Document management briefly describes how documents and information assets should be created, modified and, in connection with it, managed, archived and, above all, communicated to the persons concerned when they are updated.
The more important the information that the document or information contains, the more important it is that they are managed in a good way.
Examples of documents and information assets where careful management is particularly important are design drawings, recipes, reference and code libraries.
The purpose of document management is to ensure that the right information is conveyed to the right person so that they can perform their work correctly and find the right information as quickly as possible
Rules governing the management of document and information assets reduce the likelihood of outdated information being used in the business and the risk of important things being carried out incorrectly.
Below is an excerpt from our standard document management template that briefly describes how document management can be done within an enterprise where traditional tools such as SharePoint and Microsoft Teams are used − but there's nothing stopping us from fully using digital checklists in AmpliFlow, Confluence or even folders in Google Drive or on a file server.
It might shock you, but it doesn't actually have to be that complicated - even if you're going to certify to ISO 9001.
Published and approved by the company information that should be available to everyone and that is valid and valid shall be published on the intranet.
Materials that you can find on the intranet has interpretation priority over any other material you may find within the company.
When we publish a page on the intranet, we distinguish between the main information and the supporting information.
The main information should be as short and concise as possible to cover 80% of what the average visitor might need.
The remaining 20% and other reference/supporting information is published as supporting information by being posted in the library displayed at the bottom below the main page or as links.
The purpose of the main information is to be an entrance gate to everything that concerns the subject area.
Supporting information is material that may be needed to fully work with the main information but is not used by all visitors to the area. For example, specific legal texts, acquired knowledge in the field, forms or other related materials.
When a supporting material is ready for publication, the PDF version of the document is copied over to the appropriate folder under a main page on the intranet and then published.
Documents that are subject to audit, such as our QMS documentation are sent for approval when published on the intranet, the system automatically manages the flow for approval based on the document type, which means that the document must be marked with “type” before it can be sent for approval, otherwise the system says no.
In the most common Office 365 tools, such as Word, Excel, and Power Point, we've linked all of our existing templates.
To create a new document, follow these steps:
Ex. To produce a quote in Word to a customer, click through the templates located under the “Business Development” folder and select the quotation template for the product/service you are going to quote. Make sure to save the quote in the Teams group “Sales” in the “Quotations” channel folder. Create a new folder for the customer if one does not already exist, name the folder with the customer's full name.
New template is created from the general template in the respective Office 365 tool, see the guidance under the heading “Templates to use” to find the generic template.
Take an existing template and save it under the heading Files in Team “Development” and channel “New Templates” under “Naming Documents”.
Make suggestions for changes to the template and ping KMA coordinators to the template via Teams.
The basic principle is that a user should be able to understand how to handle information at the company by reading about document management on the intranet.
Examples of things that you need to describe:
Depending on the company, other specific parts may of course be needed such as
Creating a systematics around document management is a key requirement within, for example, ISO 9001 and actually has relatively little to do with technology, the most important thing from a standard perspective is that the systematics works. But in order to have an effect, of course, it is important to use technology as efficiently as possible.
If you are interested in learning more about how you can build a certifiable management system that uses smart IT tools in the most efficient way, get in touch via the green box below today.
