GOING GREEN AND SAVING MONEY WITH DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT

The word out there is ‘GOING GREEN’.

Everywhere, on the news, the internet, adverts, politics, social movements, entertainment and even in technology, environmental friendliness is being promoted. So we find ourselves using energy saving bulbs, planting trees and flowers, eating less of processed foods and recycling.

We now see the need to go green and develop environmental friendly habits at work, at home, at school, while having fun and in every area of our life because, it has become increasingly clear to us that our lifestyle and that of others including plants, animals and the whole ecosystems affect the well being of the planet.

Protection of plants and trees often come up as a major step to environmental protection. The retention of the flora and fauna of the ecosystem goes a long way in maintaining the balance that is much sort after. It is therefore necessary to also reduce, if not eliminate the use of products generated from plants and trees. Often times, paper hard-copy is an overlooked item of a company's "green strategy”. It should not be so. The costs to the environment of using paper, ink, toner as well as machines like photocopiers, printers, faxes which consume energy are considerable.

Paper is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood or grasses, and processing them into flexible sheets - Paper. Therefore, we can easily derive that using so much paper in our day to day activities at work encourages the destruction of trees used to produce paper which in turn affects the eco system. 

Organizations by choosing to become less dependent on hard copy documents with the implementation of a document management system will not only save the ecosystem but will save cost, increase profit and operate much more efficiently and cost effectively than they had ever done.  With DMS, the need to print and copy documents is greatly reduced.

Every business should strive to have a positive impact on the environment and its community. It should go beyond scholarships, development programs or regulatory compliance to demonstrate a commitment to the community housing it. Rather, it should adopt and implement policies that improve the quality of life for its customers, employees and the whole planet while at the same time greatly improving its bottom line.

Document Management solutions electronically capture, store, and manage documents much more efficiently than any paper system. In addition to increasing business efficiencies, going paperless gives an organization a competitive edge by enhancing document access and sharing with customers, staff and partners.

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Going Paperless

Is Paperless The Way To Go For Our Organizations?

Document management and the way our organization handles the process, is becoming a big concern for us. Why is that? Is it the fact that knowledge not put in some type of retrievable form is lost when turnover occurs? Is it the fact that businesses do not have the luxury of being able to spend quality time with employees to ensure procedures are followed to the expectations of management? Are external processes consistently changing and staff can’t keep up with it? Could it even be simpler than all this, and businesses are trying to improve productivity time and save some costs on storage and office space? All of these are valid reasons that the “Paperless Office” is becoming of interest to all types of organizations. 

Many document management companies discuss the savings of time and storage space, but the fact of the matter is that organizations will be placing themselves in jeopardy without the use of proper document management. That seems extremely strong language when referring to this topic, but let’s stop and look at the situation. How many businesses that we might be aware of intimately have proper documentation? Lack of documents will cause bottlenecks, and misunderstanding of the process. Documents in a business process are a means to measure, manage and improve processes. Workflow and routing help organizations move information on a timely basis. Knowledge and the sharing of information must come in the form of documentation as organizations cannot afford turnover without a knowledge structure in place. People are the creator of the facts and the documentation to manage the process. Processes define the organization’s framework and count on the documentation for defining, auditing and startup. Change occurs in all organizations, and documents allow for change to take place. This facilitates the change by a documentation view.

 

Document management system

A document management system (DMS) is a computer system (or set of computer programs) used to track and store electronic documents and/or images of paper documents. It is usually also capable of keeping track of the different versions modified by different users (history tracking). The term has some overlap with the concepts of content management systems. It is often viewed as a component of enterprise content management (ECM) systems and related to digital asset management, document imaging, workflow systems and records management systems. (From Wikipedia)

How is a Document Management System Used?

A document management system can be used to capture and organize all of these documents into easy-to-find electronic documents. The paper documents could have been scanned into the document management system. The electronic records could be either stored in the system or pointed to from another system. A document management system has the power to tie these documents together.

The documents could be indexed by department, vendor, purchase order number or any other concept that makes business sense to your organization. Unlike folders in a file cabinet, document management systems store documents in electronic folders that can be indexed by multiple pieces of information. This gives users the ability to search and retrieve documents based upon different criteria.

With a document management system, gone are the days of lost documents because they are all in one secure central electronic repository. Also gone are the days of wasted time because multiple people are retrieving documents from various locations and multiple file cabinets. With a document management system, the documents are immediately retrieved for the person looking for information. This not only makes them more productive for that one task, it shifts the focus from the document retrieval to solving the original issue.

Above, we introduced two important concepts, document capture and indexing. Both of these deserve a more detailed discussion. In the next section we will discuss document capture.

Overview of What Document Management Software Can Do

·     The document management software must securely hold all documents, and any file type.

·     Scan directly into the document management software with OCR and automatic indexing - Built into the DMS solutions.

·         Audit log of all activity by users.

·         Check in and out documents for remote processing.

·         Retention date settings and purging routines.

·         Archive routines.

·         Version management for generations of documents.

·         Remote access via Web, Terminal Services, VPN….

·         One touch search routine.

·         Unlimited Repository, folders, and documents.

·         Multiple file rooms for additional security.

·         Multiple layers of security

·         Route any document or file directly from any Windows application.

·         Route Faxes and email directly to the system without staff intervention.