7 Compelling Reasons to Choose a SharePoint-Based Document Management System Today

Imagine that you are applying for a new job in a company. 

Now Imagine the pathways your application form will have to travel to get back to you a response.



First, it would pass through the firm’s HR manager, then to CEO, who would cross-check the form and send it back to HR seeking queries. Then to the panel of selectors.

And finally, it will settle in a file that holds the dust of thousands of such resumes for many years.

Now when you use SharePoint as a document management system, then the whole scene changes.Before we move further, explore the benefits of using a document management system.

The Essentials of an Effective Document Management Solution

Now, let us look at what a modern DMS (Document Management System) can do to your dreary workplace.

The DMS is something that can clean up your workspace, add a different flavor to your work style, and make your employee’s life a lot better. 

But what to look for in a DMS?

How to know that you are on the right path?

The best way, as it always is, when you don’t know about something, is to ask questions. So when you look for a DMS  company, ask the questions as we have outlined in our graphic below.

The document management system that best answers these questions are bound to be right for your organization.

What does SharePoint Document Management mean to Your Enterprise?

Businesses across the world continue to accelerate their digital transformation. The fact that you are doing something is no more important than it used to be. What matters now is how fast and efficiently you do it.

Hardly any organizations exist where documents are nil. The digitization drive has indeed thinned the stacks of files in our offices, but it has not eliminated the use of records. Reports in the electronic forms have now diversified as typing and copying are quite easy today.

A document control system is a technical solution to your workplace document problem. And there are plenty of companies offering DMS solutions based on many selected platforms. But here we discuss the unique qualities that a SharePoint DMS can add to your document management capabilities.

A SharePoint Document Management System uses the SharePoint server, and if combined with the powerful features of Microsoft 365, it gives you a vibrant workspace.

If you are not aware of what SharePoint is, then you can go through our insightful blogs and step into the creative world of SharePoint development.

A SharePoint DMS software has some unique features which make it more sturdy and at the same time, agile to sort out document life cycles in your company. The remarkable features are:

1. Document Libraries

A convenient feature of SharePoint Online that stores all your files the way you want to classify it. For example, if you want the records of a particular project to be listed together, you can modify the document library that way. And if you’re going to arrange the files of your esteemed clients together, then that is another way of classifying it.

Co-authoring features in the document libraries lets you perform tasks simultaneously. If you are a software developing company or mobile app developers, then coauthoring can help you work on your Scrum Agile strategy with more speed and efficacy.

Besides this, the document libraries bring with it a host of amenities like tracking of file, activity updation on data, creating a customizable view for your document library, highlight file, link or folders in the library, and share files or folders seamlessly. SharePoint document storage provides secure, scalable space for all your organizational files.

2. Plan Content Types 

Before moving further, it is essential to understand what content types and workflows are because they are the very fabric of SharePoint software.

Let’s get to know the workflow first.

Consider an ordinary document like an application form. When you receive a job applicant’s request, a SharePoint document workflow typically charts the path a report has to travel through the organization. The flowchart shows the route of a typical applicant’s document.

Now, a SharePoint server handles several such workflows in an organization. Hence, it is easy for your employees to handle documents because the document handles themselves. All they have to do is perform predefined operations on them.

Coming to the content type, it is a collection of metadata, workflow, and other specific categories of items that are available in a document library. Your organization may have a variety of documents like contracts, tasks, documents, etc. SharePoint lets you create a hierarchy of such materials according to your necessity. This structured approach forms the backbone of effective SharePoint records management.

3. Metadata Navigation 

It can make your whole database simple to use and search. Metadata navigation is set up to quickly search files of similar types easily, with fewer keystrokes. The metadata navigation that sets for a library or group of documents displays a tree-like structure to guide you better. It appears on the left-hand side of the page. The tree also reveals the hierarchy of the content types, as previously discussed. The end effect is that the user gets to display content much dynamically.

