Active Versus Passive Document Management
Posted by Melanie Aizer on Wed, Mar 16, 2011 @ 11:23 AM
Apples and Oranges ...
In order to properly compare “apples to apples”, it is important to understand the different approaches that are used to handle document-based business processes.
When it comes to document management, there are two main approaches:
a) Passive Document Management: This is the traditional approach to handling document. The passive approach ASSUMES the existence of paper documents. It focuses on how to handle paperwork after it has been generated and processed, and generally deals with:
- Ingesting completed documents (scanning/imaging, e-faxing, etc.)
- Storing digital images of documents (archiving)
- Facilitating forms of search/retrieval for documents, and
- Capabilities around document retention and purging
The passive approach is almost always decoupled from the underlying business processes embedded in the documents. It is not meant to improve the business process or to eliminate paper, but simply to facilitate better access to the paperwork once it has been completed.
Crucially, passive document management does not provide any benefits during the business transaction itself – documents are still generated on paper, they are delivered to recipients in a variety of methods (email, fax, mail, courier, print), are completed and signed in paper form, and only then do they get fed into the passive document management system.
b) Active Document Management: Agreement Express by Recombo is built around the active approach to document management. We look at the entire document/paperwork lifecycle – from document creation through completion and archiving.
The active approach seeks to minimize the negative impact of paperwork on the organization by addressing the underlying business processes where paper is present. The three pillars of the active approach are:
- Document creation: How to facilitate the creation of quality documents while minimizing manual data entry, enforcing business rules and validation rules, and reducing the complexity of putting together all the documents required for a specific transaction;
- Document completion: How to manage the workflow involved in completing the paperwork. This includes items such as workflow routing, electronic signatures, capturing information from other sources/recipients, controlling access to document fields, validating new data, and applying required business rules;
- Document processing: Once documents have been completed, how to extract required information from the document and how to deliver it to other systems. The emphasis is on automation and elimination of manual data entry. Once documents have been processed they are then archived and stored, and are fully searchable.
The active approach to document management used by Agreement Express operates at the DATA level of the document.
This significant technological breakthrough is Agreement Express' powerful and flexible platform that enables users to control not just whole contracts, but more importantly to control the data within the contracts.
Documents and their underlying content are searchable, and can feed information to other systems via integration points. This ability to manage at the data level is what enables powerful, integrated workflow automation — virtually eliminating all previous manual-based processes.
It is this unique feature that sets Agreement Express apart from image based passive solutions.
