When it comes to the success of your organization, there’s a huge difference between work and intelligent work.
Brainless, haphazard work – work without that impetus of intelligence to propel strategic direction – does more harm than good. It’s unwork, actually.
The good news is that properly implemented document and content management strategies gets you on the right side of that dangerous divide between unwork and intelligent work.
Here are 5 ways digital document management gets your company working smarter:
1. Saves Space and Reduces Supply Costs
With quick, easy access to your documents, you obliterate the need for those inefficient rooms full of inefficient file cabinets. Floor space costs money and so do those cabinets: Just imagine what you could do with that space you’re wasting and resources you’re spending on expensive and unproductive paper-based filing.
- Reduce or reallocate staff and turn expenses into income.
- Spend less of your valuable time searching for documents.
- Stop printing and copying documents: reining in your carbon footprint and cutting down on clutter.
- Stop worrying about your sprinkler system ruining your documents
2. Removes Dispiriting Bottlenecks
With more efficient execution of agreements, purchasing, travel authorizations and bill payments, you deliver more goods and services with more speed and accuracy. In other words: When your information management is in a good place, your business works at a more efficient pace.
- Faster delivery = greater capacity with the same amount of resources and lower operating costs (i.e., productivity).
- Greater productivity = more customers and higher profits.
- More customers and higher profits = happier workforce.
- Happier workforce = higher productivity. Positive feedback loop? You bet your bottom dollar.
3. Improves Compliance and Security
Fines for non-compliance are quite often the result of inefficient filing and document indexing. How much time do you waste preparing documents for an audit? It’s not just the time wasting that you need to worry about, though: You put your documents at risk of misplacement and even fraud simply by exposing your document control to the insecurity of the human element.
- Having people scavenge through files – searching for, sorting through and preparing them for the auditor – is an egregious waste of time. No arguments there.
- With a secure records management system, the auditor is able to access the files quickly and directly.
- No middlemen between the information and the information security means less chance of misplacement, manipulation and misfiling.
4. Frees Up Resources
If you empty a file room and reduce the number of clerks/assistants you need – as suggested above in point #1 – you convert income-depleting expenses into income-producing resources.
- Hire another sales person; add another doctor; buy another production machine; build an addition to your lab; etc.
- You’re adding resources while, at the same time, using the same amount of resources – whether it’s capital, equipment or personnel.
- It’s simple economics, really: Light the fire under your revenue by doing/making/growing more and using/losing/wasting less.
5. Restores Order and Control
A document management software with workflow automation lets you put the proper controls in place to ensure both efficiency and compliance.
- A workflow management system shows who has viewed a document, when they viewed it and how they changed it.
- With check-in and check-out functionality, you block people from editing when it’s not the time nor their place to edit.
- Digital workflow software delivers documents exactly where they should go and exactly when they need to get there.
- Is your workflow engine rife with compliance hiccups? Automatically enforce record retention policies to keep up with compliance requirements.
