7 reasons to implement a document management system
It’s January, a month for resolutions; a time for clearing out and storing away; a time for starting afresh. So, like many others, your employees have probably just finished last year’s archiving (or maybe last week’s or last month’s if you work for a very large organisation). If it’s a painful, arduous process, then have a look at the reasons for implementing an electronic document management system. You never know, there may be a few here that will finally convince your Finance Director to invest in a sparkly new system.
The 7 benefits of implementing a document management system:
1. Reduce costs
Electronic document management allows you to reduce the amount of physical floor space used for storage in your office, which you can then reclaim for other purposes, perhaps using the freed up space for meeting rooms or offices. You can remove those shelves of storage files or rooms full of archive boxes and give your company a clutter-free environment.
You’ll save money because you won’t be buying filing cabinets, shelving systems, archive boxes and folders.
And you’ll reduce print and copy costs because there is less need to make copies of documents, or to print out archived documents, so that means less toner and paper are required.
2. Improve collaboration
A document management system enables better sharing of documents – between individuals, departments and across branches or sites. Documents can be accessed simultaneously by more than one user, improving cross-departmental communication and allowing supplier and customer queries to be solved more quickly and effectively. The resulting improved information flow facilitates remote working too.
3. Comply with regulations
For regulatory compliance, a document management solution helps your record-keeping to remain within the law with the automatic application of a digital signature to every document. Full audit trails are possible and on-demand access to documents can be ensured.
Or, if you don’t need to conform to legislative regulations, you may wish to ensure internal accountability or aim to adhere to guidelines laid down by your governing industry body.
4. Store all document types
You can not only file typical documents like Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PDFs, you can also scan in paper documents like invoices, faxes and shipping notes; and can incorporate emails and other electronic communications. With all of these integrated into one system, you can be sure everything is covered.
5. Ensure security
Electronic document storage means no more lost files or folders. Full disaster recovery is guaranteed, giving you peace of mind that your business-critical information is safe. You can’t say that with fire-risk archive boxes!
File integrity is maintained and the system can provide a full audit trail that logs who has accessed, edited, printed or modified a document.
Paper documents stored together – for example in a filing cabinet – all have the same security level, but with a document management system, you can afford different levels of access to different staff, and set different access restrictions per document. This prevents sensitive or confidential documents from being accessed by those with insufficient authorisation.
6. Save time and improve efficiency
Because your documents are well organised, managed and indexed, you can retrieve information faster. It’s quicker for staff to search for and then access the documents they need. Powerful indexing means that documents can be filed in more than one location, so they can be tagged with a number of pertinent keywords, which ensures easier, faster retrieval. Compare this with having just one copy of an invoice, for example. That invoice can only exist in one file, in one physical location. If it’s filed by date, but you only know the supplier name, then it will prove very challenging and time-consuming to find. Even in comparison with simple electronic filing, where a shared server is used, this is a far superior system that retrieves documents quickly and without staff needing to leave their desks.d
7. Improve staff productivity
An electronic document management system eradicates the need for manual storage and retrieval, which takes time and is a drain on staff resources. The drudgery of manual filing is eliminated, meaning staff can be assigned to other tasks and may benefit from increased morale and motivation.