“We have digital briefs only for the previous 5 years. Everything else is buried in the archives.”
“We don’t have the same document management system as Regulatory Affairs and some formats are incompatible.”
“I always need to double-check the latest version of a document with everyone before sending it for approval.”
What is Electronic Document Management?
Electronic Document Management, or EDM, is the process of managing information, data and documents digitally. EDM software allows its users to create a document, either from scratch within the system or by converting a hard copy into an electronic format. This information can then be easily stored, shared, edited, printed, and processed.
A key element in managing knowledge is the ability to manage documents in various formats. Efficiently organizing electronic documentation throughout a project is certainly a challenge. Sending a wrong version of a developing product by email or forgetting an essential participant during the approval process unfortunately happens quite frequently.
Managing data can also quickly become cumbersome. There is a wide variety of data formats, including information found in business documents such as contracts and invoices, customer data, financial data and intellectual property, etc. A data management system should properly consider these various formats to deal with their lifecycles accordingly.
An Electronic Document Management System helps companies meet those challenges. This system should include basic functions such as document automation management, workflows, searches, and the recording of a document’s history, while providing secure access to all records in the system.
Efficiently managing specifications and documents constitutes a competitive advantage. Implementing an effective EDMS will ultimately be of benefit to a company’s cost control, risk mitigation and collaboration capacities.
Electronic Document Management Software: what matters
- Authenticate, date, annotate, version, and track all your documents
- Manage any document format with a dedicated viewer
- Search and filter documents using keywords or custom rules
- Share, and validate documents via automated workflows
- Manage user profiles and rights
EDMS: Additional Benefits of Aptean Food and Beverage PLM, Lascom Edition NPD solution for the food, cosmetic, and other CPG industries
Aptean PLM Lascom Edition includes additional features and offers greater benefits than standalone Electronic Document Management software, as it is a comprehensive and holistic New Product Development (NPD) package.
The solution accelerates and automates document generation through templates and connectors to other tools such as the Microsoft Office Suite. Users will still be able to work with these tools and decide which information to store in, or retrieve from, the Aptean PLM Lascom Edition repository. No re-keying needed.
In other words, Lascom fom Aptean document automation software provides integration with, for instance, Microsoft Office, enabling users to work with familiar Word and Excel interfaces while their data is being centrally and securely managed by the document automation software. The solution consequently facilitates document generation, while users save time and avoid re-keying errors.
However, using an EDMS does not in itself ensure that all project information is correctly handled. Beyond documents themselves, there is a vast amount of information, such as product data, contributor profiles, strategic KPIs, tracked tasks, information dependencies, etc., that needs to be considered.
Therefore, in addition to an Electronic Document Management System, Aptean PLM Lascom Edition software offers its users a complete Project and Product Management solution, including process and workflow management, reporting, version control, business intelligence, task tracking, etc.
Our PLM offer for Food & Beverage product manufacturers!
Electronic Document Management Solution:
our customers’ words!
” Having features that are specific to each business unit- such as PIF generation for Regulatory Affairs or artworks viewer for packaging development- has been life-changing for the teams, as we are saving time and limiting errors.”
“Our goal of a single, reliable, and secure source of product information that we can all tap into has been achieved. We’re very happy with the support we received from Lascom from Aptean to make this project a success.”
"We see implementing Aptean PLM Lascom Edition as an opportunity to forge better practices among our teams regarding data and document management, for instance."
White paper
PIM – PLM: two complementary solutions for information management
