Document management is a process of creating, indexing, retrieving, securing, and storing documents. Let’s see what exactly it means, why you should have one for your business, what alternative solutions are available, their advantages, and how to choose one suitable for your business.
Do you know that documents are the lifeline of all businesses? Whether it’s beauty, healthcare, real estate, or legal business, documents play a major role in the business operations in the form of marketing brochures, HR guidelines, technical documents, training materials, etc.
We can say that work documents are indispensable.
However, managing them is overwhelming unless you have a document management system to handle all the document-related tasks and help achieve business goals. So, what exactly does a document management system mean? Let’s find out.
Document Management System: In a Nutshell
A document management system is software that allows to store and systematically track documents in one place. It controls all the processes related to documents. While their basic purpose is to store documents in the cloud, in its true sense, document management streamlines the business operations by smooth data sharing. It ensures that everyone gets access to the data instantly.
A robust document management system helps businesses organize documents in one place, keep track of all the documents, prioritize the tasks, speed up the workflow, and provide instant access to authorized users. Besides, it provides a great user experience.
Why is a Document Management System Important?
Digitalization has changed the way we perceive data. From traditional papers, we now have quick access to everything thanks to cloud services like Google Drive, iCloud, DropBox, OneDrive, etc. However, we forget the digital clutter we create while saving documents on these services. Managing it for your stakeholders and partners to view becomes difficult.
According to a survey, document challenges result in 21.3 percent of productivity loss. Document management makes it easy to store and retrieve documents. There are many reasons why your organization needs a document management system. Some of those include:
- Clean Digital ScatterA document management software creates a centralized repository and allows you to collaborate on all the documents from one place. This way, you don’t have to worry about storing documents in different places like computers, mobile devices, cloud apps, email attachments, etc.
- Safe and Secure Data AccessFeatures like document tracking, access control, password protection, version control, real-time notifications, etc., ensure that all the documents are stored securely and are easy to access.
- Reduce Storage and Supply CostsIf you store digitally, the cost of cloud storage can affect the overall budget. The cost of papers, printing, office space, cabinets, storage space can add up the final costs. By switching to a document management system, you can get rid of these costs. First, digital storage will curb the storage problem, and later, it will help you save costs of hiring new employees, storing and retrieving documents.
- Improve Business Efficiency46 percent of employees find document searching time-consuming and challenging. According to research, they spend 18 minutes searching for a document. The advantage of document management is that it provides a centralized location for storing, retrieving, protecting, and managing documents. It makes it easy to access documents, increasing work efficiency.
- Gain a Competitive EdgeDocument management system scales along with your business. As your business expands, you can expand the cloud storage and access tools to create, edit, and collaborate on documents. You can track the documents, control versions, save supply and storage costs, and provide better customer service. Doing all this from one place helps you gain the upper hand over those who prefer desktop folders, hard drives, multiple cloud apps, etc.
But to ensure that your document management system offers all the benefits explained above, you need to look for a feature-rich solution like a document management portal.
Document Management Portal: An All-in-One Solution
A document management portal boosts business productivity by combining documents, files, and people in one place. Along with documents, you can assign tasks to your team and employees, share files, and track through a shared calendar. You can even collaborate with your team directly on the docs, just like on a Google Doc.
The best thing is that you can integrate a document portal with your CRM and existing productivity tools like G-Suite and Microsoft Office.
Here are some of the document management portal features that make it the right option for your business.
- Customizable User InterfaceA document management portal allows you, your staff, and clients to customize the portal’s look for themselves. They can change the colors, styles, fonts, and format in the way they want to view the documents. They can customize the dashboard to view the important details at the start.Having customizable document management ensures that it is easy for your team and clients to access it. A rigid solution will make it difficult to manage documents and collaborate.
- Search and FilterWhen there are many documents, it can be difficult to find a specific one you’re looking for. All the users should be able to find the documents easily. Hence, the document management portal provides search and filter options to browse through the files and find the specific one. Categorization, rating, and tagging also help in quick document searching.
- 360 Degree Management A document management portal offers different modules for document history, document tracking, attachment, easy retrieval, etc. For instance, you can keep the document history and restore the old versions. Track the documents, their details, owner, and more. You can easily retrieve the documents that are moved from one place to another.Document management portal ensures all the document activities are well-planned and efficient.
- Team CollaborationTeams and clients can maintain project-specific documents. They can share documents with other team members, make changes, add comments for every authorized person to view, and act accordingly. Teams can even link documents with other objects for reference.
- Security and Permission ManagementMaintaining documents is important for businesses as they consist of company secrets, confidential information, legal stuff, and customers’ details. Hence, the document management portal provides features like file, role-based access to ensure that only the authorized person can access the document. It allows the admin to set document restrictions and even view and edit access as per the users’ roles.
For instance, a team working on the project will have access to edit the document, while another team may only have view access. Document locking blocks the modification of the files and docs.
Document processing, document indexing, universal format support, notification and approval, reports are a few of the other features of a document management portal.
Advantages of Document Management Portal
We saw the features of the portal, and here’s how these features will benefit your organization.
- Less Storage SpaceSince the document management portal is a software-based solution, you don’t need to manage hard copies. You can free up space and concisely store digital documents. The space, like a record room, can be used for better purposes.
- Instant AccessBy storing documents electronically in a cloud-based environment, every portal user can access the data themselves from anywhere. They can share, make changes, create a backup, and do other document-related activities from mobile phone or desktop anytime.
- Enhanced Customer ExperienceAn intuitive interface with customization options improves customer satisfaction. With a drag and drop feature, you can change the portal’s layout and even organize documents. Besides, search and filter options make it easy to find required documents on time. Users can search documents based on different categories, metadata, attributes, document name, etc.
- Improved WorkflowA document management portal acts as a centralized repository allowing users to create, edit, manage, retrieve, and share documents easily. The ease of finding everything in one place speeds up the tasks and helps them focus on important tasks.
- Better SecurityTwo-third of the companies have 1000+ files with sensitive data like credit card details, health records, etc., open to every employee. If left unprotected, it can cause a huge problem. But the document management portal restricts the access and ensures that only authorized persons can access or update the document. It also provides details such as who modified the document and when.
- Increased CollaborationDifferent departments can work and share documents with one other with minimal effort with a document management portal. For example, someone in the marketing team can send the invoice to the accounting team. The accounting team can pay and mark the document status as paid so that everyone stays updated.
Final Take
Investing in a document portal can improve business efficiency and reduce costs. However, finding the right solution is difficult.
So, look for a scalable document portal that provides space for collaboration, has a robust content management system along with search capabilities, role-based access, etc. Most importantly, it should be responsive and allow customization.
CRMJetty helps you with a document portal to replace paper documents like invoices with digital documents and manage them. It helps save your business time and costs by reducing errors, creating efficient workflows, and automating processes.
We also provide custom portal development services. Learn more about us today!
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