Too Small to Succeed at Electronic Document Management

One Size Fits All?

Randy Davis, Vice President Sales and Marketing Operations

We've heard it ourselves in talking to prospects: "We're too small to benefit from an electronic document management (EDM) solution." Sometimes the prospect means "we don't process enough paper in a month," or "we don't have the technical staff to implement and support an EDM solution."

Whatever the reason, experience shows that "too small" may not be a good excuse to keep from making the move. The document management "suit" is not "one size fits all."

Consider this:

According to Ken Neal, a Certified Enterprise Content Management Practitioner and Director of Corporate Communications, for Océ Business Services, "In a recent industry survey, senior executives involved in document management indicated that document scanning has a high impact across the greatest range of business goals that include reducing costs, increasing competitive advantage, enhancing regulatory compliance, and improving customer service."

Benefits
In fact, scanning paper into a document management solution can provide even small companies with hard benefits (reduced paper storage and management costs, improved service, compliance and audit support, disaster recovery) and soft benefits (competitive advantage).

A compilation of studies* (including Gartner) put together by Formstack.com lists the following as making Cloud services, including document management, appealing to small business. Cloud services are mainly:

1. Affordable
2. Accessible
3. Usable

* (Thanks to Rachel Delacour of Bime Analytics for pointing out this "Infographic")

Considerations
Here are some things to consider if you think your office is too small:

1. Are you storing paper records on premise? If so, can you find needed records in seconds? Are documents safe from prying eyes or unauthorized removal? How will those records be quickly replaced if they are lost or destroyed?
2. Are you paying to store documents? This includes preparation, the cost of storage, file folders/boxes, transportation, retrieval and duplication.
3. Does your office look like it could qualify for "America's most cluttered office"? Running a business is hard enough. It's just easier to run a profitable business and service your customers if you can find important documents quickly. Besides that, staff and customers alike associate a messy office with sloth and inefficiency. There's just something about decent organization that makes people feel better about where they work or do business.
4. Are you under legal or moral obligation to protect or retain records for years and prove that you are doing so?

Counting the Cost
I will be frank here. Scanning documents and storing them in an electronic document management solution is not without up-front and on-going effort and cost. It's not a magic bullet. You may have to buy one or more scanners. You may need to create a barcode-based document identification system to help automate filing (this is easier than you may think). You may need to create a different (and better) process to capture, route, authorize and store documents. You may need to train someone how to use a PC.

The question that only you can answer is, "Will my business and staff benefit from changing the way we do things now?"

Eyes Wide Open
If you think that is possible, taking advantage of an electronic document management solution can go easier if you go in with your eyes wide open and after doing some homework.

Dan Antion, vice president of information services for American Nuclear Insurers, shares "8 Secrets of an Effective Content or Records Management Implementation":

1. You are not too small for Document Management.
2. Document Management offers value beyond the obvious.
3. Document Management is not a technology project.
4. Management support is required.
5. Document Management includes costs that are not obvious. [Scanners? Training?]
6. Document Management technology doesn’t have to be expensive.
7. Education is important and available.
8. All vendors are not created equal.

(Dan's full discussion can be found at AIIM.org's Digital Landfill, dated June 23, 2009.)

Call to Action
If you are a small business, hopefully this has given you a few things to consider on your way to a more efficient office. Start today the first step of evaluating your document management processes. At worst, you may discover some ways to make your existing processes better. At best, you may find that electronic document management can help you run a better business and prepare for the growing demands of instantly accessible digital information.

Do you think a company can be too small to use EDM? Share your comments.

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Losing Electronic Documents? You’ve Got to Be Kidding!

By Nathan Khani, CloudDocs Solution Specialist

A report in USA Today (May 18, 2011) included this shocking finding: “The average worker wastes 2.5 hours per week looking for documents missing in poorly organized electronic files.” Wait a minute. I thought that electronic filing systems were supposed to solve the problem of losing files. Now we learn that even a small office of, say, five people wastes more than a day and a half of productivity each week looking for electronically filed documents. What gives?

Here’s my thought. Electronic filing systems do not inherently solve the problem of finding files if they allow for disorganized filing methods. Worse, some document management systems actually encourage poor document filing practices. Wasted time is either a direct result of the disorganized use of electronic filing, or of electronic filing systems that are prone to disorganization.

What do I mean by disorganized electronic filing? This. If you use an electronic filing system much the same way you use a paper filing system, you will experience the same challenges in finding documents. Filing systems based on Folders, file names, keywords, and text searches are simply not optimized for finding documents quickly. Such systems rely too much on ad hoc naming conventions, free-form keywords, and knowledge of filing method best practices.

When it comes to storing and finding documents, too much flexibility and freedom can lead directly to disorganization. File management systems also depend too much on where a document is stored rather than on characteristics that make a document findable. Look. We’re not talking about storing your photos, videos, favorite recipes, old high school English papers, or music. We’re talking about documents you use to run your business. The fact is that good electronic document management requires good old fashioned standards, a bit of departmental discipline, and a document management solution that encourages and supports both.

That’s why it’s important for an organization to used electronic business document management solutions that are designed to relieve you of the burden of organizing documents by folder and file name. Such solutions are often called “structured” document management solutions, and they utilize index data to find stored documents in a way that is predictable and fast. In a structured document management system you can literally scan or upload a document, index it (manually or automatically), and forget about it until it’s time to find it or use it as part of a business process or workflow. Then, by using one or more configurable, standardized index fields, you can almost instantly find the document or documents you need. Such systems reduce the complexity of filing and (almost) guarantee that you can find the documents you need when you need them.

We would love to hear any tips or advice you may have regarding organizing your electronic files. Please share your thoughts below!

Do You Discriminate?

by Randy Davis, VP Sales and Marketing Operations

Well, when it comes to electronic document storage management, you should. Discriminate, that is.

In the cloudy skies of storage management (hosted storage, in the now old vernacular. As a further aside, with a wink and nod to Yogi Berra, have you noted that concepts are getting old much younger now?). Anyway, in the cloudy skies of storage management you almost need a vendor traffic controller to work your way through the congestion. There are some excellent choices out there, depending on what one needs.

Ah, that's the crux of the matter. What does one need? A simple needs assessment may start with a need to store stuff: documents, photos, video, audio, databases, images, graphics and so on. There are plenty of solutions in the Cloud to do that.

But many of those solutions seemed aimed at individuals who need a place to collect stuff, and create some kind of organized, hierarchical schematic that will enable them to pigeon hole stuff with the hopes of finding it later via some search term. Even companies that claim to serve the business community seem designed to encourage the ad hoc storage approach.

The business use of document storage is much more stringent. (Let's see, you need to find the invoice that contains the payment amount for account 837394, paid between March 15 and June 30, 2006. Oh, and you need to see if any explanatory notes or correspondence or payments are attached to the invoice. Can you have all that to your boss in the next 60 seconds, please?)

So, a more thoughtful needs assessment should include a way to easily accommodate standard document data that can be indexed; the ability to associate, attach or link related documents and information together; and the ability to find just the information you need so that you can use it. By the way, one of the many benefits of such an approach is the ability to transfer document research responsibilities to others in a group, temporary employees, or new staff.

Why am I discussing this? Part of the reason is to remind you that we have provided the power of the structured document storage management approach to our enterprise customers for many years. Now we are in the process of providing the same capabilities to the Small to Medium-size Business market. In the next few weeks we'll be introducing you to our new flagship product, CloudDocs(TM).

To keep informed about our plans and upcoming launch, be sure to become a follower of this blog. Just use the Follow button in the right hand column.

Also, don't hesitate to add your experience, opinion or question by using the Comment space below.