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Designing a Document Management Strategy
Article #4:
Documents, Technology and People
(Read more articles in this series)
By Kevin Craine
Designing a Document Management Strategy is complicated. In my book, "Designing a Document Management Strategy," I contend that one way to demystify the process is to concentrate on three elements: Documents, Technology and People. These three elements are essentially the "what, how and who" of your document strategy: what documents are important, how they are produced, and who cares about how they perform.
Documents are, naturally, the subject of your strategy. In order to increase the strategic value and tactical effectiveness of your documents, it stands to reason that you should determine which ones are the most important to your organization. Identify the "vital few" documents that offer the highest return and the best likelihood for success in terms of meeting the needs of your organization. Target these documents in your strategy.
Technology enables the document process. Computers, printers, databases, networks, and all their associated systems and programs are the means by which documents are created, produced, and processed. This is an area that most of us have little trouble concentrating on (almost to a fault), but by performing a fresh and comprehensive survey of the technology used to produce your target documents you establish a technical grounding for your recommendations. Once you understand your current capabilities you are in a better position to make meaningful and intelligent choices about trends in technology that might improve your process.
In the end, people are the reason documents are produced - without cavemen there would be no cave drawings; without people there would be no documents. It seems reasonable, therefore, that the people who populate the document process in your organization are the best people to describe the process. Examine your "document constituency." Who are the people who create, use, and care about your documents? Recognize and incorporate their needs and objectives into the scope of your strategy. Authors, readers, producers and stakeholders all have specific, varied, and sometimes conflicting, interests. Include these interests when designing your document strategy.
Documents
- What are the documents used in your critical business functions?
- Which have the highest potential return on your effort?
- Which have the best probability for success?
Technology
- What are the technologies and processes that produce these documents?
- Are existing capabilities underutilized or overworked?
- What new and developing technology is available that might improve your process?
People
- Who are the people that create, process and care about how your documents perform?
- What are the needs and requirements of this document constituency?
- How well are their needs currently being met?
Quite simply, documents are created with technology to be used by people, so it makes sense that these three factors surface as guiding beacons for your document strategy. Mapping the course of your plans from these perspectives will help direct the latitude of your effort and ensure that your design process is comprehensive yet manageable. As a result, your directional decisions will not only be possible but practical, and more likely to lead you to a more profitable destination.
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