5 Quick Wins for Document Management this Year

Why You Need Document Management in 2019

Your customers, vendors, and employees need documents to be correct, easy-to-find, and secure. And paper-based or manual processes for storing documents can cause problems in relationships with your customers, vendors, and employees.

Customers don’t want to wait while employees search for documents they need. Vendors insist on prompt payment, which can be difficult to achieve when paper is involved. And employees don’t want to spend all their time managing documents manually.

That’s why you need document management in 2019.

Getting started with your document management project doesn’t need to be daunting. In fact, it’s best to get started with document management gradually. Bite-sized efforts can deliver quick—and significant—results.

Here are five quick wins that will help you actually get started with document management this year.

Quick Win #1: Capture, Store, and Retrieve

Isn’t it about time you took paper out of the picture? If paper is a factor in your organization’s approach to documents, this is the best spot for you to get started. Simply turn your paper documents into digital documents that are much easier to manage and retrieve.

Instead of filing a paper document in a filing cabinet, scan it into your system. With the right document management system, you can properly index the document so it’s easy to retrieve at any time. Then, instead of filing that document in a filing cabinet, you can shred and recycle it.

Managing digital documents is much easier for employees, plus it helps you improve service to customers and vendors.

Quick Win #2: Integrate with Business Systems

Your document management project in 2019 might need to go beyond just the paper. Many businesses rely on multiple systems to manage documents and data. Enterprise resource planning systems (ERPs) are often involved. If your company utilizes business systems, it’s a natural next step to link your business systems with your documents.

With the right integration, employees across your organization can stay in the ERP and access a document without leaving the screen. This makes it much simpler for employees to do their jobs, and it makes it easy to keep information up-to-date. Plus, if a customer calls asking about an order, it takes mere seconds to look it up.

Quick Win #3: Offer Remote Access and Approvals

Today’s business world is increasingly global. If your organization has offices across the world, country, or even across your state, it’s a great next step to offer remote access and approvals in your processes.

Your document management project in 2019 should think globally. Employees across all offices need access to the same documents. Electronic routing and sign-off is an important feature of managing documents electronically. The right document management system makes it easy to give access to documents across locations. Authorized employees can thus view, route, and sign off on documents digitally—no matter which office they are in.

Quick Win #4: Opt for a Digital Mailroom

Your company might already opt for digital documents—but that doesn’t mean the companies you work with will. Some vendors send invoices and other communication in the mail (or even by fax). If this is true for your company, then opting for a digital mailroom will give you a quick (and much needed) win.

A digital mailroom is the process of receiving and digitizing documents before they are delivered to a department. When a document arrives, it can be captured digitally and managed electronically through its entire lifecycle. You can route it to the appropriate department for processing and approval. This makes it much easier for your employees. Your accounts payable (AP) department, for instance, could receive an invoice digitally as soon as it arrives. The invoice could be routed digitally for approval and get approved in time to take advantage of a vendor discount for early payment.

Quick Win #5: Capture Documents Easily

Capturing documents doesn’t need to be hard. You can make it easy for your employees with the right level of automated capture for you. 

There are a lot of ways to capture documents. There’s scanning, indexing, and even advanced OCR. There are paper documents, faxed documents, and emailed documents that all need to be captured. With the right document management system, you’ll be able to pick the level of capture that makes the most sense for your business.