When you run a business, there is seemingly a form for everything. Each employee has dozens of forms that you have to store to stay compliant with countless laws and regulations. Tax forms, insurance forms, identification copies, compensation documents, and so many other pieces of paper are attached to every single person at the company. However, for most businesses, that represents just a small portion of your total paperwork.
With all of this paper to be responsible for, it’s reasonable to want a better way to deal with managing all of this information and eliminate hassles. That better way exists, and it is called document management.
What Is Document Management?
Document management is all about digital information. The process covers a lot of ground. In essence, it includes everything necessary to digitize documents, track them, store them, analyze them, manage them, and share them. If you can think of anything else to do with a document, the management system can handle that too.
While the term is broad, it includes specific practices that are incredibly powerful for businesses of any size. Document management uses automation to make the capture, storage, and access of files easier, faster, and more secure. This reduces the amount of time and labor you have to invest into these actions.
With the use of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), you can build digitization into basic practices. Receipts, for instance, can be automatically digitized and filed when the API sees that a transaction occurred. There are many other instances where automation tools can save information, tag it for easy reference, back it up, secure it, and share it with any party that needs access to it.
Aside from automation, document management aims to reduce the total amount of paper in your filing system. Simultaneously, it aims to improve your costs and returns on investment. It builds scalability into your systems by incorporating onsite and offsite resources. It brings ease of use into the equation and helps employees work more efficiently. It can even empower employees to create better documents and make more meaningful use of your information stores.
How Will It Solve Your Paper Problems?
Solving paper problems is one of the primary functions of document management, and it does this by looking at several key processes. First, it can digitize all of your paper files. Through the use of photocopiers, smartphones, and plenty of other devices, you can make PDF (or other formats) files for every single paper document you keep. Those digital files can then be automatically sorted and managed through the software system. This eliminates the need for at least some (if not all) of your paperwork. The inefficient paper filing is replaced with low-maintenance digital storage, and you are set free of this monumental burden.
Document management can also reduce the need for paper files in the first place. With creation tools, documents can exist entirely in a digital space. The creation tools allow for more adaptable documents that are easier to handle and ultimately provide more meaningful or accurate data. When this happens, the automation tools add the digital documents to your library, and you don’t have to capture anything manually.
Perhaps more importantly, document management cuts the labor needed to handle paper information. Filing paper documents consumes volumes of time. Meanwhile, digital filing is automatic and effectively instantaneous. The same can be said for retrieving documents—much less parsing of the information and gleaning value from it.
Powerful analytical tools that accompany your document management solution are possibly the most valuable part of the system. You can have constantly updated data and analytics that make full use of your entire digital library.
Is It Time for You to Turn to Document Management?
You can see how document management solves a large number of problems related to paper filing processes. A document management solution can also optimize and improve the digital filing that you already have. So, answering this question is easier when you first summarize a few additional questions.
Do you like improving your workflows? With minimal training, you can move your crew onto a more efficient system that solves problems you may not have even identified. Document management is invaluable for removing bottlenecks in business processes. This improves your labor spending, but it also leads to a happier workplace.
Do you want better returns on your filing systems? Any filing system is going to cost you money. However, you’ll get a better return on your investment when you go with a digital system as opposed to a paper system. Paper filing simply cannot scale, and you have to keep investing in it. A document management solution can grow with you, so you don’t have to keep buying more of the same thing.
Do you like having access to powerful analytics? If you want to compete with all of the other businesses that are investing in big data, you have to do your part. Digitizing your documents makes it so much easier to track information, and the software comes with analytical tools that can help you in countless ways.
How do you feel about improving document security? Document management systems use the latest security protocols and techniques. They reduce the risk of you becoming the victim of a hack or something worse. It will also provide you with robust backups that are virtually disaster-proof.
If any of those sounds good, then it’s time for you to invest in document management. We have the perfect solution to fit your Houston business. Contact On Demand today and we’ll go over your needs to help your business succeed. It all starts with a simple conversation.