Alfresco

Enterprise Content Management System is a digitized content/information and document management process to support a company to fulfill and reach its goal of a business process. A company needs to manage its information/content effectively to increase its working productivity. Enterprise Content Management System capable of providing that process for a company. ECM, generally, strongly integrated with Document Management System (DMS).

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Below are several examples of content/information and document related challenge in business :

• The non-structured information or content related to the business process causes confusion. It also needs to be redone, wasting more time and effort.
• Difficulty to find content/information based on date, the user, or content type.
• It takes too much time to spread the information. In the worst case, the information even isn’t spread.
• The storage at the office is incapable to contain the amount of content/information in a physical form.

To solve these problems, a company needs an integrated system that provides functionality.

Enterprise Content Management System  has these features/functionalities :

• Document Management System (DMS): For handling a company’s or organization’s document,
• Collaboration: Collaboration in the ECM can be facilitated through an online portal/website.
• Workflow: Delegating a task to a certain user that is wanted and improving job efficiency.
• Web Content Management: To manage, create, and deliver the content easily.
• Record Management: Simplify the storing and searching for the content/information, which is considered important for a company or organization.

Enterprise Content Management System increases the information flow within the company that will improve productivity. ECM helps an organization to manage information and content into a more structured form. The benefits of using Enterprise Content Management System:

• A structured content knowledge storing system,
• Increase the speed and accuracy of the information distribution,
• Improving productivity in office activities,
• Minimizing the information/content lost,
• Suitable for collaboration purpose,
• Accessible from anywhere and anytime you need it,
• Providing better control over the certain information/content access for a specific user, so the risk of information/content leak will be decreased,
• Easy to trace the audit result of an information/content,
• Simplify and speed up specific information/content searching processes.

One of the tools/systems of Enterprise Content Management System is Alfresco. Alfresco is the open-source licensed Enterprise Content Management System. Alfresco is equipped with a complete set of features that give solutions for the company’s information/content-related problems.

The Implementation of ECM System Features within Alfresco:

• Advanced Search Functionality. Enterprise Content Management System can search based on the keyword or the essence of the information/content.
• Easy to Use. Users won’t have problems using Alfresco, because it has a similar design to explorer (File Explorer on Windows and Finder on Mac), which they are using every day. Moreover, users can easily upload a document by using the drag and drop method.
• Workflow Engine. Creating a task for a specific user for revision, review, approval, and disapproval purpose on information/content or document effectively.
• Google Docs, MS Office, LDAP, and Active Directory Integrated.
• Versioning. Adding the information/content or document version automatically and save the history log of that document version.
• Role, Permission & Security Settings. We can add a specific permission setting on the information/content for specific users, using Enterprise Content Management System.
• Collaboration Site. You can share documents, calendars, discussion, blogs, links, and datalist. With the Collaboration Site feature, you can easily spread the information faster and with better accuracy.
• Expired Document Reminder. A notification will appear if it detects an expired information/content. Notification will be displayed through the main page dashboard of Alfresco or via email.
• Integrate with other applications using CMIS Web Services.
• Comment/Discussion Feature. Users can participate to develop an information or business process by using the comment/discussion feature.

Softbless has helped many company to manage their content to well organized, efficient by using Alfresco as ECM

Softbless is ECM implementation expert in Indonesia. Feel free to ask us and get the best deal about ECM Solution.

Document Management System (DMS) is a system that used to manage the life cycle of documents in each phase. DMS handles documents electronically, from the document is still in draft form, reviewed, published, stored, and eventually deleted/destroyed. Document Management System is a component of Enterprise Content Management System (ECM).

