Many organizations continue to rely on paper-based processes. According to a survey of global workers and IT professionals conducted by IDC, document challenges and inefficiencies account for a21.3% productivity loss. This steep drop in productivity is largely due to difficulty locating documents and finding information. In fact, employees take an average of 18 minutes to locate each document and an estimated50% of their time searching for information. Remedying these inefficiencies requires implementing formal document management procedures and automating the process through adocument workflow management system. With this system, organizations can manage the flow of documents through their lifecycles. The ability to manage the entire lifecycle is a key distinction betweendocument vs records management. Document metadata operates behind the scenes to make it all possible.
What is Document Metadata?
Document metadata is non-visual information in a document that provides additional context. For example, the author of the document and the date that it was created. It can also help to classify documents. For instance, users can specify whether a document is for internal use only or publicly available.Adding metadata to a document helps organizations to simplify document search and retrieval. This is because search tools can sort through document metadata much quicker than scanning through a document’s full text. Moreover, document metadata makes it easy to sort, route, store, and control documents.
