Important Questions To Ask Before Implementing A Document Management System For Your Business

Documents are an integral part of any working environment. COVID-19 has changed the face of the workplace and highlighted the pressing need to convert paper documents to digital files.

Depending on the nature of your business, an enterprise content management (ECM) system with a robust document management system (DMS) can offer multiple key benefits to your company including, and not limited to, the following:

• Reduction of Storage Space Requirements

• Security Enhancement

• Improvement in Regulatory Compliance

• Ease of Document Retrieval

• Better Collaboration

• Backup and disaster recovery

Still, as a manager or someone of authority, you might be wondering if the time is right for your organisation to make such an investment in the future of your company.

Here is an outline of some questions you can ask yourself to guide your decision:

1. How does your business store and access documents today?

2. How might the ability to assign varying permission levels to individual and/or groups of documents benefit your organisation?

3. How do teams collaborate within your company? (Procedures, tools, frequency, etc.)

4. What would happen if an important document was modified, moved, deleted, or stolen?

5. Could you work more efficiently knowing that when a document is scanned, you will be able to find it quickly and easily weeks, months, or years later?

6. Can you securely access your documents from a mobile phone, tablet or personal computer?

7. Does your organisation have a disaster recovery plan in place? If so, does it include the documents employees work on and save to their devices locally?

8. Are there any regulatory compliance requirements related to document security, retention, and/or destruction to which your organisation must adhere?

9. Have you ever permanently lost an important document? If so, why was the document lost?

   • What were the consequences of losing said document?

   • If not, what would happen if you did permanently lose an important document?

10. Does your organisation utilise automated workflows?

11. Which manual processes within your organisation could be automated? (Data entry, invoice processing, document approval processes, HR/employee onboarding processes, etc.)

12. Would management like to have more transparent oversight into business-critical operations? (Such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, order processing, HR, etc.)