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DocumentMS

Resources

Document management resources

Everything here is written to be used during a real project rather than downloaded and forgotten: implementation guides, retention schedule templates, definitions of the terms vendors use loosely, a cost model you can run against your own numbers, and a requirements checklist for an RFP.

What is here

Written to be used during a real project rather than downloaded and forgotten.
  • Guides

    Long-form guides to selecting, implementing and operating a document management system. Each covers one decision end to end.

  • Blog

    Practice notes on the parts of document management that decide whether a system works: retention triggers, OCR accuracy, migration failure modes.

  • Glossary

    Definitions of the terms that appear in RFPs and vendor documentation, with what each one means when you have to configure or audit it.

  • Templates

    Editable starting points: retention schedules, document control procedures, naming conventions and an acknowledgement register.

  • ROI calculator

    Model what your current document process costs, from your own numbers, with the arithmetic printed so finance can argue with it.

  • DMS RFP checklist

    Requirements to evaluate any document system against — including what an evasive answer to each question usually means.

Where to start, depending on where you are

If you are building the case internally, start with the ROI calculator to establish what the current process costs, then the guide to what a document management system is — the second is what you will need when someone asks why a shared drive is not enough.

If you are evaluating vendors, start with the RFP checklist and the comparison pages. The checklist is deliberately written to be used against us as well as everyone else, and several of its questions are ones we would rather not be asked.

If you have already bought something and are implementing it, the retention policy guide and the document control guide are the two that save the most time — mostly by preventing decisions that are painful to reverse later.

How this content is written

Stated so you can hold us to it.
  • Every article says when it was last reviewed, because guidance on regulatory topics goes stale and an undated page hides that
  • Figures we cannot verify are marked as unverified rather than dressed up as research
  • Where a guide reaches a conclusion that is inconvenient for us — that SharePoint is sufficient for your case, that self-hosting is cheaper at your scale — it says so
  • Glossary terms are auto-linked on first mention only, capped at one link per term per page, because eleven links to the same definition helps nobody
  • Nothing is gated. There is no form between you and a template
Tell us what you were looking for and could not find. A gap in this content is useful to know about.