Why Businesses Should Utilize an Electronic Document Management System

In today’s business world, the amount of paper a business manages can be endless. With each piece of paper, someone needs to file it, space must be used to store it, and on multiple occasions, someone needs to retrieve it. When you are talking about thousands and even millions of pages of paper, this can be a very time-consuming task, and therefore a very costly task. The costs mount up quickly, in the areas of wages for employees who are responsible for filing and retrieving documents, and the areas of storage space required to house the massive amounts of paper files.

It is also an on-going, never-ending task, requiring the time of countless employees. This is time that could be better used performing the tasks that they have their personal expertise in. The opportunity costs for using a paper filing system include wasted time, delayed customer response time, and wasted floor and storage space. In other words, the efficiency of a business is very much hampered by continuing to utilize a paper filing system.

The benefits of an Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) are countless. With an EDMS, you will be able to take all of paper files, put them through a scanner, and them throw them away, or if your too skeptical to toss them, you can store them in some off-site storage where you will hopefully never have to look at them again. All of your files will be stored electronically, accessible almost instantly by any computer within your office at anytime. You do not have to worry about misplaced files or somebody else already having a file at their desk.

The initial cost of converting to an EDMS is usually what keeps people from doing it. This cost consists of the time and money it takes to scan all of a company’s existing files into the system. To save time, a company can pay a scanning service bureau to scan all their files for them, and this will sometimes be the cheapest method as opposed to paying an employee, who is likely less efficient, to scan the files. Whatever the method chosen, the first year cost might be heavy, but these costs should be offset within the first couple of years.

Another route that a lot of companies take is not to scan all of their backfiles into the EDMS, but to start scanning files today as they come in, and leaving all previous files as they were. This allows the company to bypass a large part of the initial costs, while still enjoying the benefits of the electronic file storage. As time goes by and the companies appreciation for the system grows, they will slowly convert their older files into electronic images, allowing them spread this cost over many months or even years.

Once a company is completely paperless and utilizing an EDMS, their efficiency is greatly increased, their response time for customer support is drastically reduced, and their overall office clutter is eliminated. These improvements convert directly to more business and higher profits.

If that’s not enough to convince you, then this will. The company is no longer at risk to having their critical business information stolen, lost, or destroyed due to some unforeseen circumstances, such as Hurricane Katrina that destroyed thousands of business’s paper records. The EDMS can backup your files offsite so nothing will ever be lost, plus its security features will prevent unauthorized individuals from accessing the documents that they shouldn’t, a very difficult task with a paper filing system.

Document Management Systems Can Enrich The Bottom Line In A Down Economy

In these undecided economic times, countless companies are faced with the challenge of how to maximize returns on stretched budgets. It's a do-more-with-less strategy that requires business operations be optimized now to meet existing economic realities.

One area to consider for improving the bottom line is to look at how information is managed throughout the organization, particularly document management. This involves all the content, things like documents, invoices, etc.; all the actions, things like reviews, and approvals; and all the processes, these are the repeatable steps that drive the flow of information. Improving how information is managed, the content, actions, and processes, will improve efficiency, reduce risk, and lead to cost savings.

There is another benefit to consider with this as well, and it's a silver lining. With any change comes opportunity, and the right kind of change now can position an organization for even greater success long term.

There are least seven ways that improvements in how information is managed can influence the bottom line in terms of efficiency, risk and cost savings, and here they are:

