Document management solutions provide organisations with the ability to convert, store and share a variety of digital documents within a network. This process enables corporate managers to reduce workload by minimising the use of papers.
According to various sources such as Gartner Group and Laserfiche, 7.5% of all the documents get lost. Furthermore, 90% of these documents are shuffled, which leads to lost time. Interestingly, professionals spend 50% of their time looking for files but only 5% to 15% of their time reading the required information.
Taking into account these statistics, consider a scenario where 500 hours are consumed in retrieving the information while only one fifth of that time is spent in reading the actual content. This scenario does not include 7.5% of the documents that will never be found again.
In this blog post, we'll cover everything from document management strategy to document management best practices to consider.
Types of Document Management Software
As with most technologies, document management systems range in size and scope from smaller, standalone systems to part of larger, enterprise scale platforms with much more functionality. In fact, while document management is still recognised and used independently, it is also a common component found within intranet solutions.
Here’s a typical example of where intranets can assist.
| John orders a new business card by completing a paper form and sends it in the internal mail. It goes to his manager who approves it and she sends the form to the Central Services team. There, Marie copies the contents of the form into an email and sends it to the business card supplier. She copies in her colleague who adds the details to a spreadsheet so it can be costed back to John’s department. |
Duplicated effort, the risk of mistakes, the ability to lose the form, lack of speed, the waste of paper and the inability to derive data from the process make this highly inefficient.
The intranet goes beyond a standard alone document management system, by not only replacing inefficiency and wasted effort with a simple custom online form document, but allowing administrators to create associated workflows to automate the process. This means forms go to the right people based on the information that has been input and the specified business rules.
Data outputs for managing and reporting purposes can also be derived which can help increase visibility where needed. Now everybody can get on with the more interesting aspects of their roles.
For more information on how you can improve business processes using an intranet and create a high performance culture, read the intranet business processes eBook.
Key Document Management Points to Remember
Since the development of document management systems, experts agree that the rules of managing these systems have remained the same. Surprisingly, the document management best practices implementation in 80’s are still relevant even after the rapid advancement in technology.
Here are a few of the most important points to remember when implementing a document management strategy:
Capture and Share a Variety of Files
A good document management system is able to capture a variety of file types. Before implementation, decision makers should realise that their system is able to recognise images from scanned documents and multifunction printing tools. Additionally, they should check to see if their vendor provides optical character recognition capabilities that can identify text in the documents.
This includes not only traditional text documents but also spreadsheets, PDFs, images, audio files, videos, and emails. By supporting multiple file formats, a DMS ensures that all pertinent information, regardless of its source or type, is stored and accessible within a single, unified platform.
Automated workflows can also be set up to categorise and index different file types upon capture, ensuring that they are properly organised from the moment they enter the system.
Avoid Potential Legal Issues
Although managers may not put emphasis on the legalities of documents, which are captured by their systems, but such legal issues can play an important role in a future dispute. Unlike the web where rulings are often based on International laws making legal decisions a complicated affair, disputes arising from the use of the documents by a document management system are regulated and can result in strict penalties.
To avoid making costly mistakes, every manager should review the rules explained by organisations such as AIIM (Association for Information & Management) and ARMA (Association of Records). In Australia, use of such information is governed by the rules of RMAA (Records Management Association of Australia). Australian companies can also get free legal help from National Archives of Australia.
The system should also provide the ability to set start and finish, expiry and renewal dates for all documents, with document owners being notified when these actions occur if needed to replace documents. This ensures that documents are kept for the required duration and then securely disposed of when no longer needed. This not only prevents unnecessary legal exposure but also reduces storage costs and clutter. This allows audit trails for tracking document access and changes, providing a clear record of who accessed or modified a document and when. This transparency is crucial for legal compliance and can be invaluable during audits or legal disputes.
Distribution & Security is Imperative
Implementing stringent access controls and encryption protects sensitive information from unauthorised access and breaches. Everything from ransomware protection and encryption, to user access controls and two-factor or multifactor authentication.
A robust document management system (DMS) should include granular security permissions and access controls tailored to different groups of users. Administrators can define access levels based on user roles, ensuring that sensitive information is only accessible to those with the appropriate clearance. For instance, executives might have full access to all documents, while department managers have access to documents relevant to their departments, and general staff have access to only the documents necessary for their daily tasks. This hierarchical access control not only enhances security but also streamlines document retrieval and collaboration by ensuring that users see only the documents relevant to their roles. Implementing these measures helps organisations maintain data integrity, protect sensitive information, and comply with regulatory requirements.
Administrators can provide additional security measures by distributing read-only content, wherever applicable. PDFs are one of the most common methods of digital document distribution, allowing administrators to set security parameters. Such rights management modules allow limited access to other users. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is an example of ruling on the distribution and security of documents.
Capture & Store Metadata
Whenever the document management solution captures a file, it should detect and store the metadata of that particular document. metadata ensures employees can later easily retrieve documents by searching for the keywords specified in the metadata or filtering the search results based off of this.
It should be noted that a sophisticated search feature will allow users to search for a document based off keywords inside the document. For example, a PDF with the search term in the content will display in the search results, even if the term does not appear in the PDF title.
