Document management is the computerized management of electronic as well as paper-based documents. EDMS, or Document Management Systems (DMS) refers to a software package which captures, stores, retrieves and manage unstructured information objects -

files, text, spreadsheets, images, sound clips, multi-media, and compound documents

IT gives non-IT end-users rich storage and retrieval of all of these file types without anyone in the end-user's organization having to do any programming. Vendors solutions may involve a combination of involvement to configure and install the package, train the users, provide help-desk support, and keep the servers running smoothly. In this sense, DMSs are more like word processing and email packages. DMSs range widely in richness and scalability. Fortune 500 enterprises are recognizing that EDMS have an important role to play in IT architectures.

Document management systems generally include the following components:

• An optical scanner and OCR system to convert documents into an electronic form

• A database system to organized stored documents

• A search mechanism to quickly find specific documents

Document management systems are becoming more important as it becomes increasingly obvious that the paperless office is an ideal that may never be achieved. Instead, document management systems strive to create systems that can handle paper and electronic documents together.