The role of EDM in information management within SMEs

Electronic document management (EDM) is a new form of information management. EDM is described to have certain business values in organizations, but no research has been found about EDM and Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SME). In this paper we present an ongoing investigation in two SMEs guided by the following research questions: "How are electronic documents used in the SMEs? "and "What are the business needs of the SMEs, and how do they correspond with stated EDM business values?". The study was carried out as two qualitative case studies in two SMEs in the north of Sweden. The results show that the business need for an SME corresponds with the business values of EDM. Yet is management of electronic document too dependent on individuals' competence, very complex when many systems are involved, and the context where the document is created is not preserved. There is also an emergent need for an organization-specific classification scheme to enable information sharing between systems.