BUSINESS CASE
Generally automating cooperative work with documents begins with creating shared network folders on workstations. Further file server can be dedicated to store templates and shared documents. Shared MS Access spreadsheets and databases are often used for management accounting. Approving and cooperative work with documents are usually carried out by e-mailing. In this case a lot of document versions are created and stored by different users and merging them to final document can be the task much complicated or sometimes requiring additional round of approving.
Cooperative work with documents being stored in network storage is impeded by locking and difficulty of simultaneous work with them by several users. Files can be accidentally edited or deleted.
MS Access spreadsheets and databases stored at the file server also do not support multiuser work.
Moreover this solution does not support full-text search in documents being stored.
As a result users have to expend time in doing actions which are not concerned with their main activity, such as manual searching documents manually, merging different document versions and forming reports manually. All these actions can be easily automated by using up-to-date technologies.