Metadata also enables documents to automatically be added to the correct pages or sections of a document management system.
Key types of metadata that should be captured include:
- Title: The name of the document.
- Author: The person who created or is responsible for the document.
- Creation Date: When the document was created.
- Keywords: Relevant terms that describe the document’s content.
- Document Type: Specifies whether the document is a report, invoice, email, etc.
- Department: The organisational unit associated with the document.
- Confidentiality Level: Indicates the sensitivity of the document.
Document Control
Your document management strategy should be document control. Document control is a critical aspect of information management, particularly within IT and highly regulated industries.
It involves the systematic handling of documents to ensure they are created, reviewed, distributed, and archived in a controlled and secure manner. This process ensures that all documents are accurate, up-to-date, and accessible only to authorised personnel.
Effective document control helps maintain compliance with industry standards and regulations, reduces the risk of errors, and enhances operational efficiency by ensuring that all team members are working with the most current and accurate information.
Share Policies & Procedures
Another key document management best practices is to ensure that users are made aware of new policies and understand the procedures on how to handle critical information.
A good document management system will enable administrators to firstly, alert users of new policies and procedures that are relevant to them. These notifications ensure that employees are promptly informed about important changes, helping to maintain compliance and adherence to best practices.
Secondly, to create acknowledgements to understand if users are reading these documents. This can be achieved through mandatory read receipts or electronic signatures, ensuring that there is a record of compliance and understanding.
Review Storage Capacity
Of all the characteristics of an efficient document management software, good storage practices are central to the success of a company. Due to the vast quantities of data that a document management system can store, it becomes necessary to periodically review the storage capacity. Managers should decide on what is important to store and what information should be archived. At the time, it may also become necessary to destroy certain documents. The periodic review will allow the company to organise its database, prevent system slowdowns and maintain optimal performance.
Firstly, establish a baseline for your current storage usage by conducting an initial audit. This will help you understand the volume and types of documents stored, identify any redundant or obsolete files, and determine future storage needs. Regular audits should be scheduled to keep track of storage consumption and adjust as necessary to accommodate growth.
Secondly, implement storage management strategies such as data archiving and tiered storage solutions. By moving infrequently accessed documents to lower-cost storage options and keeping frequently accessed data readily available, you can optimise storage costs and performance. Regularly reviewing and updating your storage policies ensures that your DMS remains scalable, cost-effective, and capable of supporting your organisation’s evolving needs.
Provide Necessary Training
Often, managers overlook the importance of training their workers to utilise the several automated functions embedded in a document management system. In fact, it's something that often isn't part of their document management strategy. Even successful companies sometimes are reluctant to provide the necessary training to their workers.
The end result is the availability of very efficient platform, but no one to use it. For example, modern management systems come with various advanced features such as workflow automation, allowing management to create a rule for the automatic delivery of the document to several users in a hierarchy. Such workflow can help to pass an invoice to different users in a hierarchical chain where each user needs to review and sign the particular invoice before the final release of finds by the accounting department.
In addition, opting for an intranet also provides access to in-built learning management systems. A training module can be set up to help people understand document management best practices. This can further be broken down by publishers vs end users.
Experts think that the lack of training is the most crucial factors in the failure to implement large scale document management systems.
Linking Records to Business Process
The purpose of document management is to automate, streamline and improve business processes across the organisation by creating access to the required document when needed. Before implementing such a solution, managers should be able to link the types of records to a particular business process.
Without defining these relationships, it will become difficult for different users to relate a document to a certain task. For example, whenever a new customer uploads the scanned documents to a system, it may be the ‘new accounts’ department responsible for ensuring the processing of such a document. If someone else has access to that particular document then the person from the other department should realise that they cannot destroy or change the location of the document without prior consent from the ‘new accounts’ department.
Consequently, it may be the managers of ‘new accounts’ department who is responsible for deciding which records of applicants are to be destroyed. Simply, no one else should try to evaluate the eventual outcome of the documents for new applicants. In this case, the scanned documents from potential new customers are relegated to ‘new accounts’ department therefore linking that particular business process with a designated department. Creating such process will streamline the work flow.
According to AIIM, Association for Information & Image Management revealed many interesting factors that further emphasise the need to implement a reliable document management solution. Here are the top three:
- 39% describe their email management as “chaotic”, including the largest organisations. 55% agree that email is their big untagged, ungoverned, high-risk content type.
- Poor content management practices result in taking too long to find content (62%), duplicated efforts (52%) and insufficient re-use (46%).
- 49% also report too many round-robin emails and 40% cite unnecessary printing.
These statistics can be interpreted to suggest that managers of large scale organisations are still finding it a challenge to implement best practices for document management software.
Next Steps
Document management solutions are highly effective in reducing hundreds of hours that were wasted in the distribution, locating and managing of paper files.
Are your document management processes slowing you down? And do you have an effective document management strategy in place?
In this digital age, where there are several solutions on the market, there is no excuse for having poor document management processes.
Download our free guide, and discover how you can use an intranet to improve not only your document management processes, but 11 other important business processes!
