Your Document Management Knowledge Center

As we’ve discussed very recently, it’s a burden to take everything that’s in its place (and find the things that have long been out of place) and completely reorganize it to fit the contours of its new home. The benefits are obvious, but establishing the process that truly takes advantage of them is difficult. But step one is different for different companies.

While some need assistance implementing DMS, others need help simply getting all documents in the same place. If you’ve managed documents traditionally for a long time and want to adopt DMS, the idea of taking all that paper out and having to figure out how to digitize it is intimidating and daunting. We started there as well, so we know how to go paperless and easily set up a clean record system.

Imagine you’ve just signed the lease on a new home. And not just a new home, a better one. Nicer location, bigger space, better school system, immaculate golf course around the corner. It’s all right within your reach.

And then you realize: you have to move things. Everything. Where do you even start?

The hardest part is always getting started. Our clients take a giant leap in the right direction when they adopt a document management system, but often don’t know what to do to set it in motion.

If you have a ton of different types of documents floating around, different versions, duplicates, etc., all haphazardly saved in the moment and spread across multiple folders (and sometimes multiple users), you need to know the best practices to maximizing the value of your DMS. Take these document management tips with you:

You’ve probably been through this at least once: a company spends a lot of energy telling you about all the benefits its services offer, and you convert to a customer.

Then you come across a technical error, or you have a question, or you need access to some important info.

But when you contact them, they make you wait, they run through a script, they make you wait some more, they refer you to a bunch of different places and they come back with just enough of an answer to calm you down until the problem inevitably rears its head again.

As the old adage goes, “There are two rules for success in life—Rule 1: Don't tell people everything you know. Rule 2: …” However, I know that document management isn’t as simple as some people would assume it is, and I’d be doing you a disservice if I didn’t pass along the knowledge to get a consistent system up and running. And consistency is key to an effective document management system. Consider this a miniature document management consultation.

Sometimes, the survival of your company is riding on whether or not you can produce a specific document or file. Or whether you’ve destroyed that document or file in a timely manner. And sometimes, it’s not up to you to decide when that is needed. The more complex your operations are, the more you must adhere to industry regulations. Without a clear audit trail in place for organizations such as the HHS, the SEC, or FINRA, your daily operations could come to a dead halt, and your company held liable and subject to penalties for non-compliance.

If you’re still keeping your papers and records in file cabinets and shared hard drives, chances are you’ve kept it that way because it’s the status quo. It’s the only method you know, and it seems to work just fine. One of the most dangerous things about the status quo, however, is that you grow accustomed to the untold amounts of money and time you’re losing.

One of the key recurring questions I hear from people trying to figure out how to organize their files is: “What exactly is document management?” and it’s often followed by, “Isn’t that just DropBox with more features?”

Technically, you can absolutely use DropBox (along with Google Drive, OneDrive, iCloud, etc.) to backup and store your documents. It’s a fair question, but it’s rooted in a consumer context; not a corporate context. If you want to make sure your personal photos, videos, music, and documents are safe and sound, you don’t really need a DMS. You can create and organize an intricate system of folders on any cloud storage platform.

Businesses looking to gain an advantage over their competitors know that providing excellent customer service is the defining factor that puts them ahead.

They take the time and invest in their customer service systems and automate their business processes to ensure everything runs smoothly and efficiently. It could be as simple as being able to retrieve information faster than their competitors, and being able to do so doesn’t go unnoticed by potential customers.

For businesses and organizations, there is a growing and ever present need to protect documents and information from a catastrophic data loss. Failing to do so could cause more than just a lawsuit - it could lead to bankruptcy and bring your business to an end. 

On the surface, the process of an Accounts Payable (AP) department seems simple enough: invoices come in from suppliers and the AP department makes sure they’re approved, processed, paid, and documented in financial records. Unfortunately, there are two main factors that often over complicate this process - resulting in a mess of inefficiencies that weigh down the organization’s bottom line: Paper and Manual Accounts Payable Processes.