Document Management: 4 Reasons To Dive In!

If document management isn’t currently part of your plans to digitize your business, it SHOULD be. Automating a system that ensures your documents are saved and shared properly saves your business time, money and frustration. When an employee can’t lay his or her hands (more likely their eyes) on a pertinent document, it creates a bottleneck. If that bottleneck causes issues for a customer, the document management problem is now causing a customer service issue. The inability to find one little document can snowball into a real problem which impacts your business negatively.

Document management systems can be as simple or as complex as your company requires. You’ll need to carefully consider your scanning, storage, retrieval and destruction (yes, many documents need to be destroyed, or in a digital case, permanently deleted in a timely fashion) requirements before set-up and deployment. That being said, a smart document management system delivers the following beneficial reasons to get started to nearly EVERY business and business type.

1. Minimize Storage Space (Physical & Digital)

Space is at a premium in any office setting. Physical files take up space. Digital files take up space. Do any of the following apply to your office?

• Your employees need a place to eat lunch. What should be a break room is, instead, a dusty file storage room.
• Your HR manager can’t access vacation requests quickly because her computer is running VERY slow. Possibly because her hard drive is FULL of old employee records and request forms. Forms that needed to be deleted five years ago.
• You need to hire two more customer service representatives. But you just don’t have the space to fit them in. There’s no office space available because your customer files are currently living in three different offices.
• You’re trying to update the service order for a very important client, but there are numerous versions in your files and even more versions in co-workers files. Which one is right? And why are so many copies taking up space across numerous computers?

Digitizing documents and storing them in one centralized and readily accessible on-premise or cloud system saves space. But it also ensures you’re using the latest version of important documents and not providing clients with outdated information.

2 & 3. Increase Security & Compliance

We’ve joined security and compliance, as they go hand in hand.

Certain documents have to be managed, retrieved and stored in very specific ways in order to keep your company compliant. For tax reasons, security reasons, etc. Paper files aren’t all that secure. And they often stick around for longer than they’re useful or necessary. Are you still storing documents which should have been responsibly destroyed months, or even years, ago?

Continuing to store documents that don’t meet compliance standards not only continues to waste valuable space, it could also get you fined or written up for failure to comply.

Anyone in your office can potentially access those paper files you’re still hanging on to. One of the biggest benefits of a well-designed document management system, is setting standards for who can access documents, and what they can do with those documents when they are accessed.

4. Create Opportunities For Teamwork & Delegation

Many projects your business undertakes require the input and time of more than one employee. Trying to collaborate with paper documents requires that only one person can access or edit that specific document. Otherwise you’ll end up with edit notes floating around on numerous printed copies. Not particularly collaborative.

When employees can access digital documents and make notes in real time, even when someone else is making their own notes, real collaboration and teamwork take place.

Fostering a sense of teamwork boosts employee and customer morale. Clients are much happier working with employees who are enthusiastic about their jobs. Being part of a team effort tends to increase enthusiasm and employee buy-in. Feeling like part of a team effort also tends to increase productivity. More productive employees get tasks done more quickly. Quickly completed tasks finish projects ahead of time. Customers who get what they require more quickly tend to pay more quickly. It’s a win-win-win situation.

Is it time to ditch the paper? If you’re looking to increase space (physical and digital), security and compliance, productivity, profitability and employee morale, the answer is a resounding yes. When you’re ready to set up a well-designed and efficient document management system, we’re ready to help you make the decisions that will ensure your system works for your company, your employees and your customers. Win-win-win!