How to reduce the amount of paper documents? How to capture numerous documents in a short amount of time? How to sort documents into relevant folders? How to reduce document searching to a couple of clicks? What do we gain by managing processes electronically? Why do we need electronic archives in the first place?

These and many other questions are answered in the solution descriptions. For starters, let’s have a look at 5 most common reasons to introduce a document management system.

Procedures are too slow, performance is poor
Procedures of approving claims, applications and deals take too long as reviewing, commenting and approving of documents often require quite a bit of time. Document folders travel through departments and they are often misplaced or even lost. They are photocopied frequently, increasing the costs and the possibility of information leaking.
Document approval authority can be fully supported electronically making internal procedures simpler and faster.

Documents are non-transparent while business operations are made difficult
There are often conflicts and friction among departments due to missing or overdue documents. Oftentimes it is unknown who has the documents and who is reviewing them. Business operations are made difficult, which indirectly affects clients, too.
Electronic support eliminates these problems. All incoming and outgoing documents are transparently routed to electronic folders. The process will not continue until all necessary documents are obtained. Employees with access rights can review all current and past deals and the entire history of activities.

Technological limitations of existent products
These are mostly unsuitable partial solutions in document management systems which were introduced to various departments in the past and which offer support to smaller groups or simpler processes only. Scanning produces larger files which are often stored in the directory structure. Such temporary archives for electronic documents and files are completely unsuitable security-wise. Searching for documents solely by metadata is, compared to full-text search, absolutely inefficient.

Constant demands by the management to lower costs and make bigger savings
A successful management will find financial means for successful projects which already save money short-term, even in these uncertain economic times. Electronic document and business process management is definitely one of such projects.

Exceeding employees’ current mind-set
Employees spend too much time and energy on organizing their work: which task they have to perform, which documents they have to prepare and how they will obtain the necessary information.
Why not make it possible for them to do what is actually their job? Work processes can electronically completely adapt to the role of the employee. The tasks are received, executed and submitted electronically, which in turn makes work progress faster, with less coordination and significantly fewer errors.