What Is Your Idea Of The Perfect Document Storage System?

By Author: Donald Nason
Total Articles: 48
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Do you have a list of ingredients which constitute your idea of the perfect document storage system?

And before we go any further, I mean step away from specific types of system and ask how – in an ideal world – you would organise, store and access the documents that drive your business?

People we speak to consistently put wanting to eliminate the paper from a document-driven process as a top priority when looking for a document storage solution. Automating the processing will of course do this – but automating isn’t only about the physical removal of paper.

Automating also means streamlining processing – and in doing so ticking many of the other boxes on a perfect storage solution wish-list.

Firstly, businesses say, the storage process must be simple, quick and easy to use – they want to get rid of those overflowing ‘filing’ trays, the results of staff scheduling that age-old hated job for ‘tomorrow’.

It’s imperative, too, that the procedure for finding and retrieving any particular document is not only straightforward, but also quick – instant preferably.

It ...
... must be possible to access all documents in a system with equal ease – and this means including those archived (and without the need to clamber across the pensioned-off chairs and antique fan heaters retired to the basement storage room or having to travel off-site to the specially commissioned archive facility).

Organisations are very focused on being able to allocate precious square feet to their most valuable asset – their staff (and not cumbersome filing cabinets) – and are also extremely concerned to reduce storage cost.

Any storage solution must of course be legally compliant – and everyone comments on how they never want to have the hassle of losing a document again.

What people don’t want is to have to keep a document physically in sight in their in-tray as a reminder that processing is needed at a future date. Their ideal is for that document to be safely stored away and notified when action is required. Similarly, they don’t want to have to hand-write instructions and lug a hefty file along to the next person in the chain for processing.

And of course security is of paramount importance – not only in ensuring that documents are safe from physical dangers such as fire and flood, but also making certain that access is restricted only to authorised users.

Automating means holding documents centrally, but making them accessible from anywhere in the business –to the person sitting at the next desk, in the next room or operating from an office a continent away – and available 24/7.

Documents can also be captured from anywhere in the business. Those already in electronic format are captured automatically, and paper documents can be scanned and OCR (optical character recognition) technology used to extract the essential data for onward processing.

Multiple authorisation levels can be defined and a system of alerts set up to notify when action is required. A document can also be retrieved in different ways – via customer number/invoice number/department for example.

An automated system is not only more efficient, however, adoption also reduces costs – storage, stationery and processing. In addition, using workflow to automate some of the manual processing frees staff to focus on more strategic work.

And simple, quick and easy to use? Our clients think so.

Oh – but a document management solution won’t make the tea.