The average business has to deal with many documents every day. Thousands of them, in fact. There are contracts, reports, receipts, forms – the list just goes on and on. Keeping all those docs in order is a challenge, to say the least. A document management system can make all the difference.
What Is a Document Management System?
Before looking at when and why to use a document management system, let’s see what this term actually means. Put simply, a document management system is exactly what it sounds like—software dedicated to managing a business’s documents.
It’s all about digitizing your docs and optimizing their organization. In turn, that should make it far easier for you to find individual files, maintain key copies of docs that matter most, and secure your most sensitive information.
Those are just some of the many uses and benefits of a strong document management system. It can also help with collaboration, file sharing, and so much more, leading to gains in productivity, security, savings, and even morale.
Signs You Need Document Management Software
As you can see, a document management system can bring a lot to the table, helping businesses of all sizes and across all industries. Next, let’s look at some situations and signs that show your business is crying out for stronger document management.
Workers Are Wasting Time Searching for Files
Studies and surveys suggest that workers can waste up to 20% of their time looking for files and information. That’s a staggering statistic, and the problem is particularly bad in businesses with poor document management.
It’s never good when workers waste time navigating through digital folders and digging through archives looking for one simple file. Those minutes and hours add up, and all that time could be put to much better use elsewhere.
It’s no good for morale either – workers rapidly get tired of looking for files when they could be doing more interesting, engaging tasks instead.
You Handle a Lot of Sensitive Data
A lot of companies nowadays have to handle vast quantities of sensitive data. If you sell any sort of products or services online, for instance, you might have a big database of customer files, including people’s names, addresses, and contact info.
That kind of data has to be handled with care. But, if you’ve got a weak document management system in place, sensitive files could easily end up lost or in the wrong hands. If that happens, you could be looking at major blows to your reputation and your finances. Indeed, many businesses never fully recover from a data breach.
You’re Dealing With a Range of Varied File Formats
DOC, PDF, and XLS. Those are just a few of the most common file formats many businesses deal with daily. But they’re far from the only ones. There are JPEGs, HTML files, PNGs, TIF, SVG, TXT, PPT, ODP, and so on.
Depending on what sort of work you do, you may find dozens of different file types filling up your folders and inboxes every day. That adds a whole extra layer of complexity to your file management, and if you don’t have decent document management strategies in place, you’ll struggle to cope.
Your Documents Are Disorganized
Perhaps your business initially had a decent plan in place for document management. You had organized files and folders that were nice and tidy. A lot of businesses start that way. Unfortunately, it rarely lasts, and disorder soon sets in.
Before long, your folders are a mess, your files are all over the place, and finding any single document demands a herculean effort. If that sounds familiar, a document management system may be the only way out.
You’re Buried Beneath Physical Paperwork
Another clear sign it’s time to invest in a document management system is if you’re still struggling with reams of real, physical paperwork. If you’ve got stacks of papers scattered across your workers’ desks, for example, or boxes and cabinets fit to burst with documents, it’s definitely time for a change.
That’s not to say you need to go all the way and aim for a “paperless” office. Many offices still need some number of physical files. But, with a strong document management system, you should find it much easier to keep your many docs under control, with far less risk of real papers stacking up and making a mess.
You Have Lots of Duplicated Docs and Files With the Same Name
File duplication is one of the biggest problems facing many modern businesses, and it’s so easy for this issue to develop and spread, to a point where it’s almost out of control.
Workers can easily open a file and save a different version of it under the same name, for example. Or they might send previous versions of files to other team members, who then save them somewhere else on the system.
Then, when someone needs to find that specific file, they suddenly see a dozen different docs, all with the same name as the one they’re looking for, but with completely different contents. It’s chaos, but document management systems cancel out that chaos.
Access Management Is Out of Control
Access management is another essential element of document management. You have to control who has access to certain files in order to secure and safeguard your most important documents and data. But, more often than not, that’s a lot easier said than done.
Many businesses find that controlling access to specific files and folders becomes almost impossible over time as the number of files adds up and their folders spiral out of control. Once again, a document management system is the solution to get your files in order, making it infinitely easier to manage access to each one.
Get Your Docs Back Under Control With a Document Management System
So, if it feels like your file system is deeply disorganized, or if workers have to organize “search parties” to track down a single document, it might be time to invest in a document management system. Docutrend is here to help with that. For document management assistance in New York, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania, contact our team today.