Top 5 Ways Document Management Reduces Your Operational Costs

Top 5 Ways Document Management Reduces Your Operational Costs

CFOs and CIOs looking for ways to reduce costs and maximise productivity already know that a good document management solution pays for itself in a matter of months. Digital or Electronic Document Management (sometimes called “enterprise content management” or ECM) cuts man-hours and therefore costs by automating workflows and eliminating time-consuming manual tasks.

In ROI research studying the cost benefits of investing in document management, Nucleus Research found returns of £8.50 per every pound spent by small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Their report reveals the key benefits and best practices for SMBs to start saving on every pound and win back employees’ time.

Switching from paper-based processes to an electronic document management, means you no longer need to pay to store and maintain hard copies of your business records on or off site. 

Electronic Document Management eliminates the need to print and file paper documents. And in today’s hybrid or remote working environment – digital files can be shared securely and instantly – that’s what we all need – not printed copies.

With a document management system, everything from correspondence and emails to invoices and contracts is stored in digital format. A current copy of these electronic documents is archived in the system’s centralised repository, where it’s available to all authorised users. Version control ensures that everyone is working on a single, up-to-date document. The result? Your employees save time, and your company saves money on printing, supplies and equipment.

Employees spend less time storing, retrieving, and sharing documents. Tasks that took minutes or hours with a manual, paper-based system take seconds with an electronic document management system. This is a huge plus for the Accounts payable team and Finance in general where document handling and paper-based processes can be quite heavy, when storing, searching, and retrieving documents, not forgetting the elimination of data entry into Finance systems.

Automated workflows streamline business processes in Finance, sales, customer services, HR and other departments. Utilising an optimised workflow management system leads to faster payment collection, lower purchasing costs, higher customer satisfaction and increased employee retention.

Backing up your documents is a breeze when you use cloud-based solutions. Document management systems, such as DocuWare protect business-critical information with document and communication encryption; separation of customer data from system data; and secure data storage. Multiple instances of data redundancy to ensure data can be restored even if the active system becomes unavailable. Even mobile users have secure access to necessary data. In addition, with robust logging and analytics capabilities, organisations have a record of who accessed, changed or removed a document and when.

Consider these five ways Electronic Document Management reduces costs and can increase revenue through increased productivity. There’s a great opportunity to improve the bottom line and implement efficient processes to ensure that your company is agile and responsive.