In the course of digitization, it has become the norm that several people can edit and view a document. A practical example illustrates why it is lucrative for many companies to think about versioning documents and data. An important press release is completed. This is now checked by the departments involved and finalized in terms of content. Each of the responsible persons saves a new version of the press release locally on his or her computer and forwards the new draft by e-mail to a colleague for further review. At the end of the day, it is unclear which version is now the current, approved version that can be sent out, and all local computers are full of work files that require memory.

Versioning describes the functionality for capturing changes to documents and data. After each change to a document, the newest version is automatically stored on the archive. In addition, it is possible to track changes to data using version numbers. This ensures an overview of the complete document life cycle.