What, you may ask, is a document management system?  A document management system, or DMS, is, essentially, a high-tech file server.  You can open documents like reports, pictures, or spreadsheets from it, and you can save those same documents back to it.  In this aspect, it is the same as a Windows CIFS share, a UNIX NFS mount, or a WebDAV folder.  Where it differs is also where it becomes interesting.

Let me be frank: the way we manage documents at my office is horrible. We have a central file server, but some people don't like to use it, while others tend to abuse it.  It's a real mess with long email chains of Word and Excel files being sent back and forth, and no one really knowing where or what the final version of any given document is.  Since we're a small company we don't have a lot of time to solving the problem with anything home-brewed.