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Work

Document Management Transformation

Decades of documents that could be stored reliably but not found reliably.

Sector
Regulated professional practice
Scope
Information architecture · Migration · Automated classification
01Challenge

Documents were spread across shared drives, individual mailboxes and a legacy repository, organised by conventions that had changed several times over the years. Retrieval depended on institutional memory — knowing which era a matter belonged to, and therefore which naming convention applied. That knowledge left the organisation whenever a long-serving colleague did.

02Approach

We designed the information architecture first — how documents should be classified in a way that matches how people actually search for them — and only then addressed migration. Automated classification handled the bulk of the historic archive, with a human review step for anything the classifier was not confident about.

03Solution

What we built.

  • 01An information architecture designed around how people actually search
  • 02Consolidation of shared drives, mailbox stores and the legacy repository
  • 03Automated classification and metadata extraction across the historic archive
  • 04A human review step for low-confidence classifications — nothing filed blindly
  • 05Access controls and retention rules applied consistently at the structure level
04Outcome
  • Documents are retrievable by structure and metadata rather than institutional memory
  • Historic material was brought into the same structure as current work
  • Retention and access rules apply consistently instead of per-folder
  • New staff can find precedent without asking a long-serving colleague

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