4. Advanced Coauthoring 

SharePoint has revolutionized multi-person co-authoring with features that enable real-time collaboration at unprecedented scale. Modern SharePoint, integrated with Microsoft 365, provides seamless co-authoring capabilities that make teamwork faster and more efficient than ever.

The modern collaboration framework adds remarkable features into your SharePoint document management system. For one thing, it makes the whole process swift and easy to handle.

Secondly, it provides a componentized document model where writers can share content and use them as building blocks for other documents or a new application or a project. Thus, it makes data picking much easier across your organization.

Thirdly, if you are targeting customers across various countries, Microsoft 365’s intelligent features can help with translation, compliance checking, and localization. These capabilities are available across the whole Microsoft 365 platform, including Outlook, Teams, and SharePoint.

The Microsoft Pen itself was a revolution in creativity, and it gathered huge accolades from the developers and tech community of users. Watch the exciting clip to see how it spurs creativity.

5. A Better Word Experience with AI Integration

SharePoint will be a productive move for your company if they have employees working on Word Online. The AI-powered features in Word that combine Microsoft 365 capabilities use artificial intelligence and machine learning to make every document created in your organization more refined and professional.

It’s a common observation that users often ignore tools in Word which make writing much more comfortable. For example, instead of using the section heads to structure their documents, employees go on bolding each subtitle manually. Modern AI features help with acronym identification, usage suggestions, highlight extracts, and even provide average reading time estimates.

6. Intelligent Writing Assistance

Not everyone is a great writer. You may hire exceptional content writers or freelance marketers for handling the site content, your blogs and marketing requirements. But it is not pragmatic to keep a content writer to parse your everyday office files.

SharePoint integrated Microsoft 365 solutions bring you a smart way of writing quality documents through AI-powered writing assistance that helps your employees create professional documents effortlessly.

These features use advanced AI technology to provide synonym suggestions, grammar improvements, and tone adjustments through machine learning. Modern AI capabilities, including Microsoft Copilot integration, help augment employee skills and add significant value to their work output.

Top 10 Benefits of Using SharePoint as a Document Management System

We have seen the remarkable features of SharePoint that make it an efficient document management system. There is no doubt regarding the fact that it increases the productivity of an organization with its centralized SharePoint document storage and consistent workflow.

Let’s take a look at the top 10 benefits of using SharePoint DMS.

1. Security

Paper documents are the least secure. They are easy to access, manipulate, and are always at a risk of hazards.

Even digital documents like emails are not very secure. Your organization’s sensitive information is at risk in email communications.

SharePoint provides an alternative to this by creating a secure document control system. By integrating features like access control and cloud backup, SharePoint ensures that your documents are accessible by only authorized people and can be recovered in the face of any potential data loss.

2. Storage

Storing documents in a paper format is a headache! It takes a lot of physical space and can be time consuming to access and organize.

Digital documentation saves organizations from this trouble. But then again, if not managed properly, it can take up a lot of digital space.

A document management system like SharePoint helps to organize documents better so that unwanted spaces can be freed and documents can be managed more effectively. SharePoint document storage offers massive capacity that scales with your organization’s needs. This also makes it easy to access the documents whenever needed, in a quick way.

3. Single Sign-On

Using the Single Sign-on feature, SharePoint users can use their account with a single set of login credentials. It helps to minimize phishing attacks and enhances integration by eliminating the need to manage multiple softwares and systems.

4. Version History

In an organization, it is natural that we keep updating old documents by making changes with time. Sometimes it might get difficult to find the most recently updated one or there would be situations where we need to refer to the old versions.

Document versioning SharePoint capabilities can come really beneficial in such circumstances. With documents being stored in a central location, employees with access can edit those documents and update them in the same place. This avoids the occurrence of any confusion.

SharePoint will record all details of every version including who edited it and when. It is also possible to recover old versions if needed. This document versioning SharePoint feature is essential for maintaining audit trails and compliance requirements. 

