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Top reasons to use a document management software

Written by Mario Zules on March 27, 2020

The Data era is fully established by now, and it has completely changed the way every industry performs. All of a sudden, you can now track data creation and editing, vast amounts of performance statistics, and forecasts, and it all comes with a rate of document production like never seen before.

The data-readiness of major companies in different industries is what defines their success and ability to shift swiftly according to their needs. This creates the necessity of managing our digital assets efficiently.

Today we have a vast array of document management systems to choose from, and it’s something we should look forward to in order to keep up with the current paradigm.

It is essential to tell the difference between self-hosted and cloud-hosted document management systems.

A self–hosted software is an excellent investment, particularly for small businesses. It comes with the benefit of lower overall cost reduced to a one–time fee payment type of deal, which usually ranges around one to three thousand dollars, according to the number of users for whom you will enable the system to be used. It’s an overall great investment for small businesses, but you will have to rely on your own company’s servers and the amount of storage they can hold.

With a cloud-hosted system, a third-party provider will host the software and grant you access to it through any device that has access to an internet connection. The benefits of this system are enormous, particularly for larger companies, considering you won’t need a specialist to install and run the software. You will have access possible from anywhere at any time; you will have an automatic external backup, and document disaster prevention and control.

In any case, there are several other reasons to improve your business with a digital repository, so here are four reasons to use document management software.

Go paperless!

Right now, there are only certain cases (if any) in which having a business run on paper is more beneficial than going all-out digital.

Switching from physical to digital documents on a company has a significant impact on cost reductions. Several costs like printing, printer maintenance jobs, mailing, and even expenses from expanding offices, are some of the costs that get massively reduced by going paperless and using a digital management system to handle digital data.

There’s even a considerable precedent done by Estonia, which has consistently relied on digital assets and digital management systems between citizens and governmental administrative offices to increase their productivity. At this point, there are over 600 e-government services available to the entire population of the country. Everything from tax returns, to voting, has been digitalized and produced in such a way that it holds remarkable improvements in efficiency, while also increasing their information security.

Finally, there’s also the occasional disaster scenario: fires, floods, leaks, and occasional document disposals by human error. The reliability that a digital cloud document management system provides includes the preparedness for disaster recovery.

Exploit your resources!

According to a 2012 white paper by IDC, they found workers and IT professionals who deal with documents for a company, were spending an average of 2.5 hours per day searching for files.

The loss of productivity caused by this is only exacerbated by the lack of motivation left on employees, whose daily activities turn to repetitive and dull tasks. Their research also stated that companies of around 1,000 employees could waste up to $5 million per year due to the time they spend duplicating information that already exists within the enterprise.

Inefficient document search, turnover, or approval processes prevent employees from using their full potential. Several psychoanalytic studies have shown that humans would rather do complex, meaningful jobs than doing tedious tasks, even at the expense of having more difficult or time-consuming duties.

There’s also the physical space, and it’s psychological influence on employee morale.

If your company produces even a small amount of documents, let’s say around 50 relevant documents a day, considering you need to store them for about ten years, and only taking labor days into account, it all adds up to 130.000 stored documents. The amount of physical space and visual overload is made by filing cabinets, and their vast amount of documents can be immediately reduced to zero, by using a simple cloud document management system, with all of its collateral benefits.

Keep your sensitive information safe!

Another major point in current industries is information security. Now and then, we hear about a data breach from all types of companies. The Varonis Data Lab did a global data risk report based on 785 random reports from different companies. The data risk report found that on average, every employee had access to over 17 million files and they stated 53% of the companies discovered more than 1000 sensitive documents exposed to security breaches, without the proper data permissions structure and security management.

This data provided key findings regarding information no longer needed for daily operations that needed to be disposed of earlier on, sensitive information about users, and ghost accounts that should have been eliminated long before the analysis.

Some of the top Document Management Systems use the Spring Framework. This is, in a broad sense, the most critical layer of document security – Spring Security – which centralizes management of access allowed to users based on their credentials. In other words, it enables you to grant or revoke access to specific documents at any time, even during certain hours, if needed, or if you want to take it further, you can also automate those permissions.

This document security system can be determined either by electronic signatures or by restricting access to particular users for download after the selection and proper marking of sensitive files have been done by the staff, usually aided by the DMS provider.

These security measurements make it easier to do data back-ups and planning for emergencies, especially if you are using a cloud-hosted system. Digital file backups can provide you an alternate storage repository in the cloud or an off-site server regardless of the state of your printed documents, which can be easily destroyed by calamities.

Make your own app!

One of the most exciting developments a company can make is to develop its own app with the help of a Document Management Software provider.

To start, it is an investment that immediately creates an asset and diminishes your liabilities, and consequently, it increases your enterprise’s net–worth.

By building a document management app tailored to your own company’s needs, you can create a faster and more responsive way to deal with your specific purposes, focused on your business logic. The app will have a look and feel you want your business to convey, as well as help you boost your brand identity.

Tech support from the best Document Management System providers can help you handle your content, simplify your workflow, and increase your productiveness through app development.

Takeaway

You can make better decisions and increase your productivity by gathering your assets into an integrated system.

While building a business has many risks, and their success can be quickly affected by changing conditions, sound business models rely on their ability to change with these conditions. Risk cannot be avoided, and in fact, it’s something businesses look forward to since it provides enterprises with the opportunity to reach further ahead. Still, a well-managed company knows risk can be diminished through organization, analysis, and forecast.

The implementation of an integrated local or cloud document management software, allows you to deploy changes faster, and to intervene processes to increase the likelihood of success.