In these ambiguous economic times, Managing information effectively is considered one of the biggest challenges your business faces every day. Whatever the size of organization you run, information management is and will be the key to success and survival. Since business information is found, usually, in the form of records or documents of some type, organizations that have already used true online document management have a substantial competitive advantage over those that still rely massively on manually based paper processes.  Not having a viable document management system (DMS) that’s oriented for future growth and sustainability, presents three key business risks:

 1) Information Disaster caused by Natural or Man-Made Disasters:
Imagine if one or more of your office locations were destroyed in fire, flood! What if your company was ruined, or broken into and business critical information and data were severely jeopardized?  How would you explain and provide services to your valuable clients? Could you continue to operate without disruption or would they have to call on your competitor? 

Although these are certainly worst-case scenarios, they are not uncommon.  Your business, just like your family, must have a plan to be prepared for and power through these types of situations.

One of the best ways to protect your business information is to adopt an online document management platform to help manage paper-based documents as well as digital files. This ensures that all your business information, whether operational or industry-related documentation, insurance policies, contracts, employee applications and personnel files, or accounting and financial records are always protected and secure, yet fully accessible when needed.

In the time of a disaster, online document management software enables continued, yet highly secure access to your documents through a convenient portal via any Internet connection.  Only authorized users can access securely encrypted records and documents in seconds; facilitating your business’s continuity and future sustainability.

 2) Money and Time wastage:
There is no way around it -- processing and storing paper archives is simply too time-consuming and labor intensive especially when volumes are significant.

Paper is expensive to buy and even more costly to store securely in unsightly and large steel cabinets or warehouse in off-site facilities.  It is not only difficult to retrieve information from a physical document in a timely manner, but it also carries with it a range of tasks, leading to subsequent project delays and cost overruns.

Online document management enables users to access all documents instantly from their desk, even if remotely located.  Documents can be captured, linked, shared and collaborated on, stored and retrieved with a few clicks of the mouse and keyboard.  Documents are indexed as they go into the system allowing the user to search index values or do keyword searching for fast retrieval. This saves big amounts of staff time, which can be better spent on more worthy business tasks.

 3) Legal Requirements:
Using a secure and safe web based document management platform, (not “dropping your files" in a network folder or virtual box out on the web) makes meeting Legal Requirements easier and more organized.  These requirements and others mandate that compliance records are stored in an organized fashion so they are always secure, yet immediately accessible and retrievable, even in the most distressful situations.

Electronic documents are easily created, captured and stored securely and permanently based on your legal retention requirements.  Automatic audit trails will track each user's activity for every document that resides on the system, which provides unparalleled document control that the manual process quite simply cannot provide.  Clearly, organizations not using an electronic document management platform will have a hard battle when it’s time to organize critical information so that it complies properly with all the applicable laws.

See also:       DocuWare Web Client - Web-Based Document Management with Maximum Comfort

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