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For many, life has drastically changed due to COVID-19—and it will stay that way for quite some time. Many businesses were hit hard with an unexpected loss of revenue and drastic changes in procedures that, for some, have reduced efficiency. As we come out of this initial pandemic period, it’s important that businesses take the hardships they’ve encountered during the pandemic and turn them into lessons on how to improve their overall business processes.
How Digitizing Documents Became A Need, Not a Want
In the pre-COVID world, many businesses saw document management systems as something they wish they had but that they couldn’t add to their existing processes for one reason or another. Once employees were forced to work from home, file sharing across the hall became impossible—and digital document management systems suddenly became a desperate need.
If you as a business are still on the fence about switching to a digital document management system, ask yourself a few questions:
- How much extra am I paying for the space to store my physical documents? Don’t forget to factor in the time and labor costs of maintaining and utilizing this space.
- How quickly can you access a specific file right when you need it?
- Do you have plans in place for recovering paper files that are lost in an emergency or due to human error?
A careful analysis of your current processes may reveal just how much of your budget is wasted on your current storage methods. Some businesses irrationally fear the upfront cost of a document management system, which for many is a one-time fee, and don’t realize that they’re actually spending more than that fee regularly in order to maintain their current filing system.
In addition to helping manage and work through unexpected events like the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re giving you four more reasons why implementing a document management system is a need for your business and what you’ll gain from making the change now.
1. Gain Better Visibility Into Processes and Strategy
Reporting can be transformed in just a few clicks. No more manual calculations while sorting through paper—a document management system gives you the ease of finding files quickly and organizing them for streamlined analysis. Additionally, a document management system can help you improve your workflows and document life cycles to find gaps in your strategy and improve those processes.
2. Access Documents Wherever, Whenever
The amount of time that your employees waste on retrieving, returning, and sharing documents in a physical storage system is expensive. Many businesses don’t realize that these kinds of daily annoyances could be impeding their growth.
The ability to access an important document when you need it is essential for workplace productivity. With just a few clicks, digital document management systems provide your employees access to every document that they need. And with a quick trip to the printer, they can even have an additional paper copy—except now, they don’t have to make an extra trip to the filing cabinet.
3. Storage Scalability
A file cabinet only has so much space. Digital storage, on the other hand, is scalable and grows with your needs, no matter how big your business gets. You may think that multiple file cabinets could meet your needs just fine, but that’s simply not true. The more that your paper storage increases, the more that you have to spend to maintain that space, and the longer it takes to find the documents you need. Digital storage is much more affordable and accessible than a physical file cabinet in your office or warehouse.
4. Digitizing Files is Safe and Secure
No matter what specific security protocols you have in place, you can still store data electronically without compromising your security. With cyber security protocols put into place by a knowledgeable system administrator, digitizing your files can be a secure and safe way to organize your documents.
Beyond being expensive to maintain, paper-based document management systems are also risky. They can be easily destroyed by human error or a natural disaster, never to be recovered. Digital files are much more secure online and run a substantially lower risk of being lost or destroyed. Plus, digital files are typically backed up into a separate secure location once they are placed into the document management system, making them easily recoverable from that backup in the unlikely event they were damaged or lost in the document management system.
How to Get Started
Finding the right digital document management system means finding the right provider to work with. Take a look at our blog on how to choose the right document management system provider if you’d like more information on how to begin your search.
Contact us today if you’d like to begin your search with us and use Optix, a document management and workflow solution that’s easy to implement, simple to use, and backed by superior support for every single client.
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