HOW DO YOU ORGANISE DOCUMENTS EFFECTIVELY?
One of the most effective ways to organise and manage your documents is through a document management system (DMS).
WHAT IS A DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM?
A document management system (DMS) is a system which enables the creation, storage, management, indexing, protection and retrieval of all of your digital documents. A DMS allows an easy flow of critical information across the business.
WHY IS A GOOD DMS IMPORTANT?
Every day your business is creating and managing large amounts of documentation, from contracts to proposals and presentations to sales decks, HR information and more. Some organisations use as many as four or more systems to store and manage content. For this reason, employees often find it challenging and time-consuming to find the information they need – or control its retention in line with legislation.
With our Gartner accredited DMS, you no longer have to remember where things are saved as everything can be accessed within the platform. This includes content that is stored in third-party systems such as SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, Dropbox, and network folders.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF IMPLEMENTING A DMS?
ONE SOURCE OF TRUTH
Content can be created within the DMS or linked to other sources of truth within the business. This way, you will always have instant access to the most current information.
NO MORE PAPER-BASED PROCESSES
A DMS can manage all the information your business needs to run digitally. Therefore, there is no longer a requirement for as much paper in key business processes.
IMPROVED COMMUNICATION
Easily edit a project plan in network folders, view agreements in SharePoint, or view all customer-related information in Salesforce.
WHAT ARE THE MAIN FEATURES OF AN EFFECTIVE DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM?
Search: An effective DMS helps users find documents and information based on document identifiers, metadata, relationships and content.
Metadata: 93% of workers are unable to find a document because it has been poorly named or filed. In a DMS, because information is tagged with metadata based on what it is, the same information can be searched for and found using different criteria depending on the use case. Unique information appears dynamically where it is needed without duplication.
Integrations: Many document management systems integrate with other business systems and repositories — email, network folders, CRM, ERP, legacy ECM and others.
Version control: Version control features ensure access to the latest version of a document. Version control and tracking make it easy to see what has changed, who did it and when the change was made.
Regulatory compliance support: If you operate in a regulated industry, a document management system can help reduce the risk of non-compliance. Users can automate audit trails and manage information and related workflows by compliance regulations.
Scalability: When selecting a document management system, a company should pay attention to the scalability of that system. Looking beyond current needs, find a DMS that has advanced features that accommodate business growth or change.
Security: A DMS should provide robust security features like access permission and control features, audit trails, federated authentication, enterprise file encryption in transit and at rest, intrusion detection, data loss prevention, high availability and more.
Usability: Since a DMS becomes core technology for the business, a fantastic user experience is crucial— with easy accessibility, little to no downtime and simple-to-use features. Employees should be able to easily access, manage and navigate files.
Collaboration: A DMS should make it simple for users to share and collaborate on documents — with features like project document management, task tracking, workflows, co-authoring and easy sharing of documents between users.
Content intelligence: Some advanced document management systems employ artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence can help classify documents by populating metadata fields, scanning files for certain data and separating business-critical data from clutter.
Workflows: Manually managing day-to-day processes isn’t a good use of time. A DMS with workflow automation helps ensure consistency by verifying that every step in a business process is followed. Automated workflows streamline common business processes — like contract approvals, controlled content, and invoicing — sending a notification when there’s a task to be handled.
Remote Work: A cloud-based DMS allows users to access files from anywhere and often from any device — enabling remote work anywhere: at the office, home, airport, hotel, coffee shop… anywhere.
Want to find out more about why our Gartner accredited Document Management system M-Files could be a good fit for your business? Book your demo today!
