Help! Is Document Management Right for Your Business?
In today’s business world, companies are asking themselves how they might cut costs while improving efficiency to increase the bottom line. What most companies are not looking at would be the time and expense it takes to truly manage information.
When we think of document management, we immediately think about converting paper documents to digital documents. However, that is only part of the challenge because information comes in a variety of flavors. Email, file servers, cloud solutions, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, to name a few, all contain vital pieces of information needed to run a business but are also part of the problem. According to Gartner, employees spend an average of 18 minutes to locate each business document¹, resulting in a loss of 21.3% of organization’s total productivity². Couple the loss of productivity with other factors such as increased server farms for storage, risk of outdated versions of documents, data loss, and security breaches, it begs the question of how might we fix this problem.
So how do I know a document management solution is right for my business? Ask yourself these 5 questions:
- Do you have to search multiple systems to find information (i.e. email, filing cabinet, “My Documents,” ERP)?
- Do you have latest document version conflicts (i.e. not sure the last email attachment had the updates)?
- Has someone inadvertently deleted or made changes to your files?
- Have you lost a file due to misplacement or hard drive crash?
- Have you recreated a lost document?
A document management system (DMS) can enhance collaboration and increase the speed of decision making by simplifying the ability to search, retrieve, and archive information. By utilizing a DMS, companies are improving efficiency by 30%³ and realizing a 400% ROI in just 5 years*.
I ask you, can you afford to NOT explore a document management system for your business?
¹Gartner, ²IDC, ³AIIM, *IDC