1. Make information findable so people can find information, instantly, every day.
   Studies have shown that among those who are involved with the flow of information, about one-half spend two hours per day looking for what they need to do their jobs. This can translate to hundreds of thousands of dollars in unproductive cost per year. The aim is to cut down on the time it takes for people to find information, making them more efficient and able to complete their tasks much faster.
2. Automate business processes
   Manual processes, especially those that involve paper, have a real propensity to breakdown. As information is routed in steps, for example in review or approval cycles, it's often delayed, there are interruptions, and any number of user-influenced errors can occur. These practices are a real challenge to manage for accountability. At any point in the process, it's difficult to identify at which step the process is currently in. And looking back at completed processes, it's very difficult to identify who did what and when. Consequently, business processes tend to be slow, taking days or weeks to run their course. And it's this lack of speed, not mention the errors, that are the real burdens on efficiency. Automating processes using workflow eliminates the need for people to manage processes and allows people to focus their expertise on making decisions and adding knowledge. The flow of information is handled automatically, which not only establishes consistent processing of information, but also shortens cycle times, increases accountability, and leads to greater quality and accuracy of repeatable business process.
3. Improve collaboration
   A large number of companies still use shared file servers to store information, email to share it, and sometimes FTP to exchange files back and forth. But here's the problem: these methods are unstructured and disconnected. Managing information in this way lacks the necessary controls and collaborative tools to make the most efficient use of corporate knowledge. Files are easily duplicated or lost, information has to be re-created, and versioning is ad-hoc at best. Even worse, in some instances files are silo'd into line-of-business applications, for example a project management application that is only accessible to a few in the company. The answer to improving collaboration is creating a unified, enterprise, work environment where people and knowledge are connected company-wide. This allows all employees, no matter what area of the business they are in, to leverage the collective intelligence of an organization.
4. Capture a record of every change.
   Without a system to manage files as they change, it is virtually certain that information will be lost, it will be difficult to reassemble later on, and there will be confusion surrounding which are the correct versions of files. Documents are not static. They change over time. Automated version control offers a standardized way to capture and organize information in what would otherwise be a chaotic and uncontrolled process. People are more productive and the risk of information loss is greatly reduced. Plus, with version control, everyone immediately knows which is the current version, while previous versions are always retrievable. Another plus of version control is that it can reduce risk. Version control eliminates the potential for losing content in prior versions and importantly, it allows for visibility over content history, for example who approved a document and what did the content look like at that time.
5. Reduce the risk of email.
   Email may be fast, cheap, and convenient, but it's a mistake to believe that it's an informal mode of communication. Email is more and more falling under the scope of regulations such as eDiscovery. For this reason alone, it's important to view email as business records. But even beyond regulation, there are other aspects of how we use email today that make it more and more essential to consider when reducing risk factors. In many cases emails are used as a principle means of communication among employees, as well as with people outside the company, like customers or vendors. The content within emails, and files attached to them, are often times the most complete and thorough record of history over time. Your ability to quickly research and retrieve information from an email archive not only improves your chances of successfully complying with regulations and legal requirements, but it also helps with matters like researching and exchanging knowledge in hand-offs between people, say for example in times of employee transition.
6. Maintain compliance with regulations
   As with email records, some companies also face regulatory requirements that affect all types of information. Information itself can be a liability if it is incorrectly managed. Studies vary widely, but some have indicated that as much as 80% of documents reside on user's desktops, beyond the control and management of a structured document management system. Government regulations, quality standards, and legal requirements are an increasing challenge, and programs that manage for compliance by documenting policies and procedures, applying consistent business processes, and securing information are necessary to reduce exposure to risk. Where quality standards and compliance exist, such as ISO, FDA, and Sarbanes-Oxley, regulated content and processes must be managed using records management.
7. Eliminate paper storage costs and go Paperless.
   Long established storage of paper documents in filing cabinets, archive boxes, and off-site warehouses is a no-value solution. The expenditures of all that paper storage - the space and money spent on it - offers no return in value to the company. It's an unnecessary operational cost. Filing cabinets eat up valuable office space that could otherwise be used for meaningful and productive work areas; and money spent on off-site storage in warehouses could be invested in areas of business that actually have a positive return on the bottom line. When documents are stored electronically, however, there's an added value because information can be filed, searched and retrieved instantly. This is a big factor in terms of process efficiency. And there are other areas to consider as well: electronic document storage makes information more accessible, including even outside the office for employees who might be traveling, working at home, at satellite offices, or perhaps even vendors and customers. When documents are accessed, changed, or approved, everything is recorded in an audit log. Electronic document storage also makes it easier to plan for business continuity, so records can be restored quickly and the business can get immediately back up and running. And finally, electronic document storage is a greener, paperless approach that not only reduces storage and its associated costs, but also cuts down on the need for paper and printing.

