Within any enterprise, regardless of the number of memos or instructions relating to document management or retention, there is the possibility that not every document gets stored in a designated storage system. A person may create a document and save it locally on their computing device without saving the document to a designated storage system such as a file server. This may create a problem if the computer having the only copy of a document crashes or the document is otherwise lost.
Distribution of a document may also lead to problems. A person may distribute a document through e-mail or other communications channel leading to duplicate copies of the document residing across a network. This can be problematic when documents are gathered (e.g., for legal compliance) as multiple copies of the same document may be collected, leading to increased use of storage resources to store the duplicate copies and processing resources to gather and de-duplicate the documents.
Furthermore, documents are sometimes distributed in a manner that relies on the recipient to handle the document properly with respect to compliance or workflow. For example, a user may forward a document to another user without specifically tying the document to a workflow process or without notifying the recipient that the document should not be forwarded outside of an entity's network. Consequently, it can be difficult for an enterprise to manage processes and ensure that documents are handled properly from the standpoint of compliance, workflow and other processes.