You store your company's documents in a protected directory or maybe even SharePoint. Someone within your company wants a copy of one of those documents. They go to the storage location and download a copy.
Are they in possession of the latest released document? How do they know? If they use the wrong document, what are the consequences?
My Thoughts...
Documents are in a constant state of change.
Documents are created, changed and changed again until they are either deleted or archived. When a person downloads a copy, where does it exist within this process? How do they know? How can they find out?
If we are talking about engineering drawings, the consequences can be costly. Years ago, an aerospace company started with the wrong version of a drawing. By the time they figured out what had happened, they had incurred $250,000 in unnecessary costs.
If this doesn't bother you, studies have shown that engineers spend 25% of their time looking for information. If you have 10 engineers earning $80,000 per year, your company will be spending $200,000 annually for them to look for information. Document management vaults can dramatically reduce that cost and these vaults will always provide you with the latest released document [unless you request otherwise].
After surviving the recession, now is the time to embrace efficiency. Your documents exist within a process - now is the time to manage them that way.
Your Thoughts...
How does your company manage their documents within their process?
They're attachments to the workflow step(s) and the process definition keeps track of and integrates to the ECM repository making sure everyone is seeing and working with the latest and greatest. If your BPM platform can't do or you don't have that in your process definition, then you're doing it wrong.