In the world of Document Management Systems (DMS), Microsoft SharePoint and its counterparts dominate, facilitating secure storage and collaborative revision workflows. However, these systems often neglect the crucial aspect of document distribution, leading to challenges in accessibility and professional presentation for end-users. Integrating SharePoint's revision capabilities with tools like the Readin Document Portal mitigate those shortcomings.
Common DMS limitations
In the DMS market, Microsoft SharePoint stands out as one of the key players, offering secure document storage, sharing, collaboration, and revision-workflow capabilities. Apart from SharePoint, various DMS offer similar functionalities.
In a typical document-revision scenario, the most common roles involved are document owners, reviewers, authors and editors. SharePoint and its competitors offer good tools to manage the revision process with its native collaboration and its ability to further implement automation and workflow routines.
Companies do often solely focus on the revision process itself, forgetting the equally important task, which is to ensure that the documents are published and made available for readers in a professional manner.
We often see that readers are forced to read revised documents where they are stored in SharePoint. It may be difficult to locate correct documents or versions, documents are likely to be read in their native MS Word format or as static PDF files, and controlling the access for external readers is cumbersome.
How to overcome the limitations
As we see it, document management consists of two main parts:
- Document handling/revision, and
- Document distribution.
Document handling is where you write, revise, and archive your documents. Document distribution is where you publish and provide access to read documents. Those two parts are equally important. As discussed above, the DMS focuses mainly on the first part but most often lacks support for the second part.
By combining Sharepoint and the Readin Document Portal you ensure optimal document management with proper document handling as well as professional publishing and distribution. An ideal solution for both document stakeholders and consumers.
Our solution – The “Docstream Method”
The Docstream Method includes the following steps to optimize document handling in SharePoint and integrate with the Readin document portal:
- Assessment: Analyze existing documentation, identify user needs, and evaluate SharePoint's optimization for document management.
- Document Structure: Organize documents in SharePoint with a structured folder system and utilize metadata for enhanced control.
- Access Control: Limit access to source documents to minimize exposure.
- Versioning: Implement a robust revision system with reminders for timely updates.
- Workflow: Define roles for document updates and reviews.
- Distribution Plan: Tailor document delivery using document portals to cater to diverse reader groups.
- AI Integration: Leverage AI for tasks like summarization, comparison, and translation pre-publication.
- Enhancements: Utilize document portal features for improved security, accessibility, and efficiency, including site-based access control, read confirmations, update notifications, and responsive reading.
- Publication: Simplify document publishing to the document portal with a single click.
Achieve optimal document management by combining SharePoint's capabilities with Readin for document publishing and distribution, ensuring a comprehensive and user-centric approach to document handling and accessibility. It's the ultimate solution. We call it the “Docstream Method”.