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Some concepts/functionalities of Document Management System :

• Metadata. Metadata is information/propety owned by each document. For example, if we have a document type "Receipt", then the metadata of the receipts are: amount, payment date, receiver
• Workflow: Collaboration in DMS facilitated through the workflow. Collaboration can be a form of assignment or approval. Assignment workflow : an employer requires his/her to revise the report. Approval example : staff requests leave to be approved by superiors
• Versioning: every update of a document can be tracked. DMS save the history of each version of the document
• Security: security feature is a mandatory feature of a DMS. Users need to be able to restrict other users' access rights to documents
• Searching: If company already has thousands of documents, then this feature will greatly facilitate user searching to obtain the necessary documents.

Some problems :

• The difficulty of searching for a document, especially searching based on some parameters. For example: looking for documents created within a certain period and by users, with certain descriptions, document numbers and specific projects
• Difficulty determining documents with the latest version because every employee has a different document naming format, and we often do not know who holds the latest version.
• To get a physical document, requires considerable effort, starting from finding out the position of the physical document, retrieve it, and deliver it to people who need it.
• The amount of office space and file cabinets, is not proportional to the high growth of documents. It would be better if the office space is used for something else, rather than just being a document storage.
• High risk of losing documents. Physical documents are vulnerable to damage, especially if a natural disaster results in companies losing documents as an important asset
• Security, permissions for each document are very specific. We need system to handle the security.

Above problems can be handled if the company has a Document Management System (DMS). Huge number of documents owned by company/organization needs to be handled by an integrated system.

The advantages of Document Management System :

• Increased productivity - increased productivity can occur in searching for documents and document broadcast
• Cost efficiency - using the Document Management System, companies can reduce the paper purchase
• Robust Security - electronic documents can be stored in a centralized
• Accelerate access to the required documents, each user can directly open the DMS application and access the required documents according to the permissions they have
• Speed up document distribution and sharing
• Access the required documents from anywhere, as long as there is an intranet or internet connection connected to the DMS server
• Set permissions and security. We can specify which group or user who has access to view, read, update/edit, and delete a folder/document.
• Tracing Audit Trail history of document changes
• Make searching to be easier. If we forget where the document storage folder is, we can rely on the search engine owned by DMS.
• Manage working document easily
• Increase collaboration speed in company

Alfresco is Document Management System application that could fulfill our company requirements.

• Centralized Document Storage: store company documents centrally.
• User friendly. Alfresco's user experience is made to resemble File Explorer (Finder on Mac, Windows Explorer in Windows) that is used daily, so users will be familiar with the Alfresco interface.
• Online Preview for documents and media files.
• Audit Trail Log. Track user activity from login, logout, view, add, edit and delete documents
• Versioning: each version of the document can be tracked automatically by Alfresco. There is no need to manually name a new version of a document.
• Link (relation) between documents. With this feature, users can trace the relationship between documents.
• Drag and Drop Upload
• Integrate it with your scanner
• Digital Signature
• Multiple file uploads. Upload multiple documents at one time into Alfresco.
• Role, Permission & Security Settings
• The Comment feature allows users to discuss the document
• Workflow feature for document revision, review and approval, we can also create custom workflows for specific business processes in our company
• Check in & Check Out to lock documents while editing.
• Search features. With Alfesco we can do searches based on certain parameters (metadata), or full text searching (searching the contents of documents)
• Download with watermark stamp.
• Integration with LDAP, Active Directory, Ms Office and Google Docs
• Native Mobile Application, available for iOS and Android platforms for default fatures.
• Custom Metadata or Document properties. Metadata. Metadata is information / information held by each document. For example if we have a document of type Receipt, then the metadata of the receipt is: the amount of payment, date of payment, statement, recipient
• Integration with other applications through the CMIS web service.
• Taxonomy : Category & tagging
• Expired Document reminder for documents that have a validity period.
• Reminder will be sent as an e-mail or can be viewed as a dashlet.
• Automation (Rules) for triggering certain actions based on several selected criteria.

Alfresco is a Document Management System application. Alfresco is open source licensed, and has become the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management category, and has been implemented in more than 5000 organizations.

Softbless has experience and competence in business processes, change management, implementation and development of document management systems in Indonesia, using Alfresco.