You have been in business for a number of years and as the business is growing and expanding, This could mean increase in the number of clients and also the number of staff, leads to increase paper documents. These will require more space for storage and additional staff to manage the documents.
-Why electronic document management system and not cloud storage? Document management systems is a platform that manages your work process by storing, organizing and managing your documents as electronic files. It has continuity capabilities, it is secure and compliant, has workflow automation and can integrate with other productivity apps. Document management systems and cloud storage can both be used to store and organize documents and they can be accessible from multiple devices, yet with cloud storage you are still handling your documents manually but electronically which includes creating folders manually. Document management system’s platform shares, tracks, securely stores and creates a smooth workflow for data contained within your documents both internally and externally in your organization and its automated.
-Document management systems have a structured, efficient and scalable system lacking from cloud storage which eases document searchability when the need be. A good Document management system has inbuilt folder templates, e-signature integration, business and productivity application integration. How many administrative hours can you save by not having to create folders manually for all the stakeholders, clients or staff and to save documents into the folders manually. You don’t have to download email attachments to the desktop folders continuously. When DMS is integrated it minimizes tedious and repetitive tasks of storing electronic files. It also provides security to sensitive information like financial and personnel records and provides access control for only specified individuals using those files. Security of data through encryption while in storage or on transit. Staff can get access to folders they have been granted permission to only, by just using their username and password, enabling remote working.
-With cloud storage you create the folder structure yourself and will still use your time to file the electronic documents into your cloud storage.
There is a possibility you have paper documents in files and digital documents on your computer or in hard drives. Are they systematically stored? How fast are you able to access a document when you need it?
- Many questions come to mind before initiating the process thus the need for document management with a strategy on how the process will be managed. How are you going to sort them, How are you going to categorize them? Which documents are going to be disposed off and how? Will you create a document management policy, a retention policy and disposal policy? Are you going to use a document management system? If yes, which one is compatible? How are the archived documents going to be stored?
- We will start by sorting out these documents and categorizing them. You can sort them by keeping the ones required for legal reasons together, Then there are documents that are no longer needed and those that are still in use. Duplicated documents have to be identified.
- Old documents being used for legal reasons are then archived as electronic documents.
- Have a simple, standardized naming and formatting of files in place to ease search of files by other employees.
-With electronic document management systems this process is only done during implementation of the system but afterward the process is automated saving you a lot of time going through the storage process over and over again. But with the cloud storage manual sorting, categorizing and storage of documents is a continuous process of which time is always put aside for this recurring process.