Many companies are paving the way for the future by becoming completely online, remote, and incredibly advanced. However, one thing that has not changed and is actually becoming more important, is the importance of safely securing and storing both paper and electronic documents. Not only is it important that paper-based companies transition to an electronic documentation system for security and efficiency purposes, but it is also important that electronic-based companies secure their document management system.
An electronic document management system is a computer software or platform that electronically and automatically tracks, stores, retrieves and manages all information of an organization.
The top five benefits of using an electronic document management system, or EDMS, follows.
1. Increased Efficiency and Productivity
The largest benefit that comes with an EDMS is the increased working efficiency by decreasing the amount of time spent searching through paper files. With an electronic document system, you can easily search files instead of spending ample time rooting through file cabinets for a piece of information. Employees waste hours each day trying to locate, replace, and update documents. This is valuable time that can be used in a much more productive manner if the organization enhanced document processes by investing in an EDMS.
2. Higher Security and Control
Document security is a vital piece of every company. With an EDMS, you can determine who can view, edit, or retrieve certain information. With levels of protection, you will avoid sensitive information from getting into the wrong hands. Along with protection, many systems contain a tracking trail to see who has viewed or edited any document. This feature states the name of the employee, time of access, and any changes made. This allows for greater control of your documents and the information you are sharing with employees or public.
3. Backup and Storage Capabilities
With a paper-based system, it is very difficult to update document information and have a secure storage. For companies who use electronic documents but have not invested in an EDMS, updating documents can be extremely detail oriented, repetitive and time-consuming, allowing a large margin of error. With an EDMS, all documents and information are continuously tracked, automatically updated, and backed up onto a secure storage platform. EDMS systems have great storage capabilities. This will reduce the cost of manual, paper-based storage, and provide more storage space for daily work.
4. Information Retrieval
For companies who have not invested in an EDMS, retrieving information can use hours of employees time. While using EDMS, with the click of a button, you can retrieve any required information. This is especially helpful if you do not know exactly the name of the document you are looking for, or the time it was created. Opposed to a paper-based or basic electronic system, you can search for a topic or keywords to retrieve the information you were looking for. This makes the entire search process much more convenient, less stressful, and efficient.
5. Enhanced Information Protection
Along with the benefit of preventing sensitive information sharing internally, an electronic document management system also has the ability of enhanced protection from sharing information externally or publically. With platform encrypted security, the risk of an information breach is substantially lowered. This system protects your company both internally and externally.
The overall main benefit of an EDMS is the efficiency that it provides to your organization. It reduces time to track documents, searching for information, updating and protecting documents. The amount of time spent protecting and securing documents is significantly reduced with an electronic document management system. Investing in an EDMS will allow you to use the time wasted on document protection to utilizing the information on the documents to better your organization.