5. Easy Collaboration

A document management system syncs your entire workplace, so sharing information becomes easy. Collaborating within teams becomes convenient as documents can be shared with anyone during any time.

When collaboration becomes fast and happens in real-time, it enhances productivity. Thus SharePoint helps to bring the best out of employees as individuals and as team members. 

6. Automation

In a non-digitized work atmosphere, a lot of time is lost in manual processes like error correction, approval, etc. In SharePoint, the SharePoint document workflow is automated in such a way that the need for human intervention in such tasks are eliminated.

This makes the work processes more efficient and fast. There is no need to wait for approvals or manually check for errors. The automated flowchart makes workflow standard and systematic. 

7. Effective Organisation

With a document management system, your documents stay properly organized. In such a structure, it is easy to find precisely what you are looking for.

And besides this overall organisation, the search functionality implemented in softwares like SharePoint makes finding documents easier. You can search using keywords or phrases and get results in a matter of seconds. SharePoint records management ensures that documents are classified, retained, and disposed of according to organizational policies. 

8. Co-Authoring

In SharePoint, it is possible for multiple users to edit the same document at the same time. This is called co-authoring. Co-authoring makes teamwork fast and more efficient.

To ensure that all the changes from various sources are shared, it uses an intelligent locking system on the documents. This lock system locks the specific sections where some edit is being done so that it does not get lost. Thus multiple users can work on different sections of the same document at the same time.  

9. Access Permissions

SharePoint has pervasive permission settings. You can share documents with individuals or teams as well as share individual files or folders.

These permissions settings are so secure that a person without access cannot open a document. In fact, permission can be set in such a way that a person will not even be able to find a document if he is unauthorized. This granular control is a cornerstone of an effective document control system.

10. Follow Regulations

Some documents will have to follow certain regulations. Complying with those regulations is essential for them; otherwise, the documents may not be accepted.

Document management systems have specific templates or presets that make sticking to the regulations easy. It enables employees to create documents at their convenience without having to worry about regulations. SharePoint records management features help organizations maintain compliance with industry standards and legal requirements.

What Makes SharePoint the Right Choice for a Document Management System?

There are several document management systems in the market. But SharePoint stands out among them all.

A significant majority of Fortune 500 companies rely on SharePoint for their organizational document management needs.

What makes it the ideal choice for a document management system? Let’s take a look!

• This product of Microsoft has a state of the art document management system, making it popular among big organizations worldwide.
• It is compatible with several other Microsoft products. This makes integration easy and opens up many opportunities.
• Organizations can customize SharePoint according to their specific requirements. This flexibility makes several businesses choose SharePoint as their document management system.
• SharePoint can also be accessed on mobile devices. In this smartphone era, this is a much-needed feature that increases convenience and accessibility.
• SharePoint offers a massive amount of storage space. Large organizations use SharePoint document storage because of this extensive capacity.
• SharePoint has reported minimum errors, such as server issues, accidental data loss, or insecure storage. This makes it very reliable.
• Its advanced search feature takes finding documents to another level. SharePoint makes search precise, easy, and quick.
• SharePoint is continuously working on its growth to accommodate the latest innovations and provide the best of document management to its users, including AI-powered features and enhanced collaboration tools. 

A document control system adds to your impeccable arsenal making your workforce more productive, efficient, and valuable. Many platforms build document management systems today.

But the above discussion proves why SharePoint DMS is your best bet. The very fact that the whole force of the pioneers of technology—Microsoft Corporation—is behind it is one thing. The continuous workplace innovations that it brings each year is another thing.

Among the SharePoint service providers, Aufait Technologies has a distinctive position. The genius of the company reflects in its Microsoft Gold Partnership. Its near two-decade experience is serving world-class clients like Oman Air, Boston Scientific, Legrand, Qatar Foundation, etc. This is another reason that Aufait is the right guide for you.

Let’s get started today.