Every business produces thousands of
documents. Invoices, memos, receipts, and the presence of all the other
essential documents creates a situation: where do you store all this paper? The
file cabinet was a good solution for this, but what happens when you fill one
up? Do you just get another? And another? And another?
Today, there are powerful paperless solutions
for businesses that allow them to manage all of their documents digitally.
Today, we will look at what solutions are necessary to take your business
paperless.
Printing
Before we get into the paperless office, we
have to mention that printing costs have continued to rise, and while they may
not seem prohibitive to the success of a business, they can force an
organization to have a massive line-item in their budget that, with the help of
technology, they simply don’t need. Not only do organizations pay for printers,
paper, and ink/toner, they also pay for staff to collate all this information
and file it away. These costs can add up over time and really hamstring a
company’s ability to have quick access to information when they need it most.
Document
Management
Document management is the act of storing
copies of the documents a business creates/receives in a cloud-based searchable
database. Not only does a document management system cut down on printing
costs, it also presents an organization the ability to save money in clerical
costs.
Make no mistake, implementing a document
management system is relatively expensive to begin with, but once the system is
in place, the only true cost is that of the recurring monthly cost of the
hosting platform. The documents your company creates are saved right into the
document management system as PDFs, while any paper documents you have to be
digitized into searchable PDFs for them to work on the system.
Document
Digitization
Over the past several years is the act of
digitizing documents has taken off. Essentially, document digitization is the
act of scanning all the documents that a company takes on to store in a
database. When a member of your staff needs a document, they simply search the
document management system that has been implemented for keywords associated
with the document in question.
Security
As with any cloud computing initiative, data
security has to be a priority for the document management system. Many useful
document management platforms come with integrated access control, while other
options utilize biometric security or two-factor authentication for system
access.
If your organization wants complete control
over your document management system, hosting your own private cloud database
is an option, but be certain that the costs of implementing a self-hosted
document management system are more substantial, and could be prohibitive to
implementing the solution.
With the document management system in place,
you can easily access all the documents you need from any location with an
Internet connection on any number of devices, speeding up operations
considerably.
If you would like more information about implementing a document management system, or you would like to talk to one of our IT experts about the type of options you have for managing your company’s data, contact Emerge today at 859-746-1030.