Most decision makers at mid-sized companies indicated that they received greater value than they had initially anticipated when they implemented a document imaging solution. Research group, Bitkom found in its recent study on the effectiveness of enterprise content management (ECM) at mid-sized companies. The Bitkom study outlines the top five benefits these mid-sized companies reported.
1) Faster, mobile access to business information (90 percent of respondents)
The ability to access all of your business information anywhere, anytime and with any device offers great benefits for productivity, and also tends to improve the quality of decision making. If your company hasn’t had these mobile capabilities thus far, you won’t know the full extent of that productivity boost until you’re actually using it.
2) Protection against document and information loss (75 percent)
If your company isn’t able to provide information in a timely fashion and ensure its safety, it exposes your business to a variety of risks and penalties. By improving document storage, access and security, a document management solution greatly reduces these risks for mid-sized businesses.
3) Reduced document handling costs (60 percent)
When you’re relying on paper, invoicing and other document-based processes require a great deal of time and effort from employees. A well-designed document management solution allows you to automate these tedious processes using digital workflows, which reduce handling costs and free up employee time.
4) Reduced burden in maintaining compliance (52 percent)
In a paper-based office, maintaining compliance with industry and governmental regulations is difficult and expensive, and preparing for an audit is a long, painful process. For most mid-sized companies, the main compliance obstacle is how they manage emails and files.
With digital document management, it takes much less time and effort to prepare for an audit, because you’re able to quickly retrieve the right documents and prepare them for an auditor. There’s also less risk of being fined for noncompliance, because all of your information is readily available for discovery.
5) Improved process efficiency, controlling costs (47 percent)
Much of the cost of business processes comes from time wasted on forwarding documents and other information between individuals and departments. With a digital workflow in place through a document management solution, this invoice approval process could be completed within two or three days, instead of two or three weeks. You might find that your accounting department would only need two people to process 100 invoices instead of three people and make fewer errors. This process efficiency translates into additional value for the organization, including customer satisfaction.
According to the Bitkom study, these five benefits are where document management delivers the most value and demonstrates cost-effectiveness. When you’re deciding whether or not document management makes sense for you, these high-value elements should help form the basis of your cost-benefit analysis.
Credit: Thomas Schneck, Docuware Blog
