Best practice for document management
There’s no doubt that automating processes not only reduces effort for everyone involved but can ultimately cut costs over time. However, it’s one thing to invest in document management solutions, but quite another to ensure that organisations get the most from that technology. A key question to helping customers implement best practice is to ask them, “What do you want to achieve by implementing document management in your company?”
A good first step is to go back to the basics and outline goals to achieving success. While processing speed may be important to one company, another may prioritise integration with other software to capture important information.
Automation comes with many benefits by simplifying and taking the grudge work out of repetitive manual processes. By initially emulating the steps of a human workflow, document management can optimise these processes and recreate them with higher speed and efficiency.
Something to remind customers, however, is that it’s common for organisations that are transitioning from paper-based to digital workflows to replicate the exact steps. A bonus of setting up a digital workflow is that you can skip several steps thereby optimising speed and efficiency. After all, there’s no point in replacing a cumbersome process with another one. It’s important to evaluate the workflow and consider what steps can be eliminated.
Document management can also significantly cut down on printing by processing electronic documents and allow organisations to archive their electronic documents securely. Therefore eliminating printing entirely in some instances. This transition period takes time for employees to adopt a more efficient process.
Transitioning to digital processes can seem complicated, however once customers understand how their goals are being met, they will soon adapt and wonder how they ever got by on manual processes before.
Sylvester Swaine - Solutions Consultant - KYOCERA Document Solutions South Africa
