Document Management vs. Records Management: Which One Do You Need?

By Joan Honig, DocuWare: So, you’re ready to digitize your business records to maintain compliance with government and industry regulations. Should you be looking for a document management system or software that is exclusively for records management? Actually, document management enables you to digitize and archive both documents and records. Let’s explore the differences between the two to clarify the situation.

Records are evidence of a transaction, decision or commitment that an individual, company, nonprofit or government agency makes. A document becomes a record after a business process is completed. Records are stored in final form in case they’re needed as confirmation that an action took place rather than because they’re in active use. They cannot be edited or revised.

Proving compliance, limiting access to authorized personnel, ensuring security and enforcing retention schedules are among the main goals of records management. Easy storage and retrieval, time and cost savings gained through cloud office automation and data security are the primary objectives of document management.

The path from document to record