Classification Codes For Incoming And Outgoing Correspondences

Document control often gets mixed up with document management and content management in terms of what it actually refers to. More specifically, document control applications often get confused with applications that address the other two, where users believe that a document management system adequately addresses document control, etc.” [quoted: click here for more] 

The above part is quoted in an article I read in linkedIn. Differences between Document control management and Content Management had been explained in the article which was written by Carl Mueller with the main lines. Although there are differences between document control management and document content management, as the manager of the document control department, it is inescapably facing some demands that you will have to go into the content of the documents.

In this article, I am going to try to explain the classification system I created for follow up to incoming-outgoing correspondences at my previous workplace. As the Document Control Department, we had obtained successful results through this classification system we had used it effectively. Also, I would like to express with pleasure that, our reaching speed to the requested correspondences was amazing for requesters.

First of all, let’s imagine that we work on the project as like given below.

? The total number of Incoming-Outgoing correspondences are over 10.000 during the project duration.

? The correspondences are received from the Owner and the other organizations which are connected with the Owner.

? Top managers and the other authorized persons often demand correspondences from the Document Control department, nevertheless, all correspondences had been distributed to related departments in time.  

? Correspondences are requested from the document control department by their topics. Even more specifically, some correspondences are requested from the document control department with the expression similar to these:

" The correspondence on xxxx subject which was approved by the Owner…."

or

"There was a correspondence we had sent to the Owner about what we could not fulfill their request …." and a like-for-like basis…

Considering the manner of the request above mentioned, the topical classification system was composed in order to easily access to regarding correspondences.

In the first instance, the issues have been divided into main groups as "Contractural", "Technical", "Submission for approval" and so on. Subsequently, the subgroups of these main groups have been identified and coded. You can see a small part of the classification coding system below.

In the beginning, a small number of codes had been generated. However, code numbers have increased throughout the ongoing process with added new correspondences and nearly 100 topic codes were generated. No doubt, the number of codes that were given for these groups and its subgroups may vary depending on the size and type of the project. In addition, much more detailed coding can be done.

The view of the codes in the correspondence log is as follows. The descriptions of the codes should be given at the top of the table for the other users.

As a result, it was observed that the users who have the authority to access the incoming-outgoing correspondences have reached the document they are looking for more shortly. CemKaya