Enterprise document management (EDM) is a strategy for overseeing an organization's paper and electronic documents so they can be easily retrieved in the event of a compliance audit or subpoena. The term originally referred to electronic documents that were created on a computer or paper documents that were scanned into a digital format. The meaning has broadened to include email, faxes, instant messages, PowerPoint presentations, collaborative software entries and multimedia.
In the context of regulatory compliance, enterprise document management must address the following:
- How long documents should be retained.
- Where documents should be stored.
- How changes to documents can be traced.
- How documents can be recovered if a disaster should occur.
An enterprise document management software application can be used to create a single view of all an enterprise's documents and provide workflow tools to monitor and control modifications. In such a system, it's important that document in all formats, including multimedia, are tagged and indexed so they can be found quickly by keyword or full text search.
See also: enterprise content management (ECM)
EDM also stands for electronic document management, engineering data management and electrical discharge machine.