Workflow Efficiency: Get the Answer to 8 Big Complaints

When things get busy at work and the pressure is on, locating and controlling key documentation is of paramount importance to ensure efficiency and productivity ' but how often do you find yourself coming up against any of these eight familiar complaints?

Workflow Efficiency: The Eight Familiar Complaints

If any of these complaints are familiar to you, then a document management solution can help:

- I employ somebody just for filing and archiving

- I can't keep up with customer service enquiries

- When somebody goes on holiday, we're lost without them

- I never seem to know where anything is

- I've had to rewrite important documents because we lost the originals

- If we were sued, we'd spend ages finding the appropriate documentation

- We have too many paper records for compliance purposes

- Everyone in my company seems to have their own filing system

Workflow Efficiency: The One Simple Response

Document management is a glamorous name for keeping things organised. Perhaps the truly paperless office might never happen, but at least all the documents you have can be organised properly. Consider for example - what is the true cost of a key proposal which gets lost on somebody's computer because they've gone on holiday and no-one can find it? Or what is the true cost in lost time of rifling through acres of archived documents looking for one sheet from five years ago?

Document management is the result of several useful technologies (printing, scanning, archival and storage) coming together in a useful and co-ordinated way. Good document management software has the following properties these days:

- Easy for staff to use

- Won't break the bank, and offer a genuinely money-saving ROI

- Can be installed in-line with your existing IT infrastructure.

Document Management Systems: Save Time

Forget filing and photocopying (and their associated costs). With document management tools, everything is stored electronically on computer. Everything is named too, so finding documents is simple - helping you improve service to your customers and your colleagues too.

Document Management Systems: Reduce Costs

Of course good document management saves staff time. But in practice there are so many other cost savings too. Free up your storage space and use it for business! Reduce administration time. Manage projects more efficiently and reduce the margin for costly errors. Improve communication internally, response time, and customer service. Our document management solutions can help you achieve all these cost savings. And you'll spend less on paper, postage and faxing too!

Typically, a good document management system installed and configured correctly can pay for itself in six months- time you can wisely use to push your business forward.

Document Management in Practice

Here are some key elements to workflow and communication improvements which stem from the use of document management systems:

Creating documents:

Whenever a document is created, it's named according to your own conventions (even if it's scanned or copied). Everything's organised from the start and you'll never lose a document again.

Everyone has an In-Tray:

Documents, pictures, e-mails, whatever... they all come in through your in-tray, where you can categorise them, label them, and then act on them. Send them on, collaborate with other people, and manage versions of documents automatically- so you'll never be stuck working on yesterday's project.

Find and retrieve:

Before document management, you had to remember filenames. Now, search by author, client, date, project- even just a phrase, and you'll soon have the document you need.

Out of the office?

No problem- we can give you access to your office documents with the same find-and-retrieve functions over the web- at home or on the other side of the world.

Scan it in...

No need for huge paper archives. Scan it in and forget about the paper copy. You can even scribble notes in the margin electronically.

...e-mail or fax it out

Electronic documents are so much more flexible than paper. With your documents in electronic form, emailing and faxing them (and making alterations and corrections) is only a click away.

When things get busy at work and the pressure is on, locating and controlling key documentation is of paramount importance to ensure efficiency and productivity. Document management is a glamorous name for keeping things organised, and here is a summary of the benefits of installing an electronic document storage and retrieval system in the office.

Jimi St. Pierre writes for several Office Equipment suppliers in the UK, including Principal Corporation, where you can find out more about INVU document management software on their comprehensive office equipment website at: => www.principalcorp.co.uk/

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