Document management and records
Libraries, versioning, metadata and taxonomy built around the questions people actually ask — because a taxonomy designed in a workshop rarely survives contact with how anyone looks for things.
What document management has to cover
Document libraries and versioning
Structure that reflects how documents are used rather than how the organisation is drawn, with version history that survives editing in desktop applications.
Metadata and taxonomy design
A small number of fields that are genuinely used, derived from real search behaviour — optional metadata is skipped, and skipped metadata is worse than none.
Templates and document generation
Documents assembled from system data rather than copied from the last similar one, which is how inconsistency and stale figures enter.
Approval and review flows
Review cycles with deadlines, delegation and escalation, so a document does not sit unapproved because one reviewer is away.
Electronic signature
Signing integrated into the flow rather than as a separate system, with the signed artefact filed automatically against the right record.
Records management
Which documents are records, how long they are kept and what happens at the end — decided as policy and enforced by the system.
Don’t see your challenge here? Talk to us about your project
Metadata that is optional gets skipped
Most document taxonomies are designed by a small group, comprehensively, in a workshop. They then meet people filing a document at the end of a long day, who skip every field that is not mandatory and pick the first plausible value for the ones that are.
We design from search behaviour instead: the small set of attributes people actually filter on, made mandatory and, wherever possible, derived automatically from context rather than typed.
- Few fields
- Only what people genuinely filter on.
- Derived, not typed
- Inferred from context wherever possible.
- Mandatory where it matters
- Optional metadata is not maintained.
- Usage-driven structure
- Organised by how documents are used.
- Generated documents
- Assembled from data, not copied from the last one.
- Retention built in
- Records policy enforced, not documented.
A document management system for Enterprise Estonia
Enterprise Estonia's document management system had to serve an organisation where documents are the record of public decisions, which raises the stakes on version history, approval trails and retention. The design work concentrated on making correct filing the easiest path rather than a discipline that has to be enforced.
Common questions
Do you build on SharePoint or something custom?
On the platform you already own, in most cases. Custom document management is justified when the workflow or compliance requirement genuinely exceeds what the platform does — and we will say when we think it does not.
How do you get people to file things correctly?
By reducing what has to be decided. Fewer mandatory fields, values derived from context, and templates that pre-fill correctly do more than training does — if correct filing takes effort, it will not happen consistently.
What about documents already scattered across drives?
They are profiled first, which usually shows that a large share is duplicated or long obsolete. Deciding what not to move is generally the highest-value decision in the whole project.
Let's talk about your information estate
Tell us what people cannot find today and which system nobody wants to own. We will come back with an honest read on whether the answer is search, governance or migration — and what a realistic first phase looks like.
