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Implementing a DMS in the new pandemic conditions

 Written by Igor Grgur, OpenKM Serbia staff member on 12 March 2021 

The necessity of implementing a document management system in the new pandemic conditions and work from home

It is not easy to find any sector or team in a company of any type or size, which does not need to rely on documents during daily operations. The regulated company has regulated management of documents in several aspects like systematization of documents, access rights, safety and security, availability and disaster recovery, audit control, and fulfilment of internal or external regulations, to mention only some aspects of a regulated organization. All these aspects are equally crucial for business success and growth. However, the current situation is that many companies neglected some of those aspects and did not fully implemented them or have not yet adopted any serious document management solution.

In today's digital transformation era of business, which abounds in multimedia, documents, and other content tend to increase in the amount and use of most employees. Consequently, the prerequisites for the company's success and growth are significantly impacted by the strategic arrangement of repositories and management of digital content and resources and competitive business processes. To remind, these digital resources are most often:

• Word documents,
• PDF scanned documents,
• Excel spreadsheets and the like,
• e-mails,
• presentations and advertising materials,
• photographs and drawings, AutoCAD 3D assets or similar,
• video materials, multimedia materials from webinars and conferences, audio files.

Doing work outside the employer's premises, or more popularly working from home, has become commonplace for many companies.

Staff, following the provisions of permitted working hours, state of emergency, curfew, strictly defined working conditions and health maintenance of employees, collective agreements, evidence of losses in millions and billions of dollars per company, only give us an example of how drastically business conditions can change, be challenging and unpredictable.

The correct approach to such dialectical business principles is to improve the business system from multiple aspects proactively. One of them is introducing IT technologies in managing documents and other content and intensifying the use and processing of information.

A common approach to introducing document management solutions in large companies is that several of the above aspects are not introduced into the entire business. The reason is that some departments or teams rely on other partial solutions, according to the logic of "good enough" mode, for example of using Google Drive, One Drive, or some similar services. The company becomes exposed to security risks and the absence of efficient audit and control, measurability of who accessed which document. The ease and completeness of document review and related document review in such conditions are not even close to what they should be or could be with a severe document management system implemented throughout the company.

On the other hand, smaller companies often find "good enough" solutions as the main one, such as the Google mentioned above Drive or One Drive, which allows them to exchange and work in virtual teams on some documents in specific sectors, but still do not improve their business. They practically do with this approach because they are heading toward a growing disorder and inconsistency, limiting their growth potential with outdated business processes and wrong organization of work, silos of information, slowness, and confusion in work. Such working conditions frustrate employees, associates, and clients, aggravating the proper focus on developing their organization and business processes. The consequences of such work are higher costs, lower productivity, and weaker competitiveness, as we mentioned previously a reduction in the use of that business's real potential.

For remote workers concept, the company should provide timely collaboration on easy and fast documents and the best security, control over who accesses documents, when and how they use documents, and conclude valuable information? The creation of new documents from different sectors or teams should be editable, systematized, and immediately visible to other teams and employees with access approval.

The OpenKM document management solution ensures fulfillment of all modern aspects of document system design. It is easy to implement each element separately and to the extent that the company is ready to execute at a given time. The OpenKM system is very resilient with a range of flexibility and fine-grained functionalities during implementation, whether metadata, workflow processes, or document access approval. It is a system that is easily upgraded with rules, customizations, or external applications. The company can opt for the OpenKM Cloud or OpenKm Professional server option to support experienced OpenKM service teams. Companies with smaller budgets can opt to install the Community version of the OpenKm system and rely on OpenKM partners. Of course, a document management system is an essential tool for the successful operation of any company. Thus it is rational for a company to allocate an adequate budget to such a project according to its importance and a specific ROI.

The entire implementation and acceptance of OpenKM solutions from users and associates are facilitated and an intuitive and easy user interface, very similar to File Explorer. Every PC user is very experienced. Working in OpenKm application is no different from everyday daily work on your computer, tablet, or smartphone.

Employees working from home and the field often need to create new documents and attach them to the system in an easy and fast way. "E-document on the palm of your hand" is an application that can serve as an example of the OpenKm system's extension and allows employees to perform such tasks with tablets and phones with great ease and flexibility. To achieve such tasks, training processes are minimized or even unnecessary because employees perform them in a few clicks in addition to the classic use of their camera or file system.

From the above complexities and limitations faced by users of "good enough" solutions, we can conclude that the introduction of quality document management solutions such as OpenKM is not only a brilliant and priority choice for many companies but is also very well known for its ease of implementation, simplicity of use, the degree of acceptance by employees and stakeholders, as well as the specific ROI. Work from home and work from outside the employer's premises, which many companies have adopted due to the new pandemic conditions, is becoming with OpenKM very productive, competitive, and with a good quality of service to internal associates well as external associates and clients. OpenKm teams are always ready to discuss your particular cases and business challenges. We observe new pandemic conditions as drivers of many changes for the better, where one example is well-designed work from home.