Many reports have been written about document management by a number of known research institutes. Document Management is actually a name that is used for many different document solutions. Other names used are DMS (Document Management Systems), DIS (Document Information Systems, IDM (Integrated Document Management), EDM (Electronic Document Management), ECM (Enterprise Content Management), Content Management and Knowledge Management.
Document Management defined
There are many definitions of document management and its variations but they all have a common denominator: document management includes every action taken with a document within your company, that has to do with the creation, distribution and deletion of documents.
Statistics
Already in 1997, Gartner forecast that the amount of time wasted on document management-related tasks would continue to rise. At that time, Gartner estimated that knowledge workers were spending about eight hours a week (or 20 percent of their work time) on document-related tasks. In 2001 Gartner estimated that this time ranged from 20%-30% and that it will increase to 30% to 40% by 2003.
Just calculate the cost of this with the salary of your knowledge workers and you will see the amount of money spend on handling your information.
Next to these numbers, Gartner investigated other costs which are related to handling documents. These numbers are related to manual document processing.
- The average document is copied, either physically or electronically, nine to 11 times, at a cost of about $23.
· Documents cost about $25. to file
· Retrieving a misfiled document costs about $153
Further, in 1997 Gartner concluded in its report on Electronic Document Management that over 60% of all companies still process, store and retrieve documents manually. Other numbers included:
- 80%-95% of enterprise information is located within paper and electronic documents
· 25% of enterprise documents are misplaced and will never be located
· 30% of Gartner Group clients store more than 50% of their documents on local hard drives or floppy disks
· Document mismanagement claims:
o 40%-60% of office workers' time
o 20%-45% of labor costs
o 12%-15% of corporate revenue
|
Savings on time to create and modify documents |
50%-90% |
|
Increase in productivity |
20%-30% |
|
Savings on document handling |
20%-40% |
|
Improvements in cycle time |
20%-40% |
|
Savings on desk space |
30%-50% |
|
Improvement in client satisfaction |
30%-50% |
