As a business, you are grappling with increasingly complex and ever-changing regulatory environments and legal frameworks.
This is why document management is essential.
The ability to capture, store, maintain and manage all records — including their metadata, is essential to ensure compliance and to simplify the process of auditing, or searching for documents.
Critical business documents cannot be lost, misplaced or altered; should any of these issues occur the costs could be significant.
In fact, there’s a 21% productivity loss due to document issues within businesses and 7.5% of all paper documents get lost.
But investing in document management can save businesses time and money. And of course ensure accuracy, compliance and data security.
In this article we discuss 16 useful tools for managing documents more efficiently — it’s time to re-think how document management works in your business!
Use form templates — Thinking how form templates can help manage documents? It’s simple; streamline all your document’s management by creating templates for any document. To ensure full compliance, use a template that includes all relevant data fields and auto-populate those fields with the generated data when users create new documents. Smallpdf’s form templates for example are perfect for these document’s needs. Be it invoices, contracts, or day to day business templates— they’re made to help you get started with only solid, professional documents
Using a digital signature — Signing documents is an important part of businesses, yet the process of manually signing papers can be cumbersome, slow and expensive. Good news is that SmallPDF’s templates come With these features too. Now, you can easily create, sign, send, track and store documents.
Automate document generation — With automated document generation and management, you can guarantee quality, accuracy and control. Automation can reduce data entry errors, and help speed up the whole process, allowing you to finish faster and with greater accuracy. Tools like Nintex Promapp and Processmaker can help.
Use a document management system — A document management system, such as those offered by Microsoft and Alfresco, can help you keep all your critical documents in one easy-to-access location. With these systems, you can easily search for and find documents, store them securely and safely and easily retrieve them when needed.
Ensure document security — Security is key when protecting critical documents. You can use encryption software or hardware encryption to protect documents from unauthorized access. However, tools like SmallPDF are packed with powerful security features to help you protect data and can even help out with watermarks and stamps — so that you can track who accessed your documents.
Create workflows — Workflows are the processes that are automated in order to better manage documents. A workflow may include various processes such as documents approval, review, and sign off, so that tasks on your documents are done more efficiently.
Integrate document management with other tools — Integrating document management with other tools such as CRM software and financial software can help to ensure content is accurately collected and recorded. Data collected this way can be easily accessed and used to drive effective business decisions; rating different software in one seamless flow will cut down the time you spend on document management.
Use data entry automation — Data entry automation saves time and energy with automation that takes over where manual document management often fails. Tools such as ABBYY FlexiCapture can help you capture data from paper, documents, emails and mobile devices into digital formats.
Set up document retention policies — Document retention policies should be in place to ensure important documents remain safe, secure and compliant. The policies should dictate how long specific documents need to be kept — what type of documents need to be retained and — how long the document should be kept.
Document scanning and indexing — Document scanning and indexing can help make documents findable and easily accessible. Tools such as HP ePrint can help make documents searchable by scanning and generating an index of data from documents. In addition, you can apply OCR (optical character recognition) to scanned documents so that they can be read by machines.
Use document analytics — Document analytics can provide you with important insights on your documents with which you can make better decisions. Tools such as Google Cloud Natural Language Processing and IBM Watson Discovery can help you extract relevant information from documents and present them in the form of meaningful insights.
Use a cloud storage service — A cloud storage service, such as Google Drive or Dropbox, can help you store and manage documents securely. These cloud storage services also provide cloud-based office applications to help you create, store, share, and collaborate on documents anytime, anywhere.
File converter software— File converter software can help you quickly and easily convert documents from one format to another. For example, tools such as SmallPDF which can help you convert PDF, Word, Excel and other documents into different formats with ease. Businesses need such tools extensively to remain compliant with recordkeeping and document storage laws.
Leverage the power of AI for document management
AI is all the rage, and your document management system is no exception. AI-powered document management tools can help you save time and money by automating tasks, extracting data from your documents, recommending documents for review, and providing insights in a matter of seconds. Such tools can even monitor your documents for accuracy, alert you to changes and discrepancies and more.
Document management is an important part of running a successful business.
By leveraging the tools mentioned in this article, you can help keep your documents safe, secure and compliant, so that you can focus on what matters most—running your business.
Use the right tools and rest easy
Using the right tools can straighten the process and make it hassle-free. By using these tips, you can set up a reliable and secure system for document management, to help you save time and money.
However, remember that document management is an ongoing process. Make sure you keep up with the latest trends and technologies so that you can remain compliant and have secure access to documents whenever you need them.
Pro tip: Use a mix of tools. Combining document automation, document management system, encryption, workflow, data entry automation and cloud storage services with an AI-powered document management tool can help you in the long run. And lastly, make sure your document management strategy is in sync with your organisation’s digital transformation efforts.
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