Top 3 tips to use social tech to manage documents

Filing cabinets are so 2010, and no one is still using accordion files. But document management is still a challenge for many executives. According to one expert social technology can be a big asset in the management of business documents. Here's how.

by Kristina Knight

First, by promoting collaboration between departments.

"Legacy document management systems have typically have served as dumping grounds where people indiscriminately upload documents to store them," said Tim Eisenhauer, President, Axero. "Collaboration is the antidote. Social features, such as commenting, likes, ratings, and internal sharing options, encourage employees to work together and makes it easier for them to do so. They can easily ask questions, interact with each other, and participate in discussions relating to the documents. This increases their engagement and investment in those documents, and also adds in accountability, since multiple people are collectively responsible for improving and maintaining them."

Second, by building value through discussion.

"Social features create a catalyst for discussion and debate. Discussion and debate serve to clarify, improve, revise, classify, and categorize the information inside these documents. The more discussion and debate surrounding the content, the better the content becomes. The wheat gets separated from the chaff, the ideas are refined, and the end product allows all the ideas, knowledge, and creativity that went into creating the documents to shine. Every document provides more value," said Eisenhauer. "Even more, the discussions surrounding the documents will often contain valuable chunks of information you can use to see how your employees work, the types of challenges they experience, and how they overcome these challenges individually and as a team."

Third, by building a context of knowledge.

"Context is key for giving documents meaning. This is especially true when there are thousands (or more) of documents floating around in your system. Context gives those documents relevance and maintains it over time," said Eisenhauer. "So how do you create context? By combining social features with document management. Whoever accesses those documents can look at the history, which can help them understand:

• how they were created
• why they were created
• who contributed to them, and
• what their thoughts were.

They can see the genesis, history and evolution. Nothing gets lost in translation."

Tags: Axero, document management, social marketing, social marketing tips, social network tips