EDM - who needs it?

摘要

The technology of Electronic Document Management Systems (EDMS) is a relatively new one, at least for small and moderate sized businesses. They have been in use on very large mainframe systems for a long time, but it is only fairly recently that EDM has become a viable, useful and increasingly much-needed resource for any size of computer network. An EDMS is basically a computer database system designed for keeping track of documents, changes to them, related documents, and possibly to control the access to documents and assist or even enforce established procedures for workflow or QA. An EDMS can track all kinds of documents whether in computer data form, books, paper, audio and video recordings, microfilm, or anything else. For computer data, an EDMS can provide detailed and automated access to the data. For other types of documents, it can index where they are stored. A major function of an EDMS for all types of data is to enable items to be found quickly from a wide range of search criteria.