There are several variations of document management systems leading to some confusion in the industry over the years.

Image Document Management (IDM)
Refers to a system designed to store and manage digital documents. The documents passing through the scanner become graphic images, hence the term Image Document Management or IDM.

Electronic Document Management (EDM)
Refers to a system designed to store and manage electronic documents such as Word, Excel, Green Bar reports, HTML documents, hence the term Electronic Document Management or EDM.

Currently, robust document management systems handle both categories of documents described above. These systems should support a robust mechanism of capturing documents, excellent output and data sharing mechanisms, easily find and edit documents, support wide ranges of document formats and operate using standard operating systems and hardware.