6 Reasons Why Your Firm Should Invest in a Document ManagementSystem

If you run a business, you know how much paper your company can produce. Statisticians have indicated that an average employee uses around 10,000 sheets of paper every year. To put that into perspective, consider that 4 billion trees are cut down every year for use in paper production. Almost one-fifth of landfill waste is comprised of paper.

If those figures are still difficult to visualize, consider the book trilogy, The Hunger Games. Printing 5.5 million copies of those three books requires cutting down every single tree in Central Park in New York City. That is a LOT of paper.

But why is it that businesses use so much paper? It’s believed that 70% of total office waste is paper, and what is worse is that as much as 30% of print jobs are never collected from the printer.

To make matters even worse, 45% of that paper ends up in the trash at the end of the day. While some companies have taken efforts to create individualized passwords for the printer and copy-machine access to try and encourage employees to print and copy more responsibly, that strategy has proven rather non-effective. Further, in an economy and workplace environment that is trying to become more digital-savvy and environmentally friendly, organizations need to make efforts to cut down on most, if not all, paper requirements.

Today, more and more businesses are turning towards document management systems (DMS) to enable the reduction in paper use, as well as to increase employee productivity and office efficiency. Check out this below for the six reasons why your firm should invest in a DMS.

1. Reduction in overhead expenses – Document management systems free up labor hours and overhead costs by 30 – 40%. A well-designed system makes it easier for you to leverage your computer to create and access any documents that you need and can reduce the amount of stationery and office paper that you need to keep on hand at the office. This can then indirectly free up office space which can be used to house more employees.
2. Faster response times – When employees can easier locate important documents, it results in increased efficiency as well as faster response times to your customers. Your customers (and prospective customers) appreciate the responsiveness, organization, quality, and easy communication, and view these as admirable traits in a company that they do business with. This means stronger client relations, which leads to a stickier business relationship (and in this case, a sticky relationship is a very good thing).
3. Easier tax and accounting procedures – When your financial documents are all stored in a DMS, it makes life much easier for your accountant during tax season. Accuracy and on-time tax filing is critical, and when you take the time to ensure all of your critical documents such as bank statements, expense reports, and receipts, etc., are in the DMS, your accountant will be able to quickly locate and reconcile the necessary information to complete your taxes. A DMS can also benefit the payroll process by ensuring that all payroll information is easily located.
4. Security – Business leaders want to know that their information is safe and secure. DMS systems offer sophisticated security features that can reduce your risk for compliance and regulatory issues. You will also find that it is easier and safer to transmit information through a DMS than through email or physical document distribution. Your data will be protected to the maximum level possible with bank-grade security, encrypted backups, and additional security measures such as two-factor authentication, complex passwords, and controlled user-based permissions. If you want to learn more about protecting your documents, read this article on The Guardian which I think valuable.
5. Support of company growth and profitability – The efficiency and effectiveness of a paperless office can be augmented when used in conjunction with other productivity tools such as workflow management system. Secure paperless offices see serious decreases in cost, turnaround time, training and onboarding periods, and better performance towards key performance indicators (KPIs). This means that a business can do more with less time and less money.
6. Better collaboration amongst employees – When documents are stored in a DMS and employees are all given the proper authority to access what they need for their job, it fosters an environment of better collaboration. In a paper environment, critical information is often sitting on one piece of paper in a cabinet somewhere or on someone’s desk and is not available or accessible for others. In fact, 7.5% of documents get lost, and another 3% get misfiled, which means these documents may never be located. Not only that, after a document is pulled out of a paper file for viewing, it is often never re-filed (and left to wither away on someone’s desk) or is later misfiled into the big void. On occasion, these documents can include tribal knowledge that would benefit all employees, if only they knew it existed. With DMS systems, especially those that provide the ability to create digital PDFs that are organized through optical character recognition (OCR).

In addition to these six benefits, DMS systems offer several intangible benefits. A best-in-class DMS system can provide you with flexibility, peace of mind, and a competitive edge. In business, time is very valuable. We’ve all heard the common phrase that time is money, and it is so true. Time-saving is a clear and definite benefit of a DMS system, and that time saving means increased productivity.

More efficient and more expeditious document retrieval can boost staff morale which in turn will increase client satisfaction, as employee and customer satisfaction are very much related. Also, document management solutions are scalable to meet the changing needs of any enterprise.

You may visit this website, they have one goal, and that is to make life easier for business professionals. To learn more, contact at 801-722-7098, or via the applicable email address on their website. To stay up to date on the latest and greatest on going paperless and how to incorporate a DMS into your business, follow them on Facebook page or on Twitter.