Following the shift to paperless office environment, corporate organisations in the country have been urged to embrace Electronic Document Management Systems for storing and tracking volumes of data in an electronic format.
The Managing Director, MZ consulting, an indigenous Information Technology service provider, Mr. Musa Zubairu, said this in Lagos on Friday while addressing newsmen.
Describing EDMS as the process of storing, tracking and retrieving volumes of information processed each day by organisations in e-format, Zubairu said EDMS was built to meet the needs of different institutions in the medical, financial, legal, insurance, transportation, government, education, mortgage, real estate, construction, non-governmental fields, as well as other professional service providers.
EDMS, he explained, was a multi-user system that allowed many users to have access to the system simultaneously, while also allowing for any type of document or publication into its eDrawer.
He said it served as an ”e-Library” for monitoring and maintaining electronic documents with appropriate audit controls on access and usage.
EDMS, if well embraced according to him, will allow companies locate files through electronic means within very short periods measured in nano-seconds.
The vital information, according to him, may consist of institutional records such as internal memos, letters, approvals, students‘ records, examination answer papers, staffs employment details, medical records and personal profile, among others to formal organisation documents such as contracts agreement, briefs, memorandum and articles, e-mails, faxes, forms, invoices, bank statements, and other office related documents.
The system, he explained, significantly reduced document retrieval times, allowing organisations to get more work done in significantly less time, thereby cutting unnecessary overhead costs and increasing overall productivity.
The software, Zubairu said, provided the tools for various industries to comply with legislation that specify policies and procedures for record keeping, and, ” Specific departments within organisations, such as human resources and accounting, can greatly benefit from e-document management systems.”
The MZ boss stated, ”EDMS supports all documents / record types no matter which application created them. Using a scanner, search keys and indexes can be created while putting them into an electronically secured drawer.
”In each drawer, documents can be placed into appropriate folders. These documents can be retrieved, processed, annotated, updated and checked out at any time and finalised based on the appropriate user authentication.
”In many organisations, the needed information is there, but it is spread out and basically worthless - or only accessible via the silos in which it is stored. Information that cannot be found and acted upon is only taking up space. An organisation‘s security may be put in jeopardy since policing the document is virtually impossible. Paper flow is delayed or comes to a standstill without knowing where the document is in the lifecycle.
”Tracking user activity on a document is difficult if at all possible. Backup and restore of documents and files become cumbersome and can be dangerous for lost information, due to location of documents throughout the system. What this means is that much more time is spent on document searching, processing, moving it across departments and filing for day to day operation can be time consuming than the specific purpose it is intended to be used for.”
