In most companies there are cabinets full of documents that are rarely consulted, but that whenever you need to consult some information you waste a lot of time. Recent research reveals that 90% of the documents we use daily are mixed with documents that are of no use. It has also been revealed that 80% of manually written documents are never consulted and that the time spent in managing this type of documentation represents one of the 10 activities that “steals” time to the employees. Given this scenario, it becomes clear that document management is really necessary in contemporary companies. In today’s article we cover everything you need to know about document management!
What is document management?
Document management is the process of managing and controlling all existing documents in the organization in digital format. These documents may be physical, digital, or versioned in the Cloud, serve as a record and query for business procedures, and remain in the organization for a period of one or two years. Document management involves all documents, from contracts, licenses and emails that are important for creating a customer relationship history. From the moment the document arrives at the company that follows some steps:
- Dematerialization: the document is received and is soon digitized
- Classification: being already dematerialized, the document goes through the classification, at which point its importance degree is defined and where it is defined which is the place where it will be stored
- Life cycle: after classification, the document passes through the defined life cycle of all documents. It goes through publication, approval, forwarding, re-routing with corrections and destruction. With all these steps completed, it becomes easier for the employee to find the file through a search engine.
Advantages of Document Management
Largest organization
The documents are organized by categories and it becomes much easier to find them. The lack of a document management system leads to waste of time in document searching, which breaks down productivity.
Optimization of workspace
This method makes it not necessary to have cabinets full of documents, because the whole file is converted into electronic format. In this way, the workspace becomes more organized and much more pleasant and reduces the risk of loss of documents due to natural disasters.
Greater agility
Simultaneous consultation and presentation of meeting documents is easier, for example when they are digitized. Electronic search methods are also easier when the files are in digital format.
More safety
Document management is essential to ensure that regulations are being met by the organization and this is one of the main reasons why document management should be seen as a priority for the company. It is thus possible to ensure the integrity of the information and its documentation.
Standardized processes
This type of solution allows for a standardization of access to information, managing access rights, changes and submissions. All employees have access to the documents they need and from anywhere. Internal communication is thus facilitated by reducing the flow of printed information.
Simplifying workflow
The flow of creating a document for approval varies by company, but it is often too complicated in almost all of them. One of the reasons is the need to obtain the approval of several people and if there is no good documentary management this process becomes very time consuming and bureaucratic. A simple model solves this question. In document management, most services are implemented with workflows, which makes it easier to process agility, distributing the document created in the system to the person responsible to be able to archive the file. With this simplification of processes, the time to perform a task is reduced, increasing the efficiency of the company!
