There are two types of people: digital hoarders and digital neat freaks. I fall into the first category, with ambiguous file names and an organizational structure that’s iffy at best. My husband is the latter, creating art out of his foldering system while he begs me to sort out my desktop. I tell him I prefer living life on the edge.
Luckily, one of the benefits of using an enterprise content management technology such as OnBase is the ability to more easily keep content under control across departments and processes, so even people like me can find what they need quickly. Even so, there’s a few best practices for making your OnBase solution as easily navigable as possible.
There are three main approaches to categorizing your content:
1. Grouped according to departments or business units (ex. HR, AP, Legal, Plant #1)
2. Grouped based on processes (ex. Contracts, Projects, Agendas)
3. Hybrid approach that embraces both 1 and 2 (ex. Payroll, accessed by HR and AP)
There’s a number of things that should be considered when deciding which of these options will best fit the needs of your organization. First is the workflow of the documents. If they mostly stay within a certain department or user group, sorting them accordingly might be easier. Conversely, if those documents float between departments regularly but are part of a single process, a process-based organization would be better. Also consider your records management, as you may be able to strategically group your documents to more easily manage your retention schedule and other events.
Another best practice when creating a taxonomy structure is to keep no more than 15-20 document types per group in order to keep your folders manageable and user-friendly. If there’s too many, the system might become intimidating and confusing, undoing some of the hard work you’ve put in. In case you need to present groups of documents outside of your enterprise taxonomy, (for example, to contractors or vendors), administrators can create a custom query to display needed information, regardless of the taxonomical structure.
There are tons of ways OnBase can help to make sense of the massive amounts of information enterprises keep, and if you need help, contact us! Databank is a premier OnBase reseller full of ECM experts who’d be happy to answer your questions.
Also, feel free to download our case study below to find out how the Kansas City Board of Public Utilities implemented efficient invoice processing with OnBase.
