Document Management
Is Your Business Buried Under a Ton of Unorganized Paperwork?
Are You Looking to Make Your Business More Efficient?
You Need a Document Management System.
What Is Document Management?
Document management is the process of capturing, storing, organizing and retrieving of business documents. Even if your business does not have a document management system in place, all of these activities are already being done on a daily basis. For many small and medium businesses, this process is amazingly time consuming and too often ignored. Understanding document management and implementing a good system can make a major impact for your organization.
Benefits of Document Management
- Improved organization; never lose a file or document again.
- Automate processes; free up your staff to work on what is most important for your business.
- Better document security.
- Better control of your business; no longer are your business processes tied to specific people who might resign, be out sick or be on vacation.
How Document Management Works
A document management system is used to capture and organize all of the different types of documents your business produces (letters and correspondence, invoices, emails, contracts, receipts, packing slips, memos, etc.) into easy-to-find electronic documents. The paper documents could have been scanned into the document management system. The electronic records could be either stored in the system or pointed to from another system. A document management system has the power to tie these documents together.
The documents could be indexed by department, vendor, purchase order number or any other concept that makes business sense to your organization. Unlike folders in a file cabinet, document management systems store documents in electronic folders that can be indexed by multiple pieces of information. This gives users the ability to search and retrieve documents based upon different criteria.
With a document management system, gone are the days of lost documents because they are all in one secure central electronic repository. Also gone are the days of wasted time because multiple people are retrieving documents from various locations and multiple file cabinets. With a document management system, the documents are immediately retrieved.
Our Business Has a Server, Isn’t That Enough?
Documents in folders on a computer or a network drive are only marginally better than documents in a file cabinet. If we look at documents on a computer they are only really available to the person who has access to that PC. The folder structure is based on one user’s ideas and not the needs of the organization. In fairness, who hasn’t lost documents on their own computer? Documents on network drive might be better organized, at least one could hope, but they still do not have any of the power of indexing multiple documents into a cohesive and useful grouping.
Document Security
Another important benefit of document management is the improvement in security of your documents. Anyone can pick up a document off of a desk, but with document management that same document can be restricted to certain departments or individuals within your organization. Thus you can secure your most sensitive documents to only certain individuals who have a need to access that information. You can take this even further by only allowing some users to access all of a given document and other users to only be able see a portion of the document. In many instances, this type of security can be mandated by government regulations. However, for all companies, securing data is the key to making sure that confidential information does not get leaked.
Security is also about ensuring the documents are preserved and do not get lost or damaged. Lost documents are obvious. Who hasn’t looked for a file in a file cabinet and not found what they were looking for? Sometimes documents were misfiled. Other times the documents were on someone else’s desk. In the worst instances, documents are removed from the premises and then forgotten at an offsite location. Documents can be lost forever, unless they are secured in a document management system.
Improving Efficiency – Business Processes Management
What is Business Process Management? It is taking the time to understand your business processes so you can determine what the right processes should be.
Just because an organization has been following the same process for years does not mean it is an efficient process. If you look at your business as a series of processes, you will see that almost all business processes involve documents and decision making. Workflow, or at least automated rules-based workflow, includes the process of identifying and electronically documenting your business processes. This enables systems to make rules-based decisions thereby speeding up your organization’s ability to conduct business.
Today, all of your business processes are known by employees who perform various functions in different departments. Your processes are an invaluable asset for your organization. Yet every day, your employees go home at night taking this knowledge with them. When they call in sick, or resign, or get promoted, who takes over their responsibilities? And, most importantly, do their replacements know what to do? Even worse, are you paying your employees to do mundane tasks? An employee’s value is not in performing repetitive tasks, but in making decisions that cannot be automated. Not all tasks can be fully automated, but the more that are, the more productive your staff will be.
You can use Business Process Management to analyze any business process in your organization from sales to HR and from contract generation to processing claims. Every business is different and has different needs. What never changes is that most processes can be automated to improve efficiency.
If you would like more information on Document Management and to see how it can help you to organize and streamline your business, call us today at (631) 648-8647.
