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Document Management Challenges for Enterprises
A document management system is a solution that helps solve the problems of businesses relying heavily on paper processes by providing a safe, central repository for all their valuable information. However, there are a few often-overlooked challenges with maintaining a typical document management system. Many enterprises fail to approach document management in a methodical and organized manner since it poses so many challenges. Some of the major challenges are listed below.
Major Pain Points in Document Management:
Lack of Secure, Centralized Repository
Huge volume of content created across the years may be spread across enterprises and in many different repositories. Thousands of emails, proposals, spreadsheets, notes and reports are created every year by employees. When all of this content is saved and stored in multiple places like electronic folders and directories, consumer cloud services such as Dropbox and on-premise systems such as SharePoint, finding the content becomes nearly impossible for workers.
Lost Documents
As more technologies are being used for document management, more repositories are being created resulting in content stored without adequate metadata management leaving more and more content untrackable. Some paper-based filing systems may even lack a mechanism for tracking files. Neglecting to enforce a content location strategy or tagging strategy can result in your content ending up anywhere, including outside your business.
Process Slowdown
In enterprises with a manual document management system in place, moving documents through an approval process can take days to weeks. These paper-based document solutions rely on complicated approval chains that are subject to multiple pain points and often highly inefficient.
Version Control Issues
All companies create small to extremely large electronic documents via collaborative work processes. With more users accessing and editing documents on various devices running diverse client operating systems, the problem with version control can be challenging. A constant pain point is keeping track of the documents’ location, who was the last person working on them and knowing the contribution of each author.
Using Antiquated Technology
When it comes to content repositories, file servers are the most common choice. Most of these lack the technical features and functionality needed to enable employee productivity while mobile. Also version control problems, access stats/logs, granular permissions, passwords, expiration dates on links, and mobile access are some of the common file server limitations. Falling back on email for collaboration and content sharing has major drawbacks since it lacks versioning and the security required to protect confidential client information.
Underuse of Cloud Storage
Using file sharing applications and storing content in the cloud has many advantages. Despite this the majority of content is stored on premises and workers spend upwards of 9 hours a week searching for documents based on a research from Docurated. A major hindrance for shifting to cloud computing and storage is the challenges in moving all the content to the cloud. As a result only a fraction of content is in the cloud compared to what could be stored there which could have resulted in big savings for enterprises in terms of expensive storage spaces.
Solving Pain Points in Document Management:
When it comes to document management, these are some of the principal pain points common across enterprises. The key to addressing and solving document management pain points is to develop a solid document management strategy with which most of these pain points can be resolved.
Read further:
In order to find the right DMS software, you need to choose a vendor who can find out the exact pain points for your organization in terms of document management. The vendor should be able to gain a good understanding of your business workflow to identify how your goals can be achieved by rethinking your company’s document workflow by automating and streamlining processes through a tailor-made solution in order to align them with your organizational goals. Read More…
