Document management is not only for large enterprise businesses, it's a powerful and essential tool for businesses of all sizes with a need to organize any form of records, contracts or content.
Among the many small businesses out there, quite a few are using rather antiquated methods of record keeping. The reasons for this may vary. The owner may be very attached to using hardcopies to store information, the business may have made a huge investment in storing hardcopy information in the past and be hesitant to divest from that or the business may simply have a hard time moving forward to embrace new technology.
There are many benefits of document management software and some very good reasons you may want to consider utilizing document management software in your organization, including:
One of the reasons that some small businesses do hesitate about switching over to electronic record keeping relates to document management security features. This is quite understandable. There are certainly plenty of stories in the news about hacker groups and certain individuals getting into business data and exploiting it for whatever purpose. One of the biggest benefits of document management software, however, is that it is quite secure.
One of the security strategies that document management software utilizes to keep data from being stolen or accessed is encryption. In everyday terms, encryption simply means putting something in code. The encryption forms a layer around the data, which requires specific credentials to decipher. Without those credentials, it's virtually impossible to get at the data.
Retrieval and document management backup are also major benefits of document management software to consider if document management software is something you're wondering about. Retrieving files when you have a document management software product in place is enormously easy. You don't have to thumb through physical files and best of all you don't have to keep those physical files around, crowding up your office.
Backing up physical files essentially means making photocopies. Of course, that means that you have to double the cost of the materials involved in generating those files in the first place. It also means that you double the storage space required to keep those files on hand. Document management software allows you to take advantage of the fact that making copies of digital information is easy and inexpensive. Your documents are backed up as is any other digital data and your document management software allows you to access them whenever you need.
Document management software can make it much easier to run a small business, even if that business has been running on paper documentation for a very long time. There is very little learning curve involved and, once you get the hang of it, you'll find that the many benefits of document management software make many tasks a lot easier.
