Electronic Document Management Systems

Text, graphics, or spreadsheets generated by computer on any media or device for any electronic processing, including EDI. Electronically stored documents follow no format or readability requirements except when retrieve for human-use. It is simply information recorded in a manner that requires a computer or other electronic device to display, interpret, and process it. Originally, any computer data were considered as something internal - the final data output was always on paper. However, the development of computer networks has made it so that in most cases it is much more convenient to distribute electronic documents than printed ones. And the improvements in electronic display technologies mean that in most cases it is possible to view documents on screen instead of printing them. However, using electronic documents for final presentation instead of paper has created the problem of multiple incompatible file formats. Even plain text computer files are not free from this problem. Even more problems are connected with complex file formats of various word processors, spreadsheets and graphics software. To alleviate the problem, many software companies distribute free file viewers for their proprietary file formats. EDM (Electronic Document Management) is the management of different kinds of documents in an enterprise using computer programs and storage. An EDM system allows an enterprise and its users to create a document or capture a hard copy in electronic form, store, edit, print, process, and otherwise manage documents in image, video, and audio, as well as in text form. An EDM system usually provides a single view of multiple databases and may include scanners for document capture, printers for creating hard copy, storage devices such as redundant array of independent disks systems, and computer server and server programs for managing the databases that contains the documents. EDM may be needed in enterprises that capture and store a large number of documents such as invoices, sales orders, photographs, phone interviews, or video news clips. EDM may be combined with or integrated into other applications. It may be combined with a workflow management approach. Capture may include document imaging and optical character recognition (OCR). EDM also stands for enterprise document management, engineering data management and electrical discharge machine.