What Is EDMS Software?

EDMS software, or electronic document management system software, helps organizations centralize, store, search and access documentation from a variety of systems and locations, thus increasing productivity, reducing mistakes from incorrect document versions, and ultimately helping companies save money.

Many companies consider their EDMS to be one of the most powerful tools in their software collection as it helps them with complex document management, optimizing plant operations, improving operational insights, achieving and maintaining governmental compliance regulations and standards, and streamlining workflows within departments for increased efficiency. It can also help organizations overcome their most pressing day-to-day pain points, including:

• Difficulty ensuring compliance with control procedures and requirements.
• Difficulty numbering, sorting, filing and storing important electronic and hard copy documents –aka poor document version control.
• Inconsistent collaboration and siloed information across departments.
• Low accessibility to data that can maximize staff productivity and support personnel safety.
• Complicated work order management and data entry errors.
• Data security and disaster recovery concerns.

The key is to find the right EDMS software to suit your unique business needs.

Introducing Meridian, Accruent's EDMS Platform

Primary EDMS Software Functions:

Robust, comprehensive EDMS software has several primary functions. Most centrally, it can keep critical documentation centralized, accurate and easily accessible. This can streamline manual processes and replace pen and paper, which can ultimately increase employee productivity, asset uptime and ROI across facilities and departments.

Additionally, a robust EDMS software can help users:

• Analyze data for actionable insight
• Automate work order processes
• Help users automatically import and validate data
• Effectively move documents through the various stages of their workflow
• Facilitate document review and approval
• Integrate with other business-critical systems for comprehensive insights

What Can You Accomplish with EDMS Software?

Work with Accruent’s EDMS Experts

You’re not on your own when it comes to implementing your Meridian EDMS software. When it's time to implement, Accruent experts will build the implementation, test it, and provide the templates, plans, feedback and training you need for it to be a success. They will also help you resolve any existing concerns that could hinder implementation, helping you resolve issues with data cleanliness, technical concerns and business processes.

After implementing your Meridian solution, you’ll continue to have access to a number of Accruent resources, including post go-live resources and access to Accruent Academy. These are designed to help you accelerate adoption, build a profitable business and move forward in developing a culture of continuous improvement.

Whitepaper: Comprehensive Guide to Implementing Accruent’s Meridian

Learn what to expect and how to simplify the Meridian implementation process.

 

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Understanding the Benefits and ROI of EDMS Software

By digitizing and streamlining your document management using an EDMS software, your company can see both immediate revenue gains and big picture boosted ROI.

In the short term, this can be seen in the form of reduced paperwork costs, increased employee productivity and reallocated office supply budgets. In the big picture, an EDMS system will:

• Provide a single source of truth for mission-critical information
• Streamline collaboration across departments.
• Help ensure that every document change is properly tracked and managed.
• Facilitate regulatory compliance with all relevant bodies.
• Streamline task completion.
• Connect all the departments within your organization.

These improvements, in turn, will help you automate and optimize processes, develop a data-driven business model and transform your business efficiency.

FAQ: EDMS Software Frequently Asked Questions

How do you use EDMS software?

To use an EDMS software, the first step is to gather and digitize all of your relevant documentation, including paper documents and digital files. Once the information is effectively scanned and saved, an EDMS can help you organize, analyze and use your documents to improve your workflows and processes. Looking at the data and automations, for example, you can:

• Easily share your documents with the right people at the right time.
• Organize your documents in standardized formats and file structures.
• Easily store and access information needed to maintain compliance or complete a work order.
• Secure documents to ensure ongoing compliance over time.
• Use comprehensive reports to improve processes and drive down costs.

What does EDMS mean?

The acronym EDMS stands for electronic document management system, though there are many common synonyms including engineering document management systems and engineering drawing management software.

In any case, when people use the term “EDMS” they refer to a software – or suite of software tools – that are used to centralize an organization’s documentation and ultimately improve collaboration and ROI.

What is the purpose of an EDMS software?

The purpose of an EDMS software is to keep all relevant documents and drawings in one place. This ultimately:

• Provides a single source of truth for mission-critical information.
• Streamlines collaboration with all internal departments.
• Ensures that every document change is properly tracked and managed.
• Helps maintain regularly compliance with all relevant bodies.
• Helps team members effectively complete tasks.
• Connects all departments within an organization to ensure that everyone is on the same page.

What is EDMS healthcare?

EDMS, or electronic document management systems, are often used in the healthcare industry to:

• Extend equipment life through predictive maintenance
• Accelerate service requests and repairs, ensure compliance with The Joint Commission and DNV GL regulations
• Improve labor productivity
• Drive down asset and productivity-related costs.

An electronic document management system can accomplish all of this by consolidating the core asset data needed for preventive maintenance, including operating and maintenance procedures, vendor manuals, and other key information.

How can EDMS software help with data automation and process automation?

The right EDMS software will help with data automation and process automation by centralizing your important information, simplifying it and making it easier for your team to automate your processes.

What can you do with Meridian’s EDMS software?

Meridian’s electronic document management software provides all the functionality and customization capabilities you may need to effectively manage and optimize your documents. Use Meridian to:

• Consolidate hard copies on an electronic archive.
• Easily save and unify your online documents.
• Create customized workflows and set individual user permissions.
• Implement document management in various departments.
• Maximize your document security.

Who uses EDMS software?

Businesses and individuals in many resource-heavy industries use EDMS software, including those in biotech, government, healthcare, manufacturing, oil & gas, transportation and utilities. In all organizations, EDMS software is commonly used to resolve recurring pain points, helping to:

• Simplify document management.
• Improve document integrity.
• Decrease customer response times.
• Increase internal bandwidth.
• Decrease security and disaster recovery risks.
• Reduce the number of data entry errors.
• Remove interdepartmental siloes.