Boise, Idaho. – February 2, 2006 – Zasio Enterprises announced its newest module to the already powerful Versatile Enterprise records management application. The new Collaboration module will complement its Electronic Records Management System (ERMS).

ERMS allows users to store and retrieve virtually any type of electronic file, including email, right alongside their physical records. ERMS has been attracting a great deal of attention as more and more customers begin to understand the power of this solution. But, managing electronic documents is not the same as sharing electronic documents, so Zasio is taking the next step and designing a solution for effectively “collaborating” electronic documents.

Warren Bean, Development Manager at Zasio Enterprises, commented, “We’ve achieved a major milestone. Our solution for managing and sharing electronic documents rivals that of our solution for paper records.”

One of the greatest challenges when collaborating on a project is the proliferation of documents. A single document e-mailed by a Project Manager to 10 team members can easily create dozens, even hundreds, of separate documents—the original (stored on the Project Manager’s hard drive), a copy in the Sent folder of the PM’s e-mail application, 10 copies waiting to be opened, a copy on the e-mail server, and once the attachment is opened by team members, an additional 10 temporary copies created on their hard disks. Storing the document on a network share can eliminate the proliferation problem, but not tracking, revision control, and destructions.

The old method of e-mailing documents for review or posting them to network shares simply won’t work in today’s compliance-oriented environment. All of the processes and procedures diligently followed for paper records become pointless as electronic documents multiply themselves across the network with little hope of retrieving them all should they come due for final disposition or discovery.

Now organizations can fully manage their documents. The Collaboration module automatically shares documents with those on the project team based on a member’s security level. It updates each team member as revisions are made, and effortlessly cuts off stray copies when the project is complete. You can even work off-line and changes will automatically synchronize when you reconnect. Along with this flexibility comes control. Records managers will breathe a sigh of relief as they see all revisions rolled up and temporary documents destroyed at the close of a project. ERMS has already applied the records classification, so destruction dates are precalculated.  Project managers can be assured that only the right people are seeing the documents, and they can control viewing and updating privileges.