Any business operating in the modern world relies on documentation.
After all, think about it. It could be documentation of your security policies that you share with customers. It could be process documentation for how your sales team manages the sales cycle. It could be payroll documentation that tells your accounting team the right amounts to pay each of your employees.
Whatever the case may be, you're going to need a document management system to keep track of all of that information. Any business that doesn't have one is quickly going to find its operations derailed by inadequate organization.
In this article, we'll give you a quick guide on things to keep in mind as you craft an electronic document management system for your company.
Document Creation
The first step in document management is creation. After all, there's nothing to manage if you haven't created it yet!
To keep things organized, you need to ensure that you have a standardized process for creating and collecting documents right at the outset. There are a few different things to consider for document creation.
Firstly, the documents should be branded with unique customer branding. Second, they should follow any department-based guidelines so that all required info is captured.
And third, the documents should not be redundant. Before creating documentation, employees should first check existing documents. This way, they can ensure that what they're about to write up is truly necessary.
Document Storage
Once documents are created, it's time to store them.
There are a few different aspects to document storage, but the three key ones are backups, security, and automation.
Backups are hugely important. Your company needs the documents it creates — losing those documents could set it back significantly. Make sure that you have an automated backup system in place that takes manual error out of the process.
Secondly, your documents have to be stored securely. This could mean encrypting the documents and requiring employee-only passphrases to access them, or it could mean storing the documents on secure cloud-based solutions.
Lastly, document automation will assist in making the creation-to-storage process smooth and free of human error.
Document Retrieval and Maintenance
Last but certainly not least, your company's enterprise document management system should have some structure to the document retrieval and maintenance process.
What's the point of having all of the documentation if it's not easily accessible and findable? Make sure that your storage solution can be easily searched so that employees can quickly retrieve the right documents.
Second, documents will often become out-of-date. You should have a process created that will audit documents for accuracy. You should update them as needed. Finally, you need to disseminate the updated material to the rest of the organization.
Creating a Document Management System, Made Easy
There you have it. With this guide on a document management system under your belt, your company should be far better equipped to keep up with its documents.
For more business advice, check out the rest of the articles on our blog! We offer a wide variety of articles on document management system implementation, filing automation, doc translation, file storage solutions, and much more.
