The new document methodology: a value creation tool for the enterprise

Summary form only given. For many years document management systems have been equated with imaging systems which converted paper into digital documents for ease of storage and retrieval. Implementing such systems was relatively. simple as specifications for the system came from a handful of document authors who provided information on retrieval keys, distribution access requirements, etc. More recently, vendors of document management systems have proposed much broader. ramifications of documents. They recognized that the value of a document emanated from the knowledge stored therein and, that,knowledge had value primarily to users of the document as contrasted with the creators thereof. Those entrepreneurs reinvented document management as a user focused endeavor which could add value by furnishing the right document at the right time in the right place for a specific user. A new view which, seems to be a complete new context for firm-wide system development, is a complete enterprise model based upon a document view of the organization. This view relies on documents as the correct level of resolution for modeling the enterprise. This approach is based upon five axioms: documents record enterprise knowledge; documents define the enterprise workflow;documents provide the facts to manage people; documents structure computing systems; and documents guide enterprise change