Five benefits of document management for midsize companies

When you ask employees at a midsize company what they hope to gain from implementing digital document management, and then find out how they implemented solution, most of them say they got more value than they initially expected.

Here are results of a recent study by Bitkom research group on effectiveness of enterprise content management (ECM) for mid-sized companies.

Five benefits companies get from implementing an enterprise content management (ECM) or document management solution:

1) Faster mobile access to business information (90% of respondents)The ability to access all business information anytime, anywhere and on any device greatly improves productivity and helps improve quality of decision making. If your company hasn't had these mobile capabilities so far, you won't know how much productivity will improve until you start using them.

To turn this productivity into ROI, companies need to develop a plan for what they will do with time saved through digital document management. For example, if document management eliminates manual tasks, freeing up 30 to 60 minutes per employee per day, how do you plan to use that time to increase revenue and improve efficiency?

If you have a clear plan for reallocating time and resources to more efficient activities, such as generating revenue or reducing risk, it's relatively easy to see how important an investment in records management is to success of your business. But it's hard to determine value of your investment if you don't know what to do with time you save on document management.

2) Prevent loss of documents and information (75%)If your company does not provide information in a timely manner and does not ensure information security, this will expose your business to various risks and penalties. . Document management solutions significantly reduce these risks for midsize companies by improving document retention, access, and security.

3) Reduce Document Processing Costs (60%).If you rely on paper, invoicing and other document-based processes take a lot of time and effort from your employees. A well-designed document management solution automates these tedious processes with digital workflows, reducing processing costs and freeing up staff time.

4) Reduce Compliance Burden (52%)Maintaining compliance with industry and government regulations is difficult and costly for companies that rely on paper documents to prepare for audits. long and painful process. How email is managede-mail and files is a major compliance barrier for most mid-sized companies.

In order to find documents when they are needed, they must first be properly stored, so employees should store email and files easily. If document storage is painful (or even impossible) and your employees don't store documents properly, you won't be able to find documents you need in an audit.

Email is often biggest problem because people tend to leave important information and documents in their inboxes instead of storing them properly. For example, when employees email offers or contracts to customers, they often leave offers and contracts in their email accounts. If this person leaves your organization, you will be left with 500,000 incoming emails and will not be able to receive these offers and contracts.

Many companies do not have an email management policy or a simple mechanism for storing these documents, which creates compliance issues. Another issue is that when employees save files to desktops instead of servers, those files can be copied incorrectly, increasing risk of non-compliance.

With digital document management, preparing for an audit takes much less time and effort, because you can quickly get right documents and prepare them for auditors. There is also less risk of being penalized for non-compliance since all of your information can be discovered at any time.

5) Improving process efficiency and cost control (47%).Most of cost of business processes is related to wasted time on documents and other information between individuals and departments. For example, a typical accounts payable approval process can take two to three weeks, with most of that time spent on invoicing.

First, someone has to open a paper invoice at front desk, and then submit invoice to accounting department. The accountant then forwards invoice to appropriate project manager and then to financial director. Eventually, invoice is sent back to accountant and paid.

By implementing a digital workflow with a document management solution, invoice approval process can be completed in two to three days instead of two to three weeks. You may find that your accounting department only needs two people to process 100 invoices instead of three, and you make fewer mistakes. This process efficiency results in added value for organization, including customer satisfaction.

This increased efficiency opens up access to various additional benefits, such as faster cash flow and access to early payment discounts. For example,To calculate your ROI on improving your accounts payable process, you can look at average percentage of early payment rebates you've previously received and compare it to rebates you get from streamlined digital workflows. Calculating these savings can help you determine your ROI.

Here are five areas where document management delivers most value and is cost effective. These valuable elements form basis of cost-benefit analysis when you decide whether records management makes sense for you.

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