Adopting a Paperless Office Using Electronic Document Management Solution

With an eye on becoming more organized and efficient, many small businesses are adopting a paperless office environment. Assisting in this challenge are document management systems, which allow you to easily sort, edit and distribute documents to others. These systems help businesses increase productivity, save time, operate in multiple locations, support remote workers, meet compliance requirements, reclaim office space and solve a wide range of business problems. So many a times we confuse a document management solution for an online storage system. A document management system is different from online storage, the latter which only provides a place for you to store a variety of documents. Document management systems do much more. They’re essentially electronic libraries that can be easily searched, shared and managed. Some of the specific functions you can use document management systems for include: • Storing various document types, including word-processing files, emails, PDFs and spreadsheets • Creating new files directly within the system that can be edited and shared with others • Searching an entire library of files by individual keyword • Sharing documents with co-workers, departments and clients • Restricting access to certain documents • Monitoring who is viewing documents and when • Tracking edits being made to documents • Retrieving previous versions of edited documents • Controlling and regulating when out-of-date documents can be deleted • Accessing, editing and sharing documents via mobile devices A good document management solution should have the ability to integrate with your enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution or other business application. For example, an accounts payable process, no matter how complex could be automated thereby saving time by using an electronic management solution that seamlessly integrates with your ERP system. Let us paint a live scenario of what I mean. A company receives an invoice from a vendor for service rendered. This invoice is collected by the front desk officer /receptionist, who scans the invoice. Important metadata is extracted from the invoice and is populated in the accounts payable transaction window in your ERP system. The scanned image is also linked to the transaction in the ERP system by means of a dynamic URL and the scanned image is saved in the electronic document management solution’s repository. An approval workflow can also be initiated right from when the scanned invoice hits the ERP system if needed. All these processes are done automatically in less than a minute simply by configuring the software to do so at any particular time. I wish you the best in your quest for a paperless office environment!