These days, document archiving systems are computer applications. These applications enable extensive and flexible querying of the document archive, which have become more than just historical records. Decision support information of current value can be generated through the querying of the document archives.

Document archives isolate the data from the burden of serving transaction processing routines, and are optimized for querying and analysis. In the age of paper documents, document archives were primarily historical records, which company historians referred to.

To be really helpful, the document archiving systems must attend to certain issues. We look at some important issues in the sections below.

Develop the Document Archiving Systems with Primary Focus on User Requirements

While technical considerations such as optimizing the document archive for querying and analysis are important, it is user requirements that should be given primacy.

We mentioned earlier about providing decision support information. The system designer has to work closely with the decision makers to identify what kind of decision support information would help them. With this knowledge, the designer can provide report generation tools that generate the required information with minimal effort on the part of the user.

With the extensive querying and analysis facilities, it might of course be possible for the user to generate the needed reports. However, readymade facilities for typical reports would minimize the time users have to spend on this task, and would speed up business decisions making.

Document archiving systems are no more just for the use of historians, and this perspective requires that the archive designer must work more like a computer applications developer. There should be extensive interactions with users to identify their needs and how these needs can be helped through well-designed reports.

Attend to the Security Requirements

A system of permissions and passwords are typically used to ensure that only authorized persons have access to documents. The system ensures that users are able to view those documents that they need for their work, and only those documents. In today’s scenario of SCM and CRM, even persons outside the organization might have access to the documents.

The security system needs to be even more robust in such a context to make sure that the outsiders are not above to view any sensitive documents, or any documents that do not concern them.

The system designer has to work closely with the users to understand the requirements and incorporate necessary security features.

Future-proof Design

While it might not be possible to foresee all future technological developments, the document archiving system can be made future-proof to some extent by adopting an elaborately modular design. The simple modules can then be modified to take advantage of some better technology or other.

Such a modular design also facilitates maintenance to meet changing requirements.

Avoid Treating the Archives as Just Archives

The key point is that the document archives should no more be treated as just archives. In the paper document era, document archives might have been pure archives, of interest only to company historians. The situation has changed dramatically since them.