Definition of document management refers to the way by which the documents piled up in an organization are managed. If you refer to the definition of document management you would come to know that it also refers to the way by which the paper documents as well the electronic documents are managed.

Managing documents involves the storage of the documents in the electronic form with the help of computers, organizing the electronic documents into categories using folders or database, sharing of the documents by the users, and retrieval. Apart from the above tasks, there are other features that are to be implemented in a document management system such as access control, backup of data, archiving, and risk management.

Converting the existing documents into electronic form is done with the help of scanners and OCR software. Using a scanner you can convert the paper documents in to images and store them in the document management system. However you need OCR software to extract the text content found in the image of the paper document. This text thus extracted using the OCR software is mapped to that image so that the image is retrieved when a search is done. A search performed for a document searches the texts that are extracted using OCR software and maps it to the corresponding image of the paper document.

With the use of a document management system the documents are stored electronically in a centralized server. This enables the users to access the documents from any of the system in the network if proper permission is granted for that user and system. Hosting the documents in a web server enables the users to access it from anywhere in the world. Data backup is another aspect that has to be done regularly and automatically in a document management system.