Implementing a Comprehensive Document Management System for a Leading Petroleum Corporation in India

Documents are indispensable for every enterprise. They play a vital role in ensuring the proper functioning of organizations. A good document management system benefits organizations by bringing standardization, improving security, and increasing collaboration. We were fortunate to work with a leading petroleum corporation in India to set up a comprehensive document management system for all the departments in one of their refineries. It was a challenging project and we were able to use our expertise to significantly contribute to the company’s operations.

The Challenges

The existing documentation process followed by the organization lacked standardization and was inconsistent. No document templates were practiced and tracking required metrics was quite difficult. While some departments did not maintain their individual sites, some did not even have sites. Overall, there was a lack of visibility in document creation, usage, and updating.

A major challenge we faced was the unstructured data storage in department sites. There was no streamlined folder structure for linking different applications. Further, there was a concern of data duplication. A department wise standard naming convention as well as guidelines for content upload and management was missing. Also, efficient features like search and Onedrive for business were not utilized properly.

The inefficiency in addressing information security was another existing problem. Versioning/document control, audit trails and logs were not maintained. There was no archival mechanism for available documents. Also, important documents were stored on individual laptops. The lack of document security and data integrity was a key concern we had to address.

The Scope

The requirement was to implement a document management system (DMS) encompassing around 800 users. The major objectives to achieve were:

• Identify and capture documents that exist across the organization.
• Enhance system integration
• Data Duplication.
• Enrich document sharing.
• Speed up processes and access to value-added information
• No proper archival mechanism for documents.

The client proposed to carry out the implementation in a phased manner. In the first phase, the scope was to:

• Set up a DMS framework based on best practices
• Enforce governance rules, document control, and security
• Design metadata for scaling to a full-fledged knowledge management framework

The expected outcome after implementing and operationalizing DMS were:

• Document Sharing and enrichment - Document submission, evaluation, and publishing
• Document storage and repository
• Document dissemination/replication.
• Increasing the reach to maximum stakeholders spread across the organization.

The Solution

We proposed a Microsoft Sharepoint-based solution to overcome the challenges and achieve the desired results, A customized user interface for admins was implemented to enhance site management and library permissions. A department site template was introduced using which a new department/division site can be created easily. So, admins could configure tasks without any help from the IT department. Also, a customized user interface was done for users to create content type, metadata and document libraries from a single screen.

With the Microsoft Sharepoint solution, we could achieve complete digitalization of data, captured across the organization. The platform allowed employees to avail and access all required facilities from one place. To simplify information management, we implemented categorization of data in an efficient manner. We also addressed the data visibility and access concerns to ensure exposure of data to the right users.

Besides this, with the Sharepoint solution, we carried out actions such as:

• Ensuring the policies, procedures, and quality standards for required document types are met.
• Migration of documents in soft format currently stored in OneDrive, network folders, personal folders, etc.
• Embedded DMS to the core of future KMS Application.
• Role based permission matrix implementation on complete DMS application
• Seamless approval process based on document type
• Auto reminders/alerts based on events such as document expiry, approval status, etc.
• Content type / Document type based filtering of documents.
• Keyword / free text based searching of documents
• Capabilities with high value / common TAG cloud for clickable search of documents.
• Readable content based search facilities of documents.
• Discussion forum on DMS main portal and department portal.
• Incoming Library facility to be setup in Department Portals to allow forwarding of important emails using designated Email Ids
• Microsoft Office Online .DOCX, .PPTX, .XLSX based document co-authoring and sharing facilities
• Usage Analytics and User Adoption Reports for DMS Administrator

The Result

After implementing the Microsoft Sharepoint based solution, the company experienced an overall increase in productivity and profitability. Efficient records management could be achieved because of the single centralized document management repository. The DMS solution helped in reducing the workload of employees and simplifying their information management activities. Searching and retrieving of documents could be carried out easily. The structured documentation of files helped to increase efficiency by a large extent.