Kanban boards and other visual management techniques.
4. The ability to modify flows easily to adapt to change.

This is one of the capabilities you should take into account when choosing a Document Management System.

Search, Metadata and Classification (Position 14)

Another very useful capability to bear in mind is the ability to search for information within the Document Management System. This way you can quickly locate what you need using different search filters and queries.

1. Defining the data sheet for each type of document.
2. Creating fields of every kind: text, number, currency, date, drop-down lists, image, file, location, and so on.
3. Creating relationships between data sheets (a relational database).
4. Full-text search (FTS) inside documents.
5. Free keyword search (Google style).
6. Search through custom queries.

All of this is achieved by linking documents and their information to a metadata record. This technique is also known as taxonomy. With it, the Document Management System lets you build a solid, complete database out of all the information you hold.

 

To sum up, these are the features that most interest companies already working with a Document Management System, and they will serve you as a reference for finding the one that best fits your organisation.