Countering The Content Conundrum

Have you ever spent hours poring over a document to ensure accuracy and inclusion of all edits made to earlier versions? Have you — or has your company — ever suffered consequences from taking content written for an internal audience and using it for sales or marketing — without thoroughly vetting it for external use?

No matter the department — HR, sales, marketing, legal, administration, etc. — many of you find that kind of content pain to be an unavoidable fact of work life, standard operating procedure. Unaware of a better way to create and manage content, you suck it up. Well, you can stop sucking because there is a better way, and that way is structured content — documents that have been chunked into meaningful component parts and tagged in a systematic fashion.

While it remains one of the best-kept enterprise secrets, structured content has long proven its value in technical communications where it mitigates risks, reduces costs, and increases revenues. Better still, the road to mature, standards-based structured content has been paved by organizations such as IBM and OASIS and standards such as DITA. Now, it’s time for other enterprise functions to realize the same benefits associated with structured content.

In brief, structured content brings organization and automation to content. Structured content lets content creators efficiently create, collaborate, manage and reuse high volumes of information, which can be repurposed into the languages and formats your customers demand. The result? Organizations accelerate the cost-effective delivery of accurate information products — whether those products are for internal or external consumption, e.g., sales RFPs, marketing brochures, HR forms, legal contracts or any other department’s content.

So, what does structured content look like in the enterprise? It depends where you look.

In research & development, you can use structured content to create and manage engineering documents, technical publications, and strategy and planning documents. Here, structured content can help increase revenues by improving the ability of key employees, partners and vendors to share and discover documents, resulting in faster time to market for new products. Meanwhile, costs can be reduced through content repurposing and reuse, which eliminates the duplication and re-creation of existing content. And structured content can mitigate R&D risk, for instance, helping companies avoid noncompliance, and improve customer satisfaction by ensuring the consistent use of authoritative content in product documentation.

In manufacturing, contracts, manufacturing operations, standard operating procedures and regulated documents all benefit from structured content. Revenue growth can come from streamlined creation of contracts and agreements, ultimately accelerating time to revenue. Cost reductions may be seen in reduced rework, recall and aftermarket service costs otherwise caused by inaccurate information in manufacturing documents. Risk can be mitigated by reducing the risk of inaccurate or inconsistent contracts, and by reducing the risk of human error associated with reviewing one-of-a-kind, complex legal documents.

In sales and marketing, structured content can be applied to sales and marketing collateral as well as contact center documents. The revenue opportunities in the sales and marketing department include developing a reusable library of proven RFPs and content to improve win rates. That reusable library also helps to reduce the costs of goods sold by reducing the time and costs associated with developing proposals and business correspondence. Predefined, reusable content components with approved language and standard terms and conditions mitigate risks by ensuring the accuracy of contracts and legally binding agreements.

In service and support, you can use structured content for maintenance and repair, technical support and training documents. To increase revenues, you could increase aftermarket sales through maintenance and repair operations supported with structured content. Cost reductions may be realized through content reuse, which reduces editorial and publishing costs. Structured content helps mitigate the risk of noncompliance and potentially catastrophic equipment failure by ensuring personnel have consistent, up-to-date maintenance and repair information.

In corporate administration, structured content can benefit legal and regulatory, human resources, and finance and operations documents. Revenue growth can come from improving the ability to discover patents and IP documentation for ongoing growth and protection of revenue streams. Cost savings may be realized by reducing redundant editorial and publishing costs, which lowers the cost of publishing and maintaining standard documents. Finally, structured content can help reduce the risks of errors during the review process and through regulatory filings, demonstrating that you have compliance policies in place.

Clearly, these are just a few of many examples in which structured content can benefit the organization. The important takeaway is that you don’t have to live with your current content conundrums. You can relieve the pain and realize significant advantages by embracing structured content, in whatever department you happen to work.

Orginally authored by Dr. Bruce Sharpe, JustSystems