The Life Cycle of a Document: Manage

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Like the individuals that fuel your business, documents are integral to performance.  Documents contain imperative information and should be thought of as active resources.  Instead of merely considering where you are going to put a document, begin to assess what you are going to do with the document.  Upon asking, how am I going to deal with this information?-you enter into the manage phase of a document's life cycle.

As indicated in the preceding article that focuses on Capture, there are four phases in the life cycle of a document:

1. Capture

2. Manage

3. Archive

4. Retrieval

Subsequent to capturing and converting the information from a document into a useful format, it is time to consider the relationship that this information is going to have with your system.  For instance: will you be changing or updating the details of the original document; such as, making an addendum to a contract?

Depending on the type of document and/or information that you are handling, there are different forms of management strategies to maximize their value.

The following are a few of the most common methods of management: redaction; revision control; notations; workflow processing; and hyper-linking.

Redaction: Redaction is the process of blocking information that should be kept confidential.  For example: if you are scanning a set of student records, but want to ensure the privacy of their social security numbers, then you could manage this process with redaction.

Revision Control: Revision Control works like the ‘track changes' application in Microsoft Word and allows your system to follow a progression of modifications; distinguishing the updated from the original scan.

Notations: Adding a notation to a document is like placing a ‘post-it' note on a piece of paper.  The notation allows you to add information to a document without altering the properties of the document itself.  Notations are helpful if you are tracking package shipments.  For instance, if you have two items that are part of the same order, but will be shipped separately, then it would be helpful to note the respective days for each shipment.

Workflow Processing: Workflow Processing can be illustrated by following the path of an invoice.  First, the invoice is scanned into the system.  Next, it is routed to the specified department.  Then, the department either verifies that the payment has been received, or, that it was a delinquent invoice.  Collectively, each stage accounts for the invoice's workflow.

Hyper-linking: Hyper-linking saves the time that you would spend searching for information and retrieves this information by link-ing directly to the proper document.  Hyper-linking has been especially advantageous for the healthcare industry, in that it allows for immediacy in gathering information about a patient and their medical history.  For instance: prior to surgery, an orthopedic would like to look over the medical records regarding her patient's broken ankle.  If the X-Ray of the broken ankle was scanned into the system and there was a hyper-link integrated into the image of the ankle, then the surgeon could click on this image and retrieve the correlating records.

While there are multiple strategies to resourcefully manage your documents, please note that the methods available are specific to your software type.  As such, it is even more important to consider the phases of a document's life cycle, because your understanding of this relationship will inform the type of software you choose to employ. Additionally, when the information that is vital for the fluidity of your business is systematically organized, you are able to conserve and channel your energies more effectively.

Dana M. Dombrowski