Challenges:
Construction industry is not only capital intensive industry it is also document intensive. Managing various business documents (engineering drawings, contract documents, legal documents, pre-qualification documents, correspondence, etc.) and standard documents (taxation, legal, power-of-attorney, bank guarantees, court cases, employee documents, etc.) is a Herculean task.
Common challenges in this regard are as follows:
Solution and benefits:
Document management system (DMS) enables to store the documents electronically in a systematic standardized manner across the organization. The key features of DMS are as follows.
Document storage:
- The files can be stored in standardized systematic manner across the organization. The documents may be in the form of scanned copies of paper documents, Word/ Excel/ PowerPoint/ AutoCAD files or any other digital format. These files will be stored in a central location (i.e. data-center computer storage).
Associating workflow with documents:
- The progress of a document from one associate/ department to another can be defined in the system. At any point of time the status of the document will be available on the system.
Easy access and retrieval:
- The documents are stored with a standard nomenclature with a well maintained index. Also along with the documents related keywords are stored. The retrieval of documents becomes easier and faster because of these systems as compared to physical documentation. The documents can be accessed from any location because of their digital nature.
Security of documents:
- The access to various documents can be controlled by providing different kinds of authorizations to the users or documents.