The 3 Biggest Risks Your Organization Faces and How Web-Based Document Management Insures Against Them
Managing information effectively is perhaps the number one challenge your business faces every day. Whether you run a large or small organization, information management is the key to success and survival, especially in these uncertain economic times.
Since business information is found, for the most part, in the form of documents or records of some type, organizations that have already adopted true online document management have a significant competitive advantage over those that still rely heavily on manually based paper processes. Not having a viable document management system that’s geared for future growth and sustainability presents three key business risks:
1) Information Loss Due To Natural or Man-Made Disaster:
Imagine if one or more of your office locations were destroyed in fire, flood, or hurricane? What if your company was vandalized or broken into and business critical information and data were severely compromised? How would you explain and provide services to your valuable customers? Could you continue to operate without missing a beat 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, leases, employee applications and personnel files, or accounting and financial records are always protected and secure, yet fully accessible when needed.
In the event 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 documents and records in seconds; facilitating your business’s continuity and future sustainability.
2) Time and Expense Losses:
There is no way around it -- processing and retaining paper archives is simply too time-consuming and labor intensive in the long term--period.
Paper is expensive to buy and even more costly to store securely in unsightly and space-hogging steel cabinets or warehouse in off-site facilities. Not only is it difficult to retrieve information from a physical document in a timely manner, it carries with it a range of tasks, leading to subsequent project delays and cost overruns.
Online document management allows users to instantly access all documents from their desk, even if located remotely or internationally. Documents can be captured, imported, 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 incredible amounts of staff time, which can be better spent on more worthy business goals.
By improving real-time collaboration and communication, lowering overhead expenses, and shrinking “time-to-market”, transitioning your organization to a cost-effective web-based document management solution is an important step toward increasing production and profits.
3) Non-Compliance with Legal Requirements:
Using a safe and secure web-based document management platform, (not a "drop your files" in a network folder or virtual box out on the web) makes meeting compliance laws such as Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and HIPAA 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 producible, even in the most distressful and direst of situations.
Electronic documents are easily created, captured, transmitted, and stored securely and permanently based on your legal retention requirements. Automatic audit trails will track each user’s activity and every document that resides on the system, which provides unparalleled document control that paper -- quite simply -- just cannot match. Clearly, organizations continuing to hedge their bets by not using an electronic document management platform will have an uphill battle when it’s time to organize critical in formation so that it complies properly with all the applicable laws.
Learn more information on how easily and affordably your organization can mitigate these three significant business risks with online document management.