Why your Business requires an Effective Document Management System
Owning and managing a business is a big deal—no matter if it’s a large corporation or a start-up. To maintain, you need to know every nook and corner of your business, be it invoices, employee details, emails from the past years, or any contract details. Everything you require needs proper documentation. Be honest, do you have the time to go through every document when you are searching for a single document? No, you do not like to waste your time. All you need to do is, implementing Document control, and you are good to go. How would you do it? Simple, by installing a document management system (DMS).
What is Document Control and why it is required?
Well, document control is a difficult term, to make it more understandable let me give you an example. As mentioned earlier you cannot spare any extra time to search for a piece of paper from a large number of documents. That’s why you need to hire someone to manage all your documents in a certain way that it would be more comfortable in the time of searching. That person needs to check every record and then classify those in a bunch of folders; this is called “Document Control.”
Now you can think if you can hire someone who does the entire job for you why you would need a DMS. Because the person you will hire is also a human and it will take time for him/her too to find a document from a large number of files. ‘Paper’ definitely is a significant discovery for humankind, but storing paper documents will take more space, and can be damaged.
Why risk that? Having a DMS would be beneficial as it would reduce cost, space and you do not need to worry about the paper being damaged.
So before beginning, we all should know the definition of a Document Management System and why do we need it?
We all have cabinet or drawers in our houses; well the DMS behaves exactly like a cabinet. We can call it a digital drawer, in which every document related to a business are scanned and stored. The main objective of the Document Management system is to provide you the right document retrieving it from the storage.
Not only storage, it will provide you the security of your documents from getting damaged, and also it will classify your documents using an index, even you can run reports trusting its ability.
Let’s dig into the features and benefits of Document management system more elaborately:
Indexing content:
While using DMS, you can sort out the documents by their purpose. It will help you to create an indexing style, so it will be easy for you to find a report using only a keyword or even the description.
Damage Control:
Paper documents are not safe, as those can catch fire, have water pour over them, even worse can be stolen. The document management system provides a secure solution for storing your documents without being worried about their physical damage or improper handling.
Making report:
You can trust this document management software blindly while running a report, as it can analyze the data and compile all the required documents to generate the necessary information to create a report for you.
Monitoring access:
Your office might have individual departments which are not related to each other. So checking each other confidential documents can cause a fuss. You can monitor thoroughly to check who is using which documents.
Say no to Paper—a step to be eco-friendly:
No paper documents would save you the cost of buying paper and storing them in a cabinet or drawer. As well as going paperless would reduce paper waste, and it will be great for our environment as it will be a step to preserve trees. Therefore, I found a report of the Two Sides of North America about going paperless would save trees concept is how misleading and false.
Time- saver:
Do I need to tell you that using this system you will able to store anything quickly, and while finding any document it will hardly take any time? I’m sure you have guessed it.
Choosing the right document management system:
There are two types of DMS currently available. Here I will provide you all the details about them, choose the one according to your need. .
- On-Premise/ Self Hosted DMS– this can be installed if you want to have your server and storage. That is how you will be responsible for the maintenance, and the complete security of your data will rely upon you. So you need to do the data backup regularly. To install this, you need an IT infrastructure in your company. Mainly large companies use this on-premise DMS.
Pros:
- As you do not need to rely on others, you can control the system of your own.
- This type of DMS does not require internet, so if the internet is down, you will be able to access data.
Cons:
- This type of document management software is costly as you have to buy it in one go; there is no need to renew it every year. However, if you want to use the updated version, then you have to pay for it.
- You need maintenance to back up your data regularly because files will not be automatically saved, as it not getting saved in the cloud.
- These types of software are not compatible to run on both Mac and Windows.
- Cloud-based DMS— cloud-based document management software is hosted by the Providers, and only they can give access to your organization to store and retrieve files online. You will not need an IT team to install and maintain this type of DMS.
Pros:
- Cost effective, you need to pay monthly or annually to have access to this software. You do not need to pay extra money for the updated version.
- As it is wholly accessed online, you can have all the documents you want even you are outside of your office.
Cons:
- You need to have a internet connection; if it fails, you won’t be able to access your files.
- Whenever there’s a problem in the data center, your provider would not be able to give you access.
Disadvantages of the document management system:
There are some disadvantages while using this kind of system as well.
- Internet is not trustworthy enough, as it is the source of many criminal activities. Hackers can have access to your confidential files if they can hack into your document management system. In other prospects about protecting your company from hackers, you can found more in details here >> How Can You Protect Your Company from Hackers?
- No matter which type of DMS you are opting for, as mentioned earlier, a poor internet connection will affect your workflow, as well as you would not be able to access your documents if you have a non-functioning laptop.
- The health issue is another terrible problem. If you have to work on your laptop continuously, your eyes can be affected. Sitting on a chair for long would also give you some muscle cramp.
- Cloud base DMS have a limitation of storing data, so you need to keep that in mind.
- Some utility tools which come along with DMS can be entirely useless for you, but you still have to pay for it, which can be costly.
I have found some useful notes on disadvantages of DMS here >> Advantages & Disadvantages of Document Management System
Nothing in this world is perfect; neither is the Document management system. However many companies use this system to work with ease. Many features of this software can be useful for your business, so don’t overthink and give it a go.
