Every business has a document management challenge and every business has
developed, over time, ways to cope with that challenge. Whether your current
document management solution involves offices around the country filled
with filing cabinets and armies of clerks, or as simple as stacks of cardboard
boxes piled around the perimeter of your office, there are affordable, realistic,
and functional solutions available to help.
To help you decide if your company has outgrown your current method of dealing
with your document management challenge, here are five simple
questions to assess your needs.
Q: Does filing, retrieving and storing paper documents consume human
and monetary resources that could be better used elsewhere?
A: If you currently have staff members that are dealing with paper filing
and duplication tasks whose time could be put to better use, then you are
missing a major opportunity. It's not uncommon to be able to shift 2/3
of resources dedicated to paper handling to other tasks after implementing
a solid document management system. On top of the time saved, a recent
Price-Waterhouse study estimated average storage, cabinet, and paper costs
to be a lifetime per-page cost of 25¢. Costs
that are completely eliminated by going digital.
Q: Does your company have compliance standards or regulatory oversight
that must be adhered to?
A: If you're a public company, Sarbanes-Oxley makes the answer an automatic
yes. But even small and medium sized, privately owned, businesses face
taxation, employment and other federal guidelines for document storage
and security. Depending on your particular specialization, your business
may also face one or more of a host of other rules and standards.
More importantly, other studies indicate that 2-4% of
all documents are misfiled and 7.5% end up completely lost, making the
possibility of non-compliance high.
Q: Is there a gap between your paper information and your enterprise
data?
A: Even after implementing business management systems like accounting and
CRM, a huge portion of your corporate knowledge still exists only
in paper form. Vendor invoices, bills, P.O.'s, quotes, fax orders, and
packing slips (to mention a few) are still filed, duplicated, passed around,
and sometimes lost. Many businesses also have repositories of technical
information or historical reports that are only available as paper at a
single geographic location - not to mention the documents stored on desktop
hard drives and personal filing cabinets. Ask any business affected by
a fire, flood, or even theft, how important this is.
Q: Do you have paper-intensive processes that create delays or lack
oversight?
A: Another study estimated that 90% of all paper documents passed around
an organization on a daily basis are merely shuffled, and that no significant
information is added or decisions made – sound familiar? It is also
said that corporate professional staff spend 40-60% of their time processing
paper. Ensuring that each step in a process is completed correctly before
being passed on can cut processing time by as much as 50%. Add the efficiencies
of completing these approvals online, without geographic barriers, and automating
a few key processes can turn into a serious competitive advantage.
Q: Do you have multiple departments, sites or remote employees that
need access to the same content?
A: If you have multiple sites or remote sales representatives, a document
management solution can almost certainly increase collaboration and speed
document processing. In some cases, the cost of physically sending packages
between sites may pay for a significant portion of the system!
If you have answered yes to even one of these questions, then implementing
a document management strategy for your business can streamline operations,
encourage cooperation, and enforce security & compliance – giving
your company a competitive advantage.
Want to find out more? Contact Laura Kasman at 215-702-8155 or lkasman@kastechco.com.
