SharePoint is used by most companies as "the place where a lot of files live," but its real potential is much greater. With the right site architecture, metadata tagging and content-type definitions, SharePoint turns into a real enterprise document-management system.
01. Site Architecture
A hub site + spoke site structure is recommended. The hub site (e.g. Company Home) for shared navigation and search; spoke sites (departments, projects) each keep their own content.
02. Library Setup
Metadata-tagged libraries should be set up instead of folders. For example, in a "Contracts" library: customer name, contract type, start date, expiry fields. Filtering by these fields becomes possible.
03. Content Types
A Content Type is a document's metadata + behavior template. Types like "Invoice," "Contract" and "Procedure" are defined; each type comes with its own field set.
04. Search and Filtering
The efficiency of SharePoint search depends on metadata. So designing the field definitions well at the start prevents future search headaches.
05. Data Policies
Document-retention periods, automatic deletion and archiving rules are managed via Purview. Critical from a data-protection standpoint: the lifecycle of documents containing personal data must be defined.