Software
The market is mature and a good deal of application software exists to manage and process documents. Most will employ the standards described above and also use techniques to secure documents either by controlling access or by the encryption of data or files.
The main application types can be broken down into several broad categories. These are records management, document management, workflow, forms processing and free/full text retrieval.
Records Management: While records are normally electronic or physical documents, they may come in a variety of formats. Some lend themselves to convenient data capture. Some do not. For example, such records may be in books, clipboard pads that are not easily scanned, cards, Filofax sheets or tickets.
The process involves extensively describing and cataloguing the entity/document, including the establishment of a destruction schedule. Due the amount of information required at each stage these systems generally require a significant amount of resources to operate.
Document management: This is generally more concerned with scanned and electronic documents, and will be indexed to the level the application demands rather than to a comprehensive schema as in a records management system. That said, records and document management systems frequently compete for the same customers.