Your Document Management Knowledge Center

If you’re like most people, you’ve got some stacks of paper sitting on your desk awaiting your attention. But you’re super busy, and pretty soon you’re surrounded by a variety of piles and stacks – enough to make your blood pressure rise when you walk into the office.

In situations like this, confusion easily abounds and your productivity slowly decreases. You’re not sure where to find things, what’s important and what’s not, or where you should even put the stuff.

It’s easy for important documents to get misplaced or put at the bottom of the stack. Worst of all, this can be a huge liability for your company as important workflows halt or critical documents get lost or stolen.

Think putting all your documents “in the cloud” will solve your frustration in trying to find and collaborate on documents?

Think again.

There are a plethora of solutions out there that allow you to put your documents online for all to view and share. (All those with access rights, that is!) It’s pretty simple, really.

However, for most companies – especially those with multiple branches and locations – having folders in the cloud is just one teeny tiny part of the solution. By focusing on that alone, you could very well be just moving your problems from one platform to another.

Here are 4 document processes every company should clearly define before they do anything else:

Most of the companies we talk to have four common problems that dramatically decrease their operational efficiency:

1. Documents are mismanaged and stored all over the place (never in one central location).
2. Limited or no access to documents when they really need them, especially when they're out of the office.
3. Employees spend a good portion of their day searching for documents and pushing them from one person to the next.
4. There are so many versions, they never know which one to use.

Eventually, the mess becomes so frustrating that they come to the conclusion that they need a new system for storing their files. Dropbox and Google Drive are usually the first place they look, because at least their files will be stored in the cloud and easily accessible, right?

If you like wasting time with inefficient processes and you welcome mismanaged mayhem, then a real document management system with powerful workflow software, records management and email integration is not for you.

You like things the way they are, no matter how broken down, beat up and tapped out your workflow engine is. We know what you’re thinking, more or less:

Process improvement. That’s a phrase that sends shivers down both managers’ and employees’ spines. Why? People – well, most people – are adverse to change. Whether it’s a fear of the unknown, a touch of laziness or a stubborn attachment to the status quo, a change in the way things get done doesn’t bode well with most individuals – not at first, at least. But if you don’t commit to improvement, you can’t commit to success.

Do you need a boost of process improvement?

Here’s how you know if your processes are underperforming: