• File Management - A document management system can manage any kind of file, including word processing files, spreadsheet files, and printed documents that are digitally scanned into an electronic format. This makes them ideal for managing documents that are typically stored and shared among many users, including invoices, contracts, and insurances claims. A document management system stores the files in one central repository that can be accessed by many users within an organization, allowing them to reference those files and reuse them in their entirety as necessary.
  
  
• Lifecycle Management – This is where the “smart” filing system comes into play. Document management systems are designed to track documents from their creation all the way through the editorial process (inception > creation > review > storage > dissemination > destruction). Automatically tracking document lifecycles makes it much easier to manage many document workflows at once. At any given time, an editor can check the status of a document to see where and when it was last updated and who has reviewed it.
  
  
• Security – Along with lifecycle management, a document management system can keep your documents secure. Using the system, only registered users can update the documents, ensuring that unauthorized users do not have access to edit those documents. In addition, access levels can be set for registered users, allowing them to access only certain groups of documents. This ensures that only users assigned with the appropriate security level will be able to access the documents.

• Single-Sourcing – The best content management systems on the market are the systems that single source; that is, they save content once in a centralized repository and make it available for reuse and repurposing across multiple documents, regardless of the media format. For example, imagine that your organization publishes a large medical dictionary. Using a content management system, you could save each definition individually one time, and then reuse it to construct the print, web, and CD-ROM versions of the dictionary. But imagine that in this year’s edition of the dictionary, you have to update one definition. Thanks to your system’s single-source functionality, that change only needs to be made once, and the print, web, and CD-ROM versions of the dictionary will all be updated automatically. This protects the integrity of your content because all the changes are performed uniformly – ensuring content accuracy.
  
  
• Lifecycle Management – A content management system can manage editorial workflow in even more detail than a document management system, because it tracks the lifecycle of each individual piece of content, rather than whole documents. This is especially useful for writers and editors who manage large amounts of documentation. It allows users to track exactly what changes are made to a specific piece of content, when they were made, and who made them.
  
  
• Security – Like a document management system, a content management system also protects your materials, only on a content level, rather than a document level. Most content management systems control exactly what content a registered user is authorized to access, which helps to protect against user error and ensures that users can access only the content that they are authorized to work on. Some systems also protect content from accidental deletion. When you delete a piece of content, rather than throwing the content away, the system holds it in a “recycling bin” area and marks it as retired. That way, if you ever need to access that information again for any reason, you can still restore it without recreating it.
  
  
• Creation of New Materials – One of the things that content management systems do that document management systems do not do, is facilitate the creation of new materials. Thanks to single-sourcing and the ability to change granularity on the fly, users can quickly and easily extract content for a new project. Going back to the medical dictionary example, suppose that after you created this year’s edition of the dictionary you decided to create a special Web site of information relating to cancer treatment. Instead of writing content for this Web site from scratch, a content management system would allow you to repurpose the information that you already used in the medical dictionary. You could go back into the system, select the relevant cancer information, and reuse it to create the Web site. Organizations that invest in a content management system often see an ROI surprisingly quickly due to how much money and time they save on the production of new materials.

What is right for you?
You want a document management system if…

• You want to track invoices, contracts, insurance claims, or other similar documents. Content management systems can also do this, but document management systems are specifically designed for it. These systems are also good for keeping records to comply with government regulations, such as HIPAA.
  
  
• You want to organize and share documents with many users in your organization, while controlling the security of those documents.
  
  
• You are only concerned with managing documents as a whole, and do not regularly reuse content within the documents over and over again.

You want a content management system if…

• You have a lot of duplicate content to manage. A single-sourcing content management system will allow you to more efficiently organize and store chunks of content, and will make it easy for you to quickly access and update that content as needed.
  
  
• You regularly create new materials that reuse and repurpose chunks of content from existing documents. A content management system allows users to quickly create new documents by reusing chunks of content that were previously written for other documents, saving editors and writers hours of time.
  
  
• You want to improve the accuracy of your content. Because content is stored only one time, the content management system ensures that all instances of content usage are updated and consistent.