No matter what the size of your business, or industry you’re in, you share something in common with every other business… the challenge of managing paper documents. Even as we move toward the paperless office, the fact is, most businesses still rely on paper on a day-to-day basis.
Paper documents are inefficient to work with, take up valuable real estate, are prone to being misfiled or lost and can become a security risk when mishandled. Many companies are turning to document management solutions to deal with their abundance of paper documents, enabling them to save time, money and space in the process.
Optimizing Your Document Management Solution
While all document management systems aren’t the same, there are some best practices that you can apply to any one of them to help optimize your choice.
Here are some things to consider:
Know Your Document Output, Processes, and Workflows
To ensure your solution is properly configured and fulfills your needs it’s important to have a clear understanding of what types of documents you produce, and how they are used in your business practices and workflows. The average business has many documents stored in many places so it’s important to understand your forms and files.
Identify:
- What types of documents do you use daily?
- What types of data are categorized within them?
- Where are they currently stored?
Classify Content
How should you organize your documents and what permissions should be applied? Who should have access? And how should you classify them? For example, by client, project, date, department, etc.
Have the Right Tools
To take full advantage of a document management solution requires having access to the right tools. At the onset you will need to digitize a large volume of documents and have access to an imaging device that can handle this workload.
Get Your Team Onboard
Working with new systems and processes can be intimidating. Get your staff onboard through communication and training. Explain what you’re trying to accomplish with a document management solution and how it will make life easier. Provide training to ensure a smooth transition.
There are a host of benefits you’ll enjoy when you implement a document management solution. Once you’ve made the decision, take these beginning steps to optimize your results.
Want to learn more about document management solutions? Contact Allied Business Solutions and let us show you how to save time, money, storage space and headaches by automating key business practices with a digital document management system.
