Even if the question “What is Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)?” is still discussed among experts; There is no doubt that document management (DM) is a major component of PLM. It collects, organizes and distributes all documents in the enterprise-wide information flow.

To have an integrated process in place means to eliminate additional efforts to feed these kinds of systems. Only if the document management system is able to manage the original files and only if the system is integrated in the daily working process and the collection of the documents takes place automatically in the background are we able to talk about an integrated document management system. That’s the reason why SAP provides integrations in different applications like

An additional major requirement is to have on the one hand a secure and vaulted storage for all files, but on the other hand the possibility to distribute them in a global enterprise environment. SAP’s document management system with a scalable Content and Cache Server Architecture controlled by a central SAP system is able to control the file access but also to support internal and external collaboration. Additional functionalities of SAP’s DMS are: