Rightsizing your document management system and workflows can help you achieve cost control and extract maximum value from key areas of your business.
The world is inundated with software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms that aim to make your work easier. But it’s become commonplace for businesses to add on more and more tools until managing the silos negatively impacts your productivity.
Data from Productiv shows the average company department uses 87 SaaS products. For instance, an employee uses one app to check emails, another for messages, another to track tasks, a database app (or many) to manage their department’s data, and so on. Each tool potentially creates a data silo, and these silos require manual data translation between them, causing delays and risking mistakes. They also affect employees emotionally and reduce morale.
A key practice in IT is “rightsizing”—using the right tool for the right job.
In a document management workflow, juggling multiple systems is frustrating and risky. Do you stay compliant when you move information from one SaaS platform to another? Do your Accounts Payable clerks endure unnecessary delays from using different apps for invoices, payments, and compliance checks? Does your staff spend hours reconciling data across systems?
Inefficiencies in document management don’t just waste time—they drain resources and impact your bottom line. Without a rightsized approach, you might overspend on tools or underutilize systems, creating friction and inconsistencies.
By adopting rightsizing principles, you can align your technology and processes with your organization’s actual needs. That means no superfluous apps or duplicate work. It means more efficient execution, which eases the burden on staff.
Rightsizing for document management is a strategy where you determine which departments (like Accounts Payable) or functions (like contract processing) use more time and effort than can be afforded based on what they add to your organization’s revenue.
This approach shows you where you are overprovisioning effort and where you have space to invest more. Then, you can delegate expensive work to the right tool.
At a high level, you can think of rightsizing related to your infrastructure and tools. Or, you can get more granular and rightsize your processes. Or both. Why does this matter? When we think of optimization, we often think of cutting back—such as taking out steps or reducing the number of people involved in a process. But optimization can also mean adding more resources to an area of the business that needs them. The goal is to achieve a balance of investment and value.
Ultimately, the first step is knowing what a given department, function, or workflow costs you. Measuring this helps you stay on track and lets you make adjustments where they’ll have the biggest impact.
Whether you’re interested in improving your systems (better tooling, faster execution) or your workflows (smoother collaboration, happier staff), here’s how you can approach each:
The goal of choosing the right systems is to avoid software sprawl and reduce or eliminate environmental challenges. Software sprawl will have your teams spending valuable time tool-hopping, trying to find what they need to do their jobs. Tools that are overly complex or incompatible with your tech stack are also a time sink and will increase maintenance and staff training costs.
Consolidating your document management workflow needs into one efficient system will reduce your dependency on multiple tools and minimize software conflicts. The system should also be straightforward to learn and use by any employee, regardless of tech expertise.
A unified platform also integrates with key business systems, creating a stable digital environment. This environment is consistent and secure, protecting your institutional knowledge so that everything is in its place regardless of who uses it. You’ll reduce ongoing staff training time and won’t lose your core business process knowledge when you experience staff turnover.
What if you need your system to fit specific department needs or at least be scalable to accommodate future staff growth? A DMS like DocuXplorer has the flexibility to meet your needs by function and/or department, making sure efficiency is maximized in each area. You also have the option to change this as needed—you can scale the system up to support and enhance new departments or processes.
Faster, better, and cost-effective. This is the Iron Triangle of performance, and it’s said that you can’t have all three. But what if you could?
Comparing cost and performance lets you tackle the three points of the triangle with each workflow. Assess which workflows use excessive time and resources versus those that provide clear ROI. Then, you can rightsize your workflows to achieve optimization in just the right places.
Let’s look at a real-world example of this:
A large retailer learned they spent 950 hours per month processing just 100 contracts. This single, tedious workflow cost them nearly $30,000 per month. Yet, contracts were a vital part of the business.
Costs weren’t the only consideration. The inefficiency of the process created uncertainty and frustration for the team. It also caused unnecessary delays and risk. The client discovered that standardizing and automating the workflow’s key steps using DocuXplorer shortened processing times by 62%, reducing friction, easing the burden on staff, and saving time and money.
Faster, better, and cost-effective. Take a look at the savings:
Automating complex workflows using a rightsizing approach gives you more operational control. You can protect and improve the processes that deliver value. You can also free up skilled personnel from lower-value tasks, allowing them to focus on revenue-generating ones.
With time saved from not having to do so much manual paper-shifting, staff can meet deadlines without exhausting themselves.
Rightsizing your document management workflow is not just about cutting costs—it’s about creating a balanced, efficient, and scalable environment that aligns with your business. By assessing where your current tools and processes may be overburdened or underutilized, you can reallocate resources to areas that deliver real value.
A rightsized approach doesn’t have to be static. It can evolve with your business. As your organization grows, your document management needs will change. With a solution like DocuXplorer, you can stay agile and continuously improve.
Using one tool across departments cuts costs and drives efficiency and consistency when you have a system that's flexible enough to work with each team, how they work.
Start by identifying inefficiencies in your current processes. What workflows consume time and resources? Does your team do redundant data entry? Are your tools creating silos or overlapping functionalities? Once you pinpoint these areas, you can take actionable steps toward implementing a rightsized solution.
Ready to go from chaos to clarity? Book a time/money-saving evaluation with our team.
