Digital document management is no longer an option. With an ever-changing business landscape, one that is now in continual rapid shift, digitizing your paper processes is now crucial to developing and sustaining an effective organization.
A document management specialist assists in developing an enterprise-wide document management implementation, ensuring that best practices are followed, and guaranteeing that documents are efficiently located, stored, secured, shared, archived, and destroyed.
Any organization, regardless of size or industry, must have a document management system to handle digital documents from collection to disposal. As a result, a career as a document management specialist should be rewarding and will continue to grow in the future.
Most document management specialists begin their careers with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, data science, information technology, or a related subject. However, expertise and exposure to diverse document management challenges, as well as the ability to overcome them, are essential factors to becoming skillful.
In this article, we will define document management specialist and assist you in becoming the most knowledgeable in your field.
What is a Document Management Specialist?
Document management specialist assists in developing enterprise-wide strategy, overseeing the implementation of best practices, and ensuring that the system is designed and functioning as per the business needs to facilitate efficient, compliance, and secure access to documents.
A document management specialist is a type of administrative professional that is in charge of managing organizational documents. The goal is to classify and archive documents, store and retrieve them, and ensure that all team members have access to vital information when needed.
They typically support the document and information manager in analyzing, recommending, mapping, and implementing work processes and data flows related to information and documents.
The document management specialist realizes the feeling of urgency involved in providing documents within strict time limitations while maintaining accuracy and completeness of the information and has skill in formatting, compliance, storing, and organizing technical documents.
Effective implementation of Document Management System helps to ensure clear transparency in your business activities or business defined workflows
What Does a Document Management Specialist Do?
Depending on their size, corporations must appoint a team to handle their documents throughout their entire lifecycle. Proper document management is essential for properly executing corporate activities. In this competitive world, proper and efficient data management is a significant source of success.
Unfortunately, some businesses still regard the document management specialist as a clerk rather than a valuable resource. However, it is certain that these firms will face several challenges in the near future if they do not recognize the importance of document management and thereby unleashing their full potential.
The following are the primary activities that every document management specialist should perform:
- Support fundamental elements such as document monitoring, accountability, control, and quality.
- Identify and classify all sorts of documents circulating through the company, as well as their different lifecycles.
- Draft, develop, and implement a document management and control policy for document archiving & filing procedures, document retention, and document shredding.
- Develop, design, and execute the procedure and process for the document management system.
- Implement new quality procedures to ensure each document meets contractual requirements. Such as document approval processes and document distribution matrix.
- Archive, store, and manage all critical and confidential documents for the business in a single repository or document management system, assuring their safety and security, and retrieving them when needed by senior management.
- Coordinate, track, and process of document delivery.
- Ensure that all stakeholders follow the document management procedure that has been adopted.
- Collaborate with subcontractors and clients to ensure that all project documentation are received on time in order to satisfy milestone obligations.
- Develop document workflow procedures.
- Train and educate other colleagues.
How To Become a Document Management Specialist
To become a document management specialist, you need to:
1- Earn A Degree
The majority of document management professionals have a degree in computer science, information technology, data science, management information systems, or business administration. Earning a computer-related degree can help you grasp how systems, databases, and computer programs function and how to use them to their best capacity.
Even while a degree is no longer necessary in larger companies to gain experience in computer-related disciplines, it may bring a lot of value to your professional career.
2- Boost Your Experience
Earning a degree without putting it into practice is insufficient. Perfect practice makes perfect. Get entry-level work at a company that relies heavily on documents, interact with people, learn their document frustrations, and try to come up with a solution that will help them reach their goals more quickly. This will offer you a sense of numerous real-world challenges while combining academic knowledge with practice.
If you are part of a larger team of document management specialists, strive to learn as much as you can from your colleagues and ask them questions that you can only discover answers to while practicing.
Make sure to additionally learn about the various document management solutions that are available in order to have a better chance of landing your ideal job in the future.
Check out the below article covering in-depth
What is Document Management System? The Complete Guide (theecmconsultant.com)
3- Get Certifications in Related Topics
There are several organizations and groups dedicated to document management. Some of them even allow you to take a course with them and get certified. AIIM is one of these, and I strongly suggest their CIP certification. More information may be found at the website provided below.
Certified Information Professional | AIIM
4- Participate in Online Discussion Groups
Linkedin groups are a great way to expand your knowledge about document management, information management, records management, and other relevant topics.
There are tens of groups with thousands of members where you may engage with them by asking a question, sharing your own experience, or seeking expert assistance.
I strongly recommend the below two groups
Enterprise Content Management Industry Association | Groups | LinkedIn
Records Management Professionals Group | Groups | LinkedIn
5- Read Related Online Articles
Several providers and other communities are publishing articles on their blogs to explore a certain issue that you as a document management specialist may be interested in.
On my own blog (link below), I attempt to share my experience and create awareness about various information management topics. Always check it out and sign up for the newsletter to remain up to date on new content.
The Number One IM Blog (theecmconsultant.com)
6- Join Social Media Communities
I have started a Telegram group for information management experts to discuss everything relating to our field. We have various specialists in the group that you might be able to learn from. Make sure you join by clicking on the link below.
