Organizations can follow document management best practices, such as defining goals and implementing access control, to organize and secure their content.
Without effective document management, organizations can quickly lose track of enterprise content.
A document management strategy can help IT professionals and content managers streamline workflows, improve collaboration and support regulatory compliance. Organizations that lack a well-structured document management approach risk inefficiency, data loss, security vulnerabilities and disorganized content.
To create an effective strategy, organizations can take the following steps:
Define goals and KPIs.
Build a partnership between stakeholders and IT.
Establish consistent file naming and metadata conventions.
Implement a reliable backup and disaster recovery plan.
Encourage user training and adoption.
IT and content teams should understand the top document management best practices to help them organize and protect files.
What is document management?
Document management is a process organizations use to store, organize and control access to documents systematically. It includes digital and physical documents and involves technologies such as cloud storage, document management software and version control systems. A strong document management strategy helps organizations improve productivity, reduce errors and maintain compliance with legal and regulatory standards.
9 best practices to create a document management strategy
An effective document management strategy meets end users' needs and automates workflows. Best practices include defining goals and KPIs and forming a partnership between stakeholders and IT.
1. Define goals and KPIs
To create a document management system that meets users' needs, IT and content teams must understand the organization's objectives. They should set clear goals and KPIs to align the document management project with business priorities. These goals let the document management team assess the project's effectiveness and refine it as needed.
Misalignment between implementation teams and end users' requirements is a common reason for abandoned document management projects.
To align the project with business priorities, IT and content teams can take the following steps:
Consider the organization's key document management challenges, which might include enterprise search, security and content relevance.
Set measurable goals, such as reduce document retrieval time by 30% or reduce the number of systems to save licensing costs.
Regularly review and adjust goals based on performance against these KPIs.
Implementation teams that lack clearly defined goals might implement tools and processes that fail to solve the organization's specific challenges or run contrary to corporate goals. Misalignment between implementation teams and end users' requirements is a common reason for abandoned document management projects.
2. Build a partnership between stakeholders and IT
A strong partnership between stakeholders and IT is key in any content management project. The stakeholder team should include the potential system users, such as content authors and content consumers, and information security, regulatory compliance, legal and other teams who secure information, build in audit controls and respond to court-mandated e-discovery processes.
Each department has needs -- sometimes seemingly contradictory -- that implementation teams must balance to create an effective system. A governance body that brings all these stakeholders together can help IT and content professionals resolve potential conflicts and reach agreements before they adopt a system.
3. Establish consistent file naming and metadata conventions
Organizations should adopt a structured and standardized way to name and add metadata tags to files because this approach makes documents easy to find. Inconsistent naming or metadata tagging can lead to duplicate files, confusion and wasted time as employees struggle to find documents.
A file naming rule might use a naming convention that includes the ISO date format, YYYY-MM-DD. For example, organizations might use the following structure: [YYYY-MM-DD]_[Department]_[Document title].
IT and content professionals should come to an agreement with the larger governance team on these rules. They should also train users on them and implement automation to help enforce the rules. Many document management systems offer folder-based automation tools that can automatically apply metadata tags and file naming conventions based on folder rules and structures.
4. Implement access control
Access control lets only authorized users access, edit or delete certain documents. This security measure prevents unauthorized data breaches and protects sensitive information.
IT and content teams can use role-based access control to grant permissions based on users' roles, such as authors, editors, approvers or other relevant titles. These teams should audit user access and update permissions over time because users' needs and responsibilities can change. IT and content teams can also implement multifactor authentication for added security.
5. Implement version control
Organizations should implement document version control -- a feature that tracks changes to documents as people edit them -- to help users identify the latest versions and revert to older ones as necessary. Without this feature, organizations often have multiple, conflicting file copies spread across storage, which leads to confusion. Version control organizes historical versions to clearly indicate which is most current and offers a file creation and usage history for audit purposes.
Most document management systems include built-in version control. IT and content teams should define procedures to lock documents as users edit them, so multiple users can't make changes simultaneously. After users complete and save their edits, they can unlock documents.
Organizations should also establish a versioning scheme -- such as v1.0, v1.1, v1.2, v2.0 --to systematically track document revisions. Additionally, content managers must train users on these procedures to enforce adoption.
Document version control helps employees identify the most recent document versions and tracks revision history.
6. Automate document workflows
Manual processes slow down operations and increase the risk of error. Automation can streamline processes, such as review, approval and distribution workflows, to improve system adoption and user compliance.
To automate workflows, IT and content teams can use workflow automation capabilities built into the environment, such as Microsoft Power Automate, or external automation tools like Zapier. These tools can automate approval processes for document changes or integrate with existing document management platforms to further streamline workflows.
7. Implement a reliable backup and disaster recovery plan
A single data loss incident can be costly and disrupt business operations. Backup and disaster recovery plans keep documents accessible and recoverable in the event of system failures, cyberattacks or human error.
Extreme weather events or power outages can also lead to expensive business operations challenges. Organizations should use cloud or intranet backup services that offer automated daily incremental backups.
If the organization has global operations, IT teams can set up redundant systems in dispersed geographical locations to load content and continue operations in the event of a disaster. Additionally, these teams should schedule regular tests of data and systems recovery processes to verify they work properly.
9. Encourage user training and adoption
IT and content teams must train users on the document management system if they want high user adoption. They must ensure employees understand and follow document management policies and best practices because even the best document management system fails if employees don't use it correctly.
Organizations can include end users in the governance board to help design the system for their needs. For the broader user community, organizations should offer ongoing training and refresher courses. It is also good to create a knowledge base to answer questions as users interact with the system. The implementation team can also gather employee feedback to refine processes, improve UX and boost adoption.
An effective document management strategy enhances security and compliance. It also improves efficiency, as it simplifies file organization and search. IT and content management teams can follow best practices, such as setting clear goals, using version control and implementing access control, to create scalable and effective document management systems that support business growth and collaboration.
Jordan Jones is a writer versed in enterprise content management, component content management, web content management and video-on-demand technologies.
