9.3. Developing a System
You’ve just started your co-op placement at Sunny Horizons, Inc. The new branch in Calgary has opened, and your task is to work with the London office to get things back in order at Headquarters after a whirlwind six months working on the expansion project. On your first day, your manager asks you to find a vendor agreement for last year’s company retreat. You open the computer on your desk, which you’ve just gained access to – and immediately feel lost.
The folders in the shared drive are labelled with random abbreviations and numbers. Some documents are saved on the desktop. Others are buried in emails.
What should’ve taken five minutes takes nearly an hour. Sound familiar? It’s clear the person at your desk previously didn’t feel confident in developing a system for document organization. They took a “saving it somewhere is better than nothing” approach and hit the “Save” button without much regard for what happened next. Preventing this sort of experience is why document organization matters. A task that should have taken moments with a simple search took much longer.
There’s No “One Right Way”
Document organization is not about perfection—it’s about creating a system that works for the people who use it. A document management system (DMS) is a system that is used to organize documents in an organization. That system might be simple or detailed, digital or physical, but it has to be:
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Easy to understand – would anyone in the office be able to look at a folder or filename and tell you what is housed within?
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Consistent – do all files and folders have the same naming pattern (naming convention) as others like it?
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Accessible to those who need it – can anyone in the office who needs a particular file get to it easily, or do they need a password or special access?
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Sustainable – will this system last for a long time? Or is it only feasible for the current project?
As an administrative professional, your job often includes helping a team stay organized. Sometimes, that means building a system from scratch. Other times, it means adapting to a system already in place. Or you might tasked with making updates to an existing system. Before making changes, however, it is important to get buy-in from everyone who is going to be using the system developed. Rather than working to rename files in a way that makes sense only to you, you should first spend time learning the culture of the company and get a better understanding of what the employees expect from the document system. This is a great opportunity to do an evaluation of the existing system by gathering feedback from those who have utilized it so far. The best system is the one that works for all who are using it.
Designing a System
Before setting up or revising a DMS, ask yourself:
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Who needs to access these files?
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How often will the documents be used?
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Will the files need to be shared with people outside the organization?
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How long should documents be kept? Some companies have regulatory bodies that they answer to, which require documents to be retained for a certain period of time before they can be destroyed.
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What kinds of documents are we dealing with? Are there confidentiality issues that need to be mitigated?
The answers to these questions will help you decide how to sort and label files. You may choose an alphabetical system (by client name), a chronological one (by year and month), or a category-based system (finance, HR, events, etc.).
A Word About Standards
Even though your system should work for you, there are professional standards worth knowing—especially if you want to grow in your role. One is the ARMA recordkeeping principles. These principles focus on things like accountability, transparency, and retention.
