How Does Document Management Save Money?

While the concept of document management is not a new one, everyone agrees that it easily enables organizations to operate more efficiently – resulting in cost savings of various degrees. And in today’s economy, nothing could be more valuable.

What exactly is it? Generally, Document Management is a catchall for various other systems such as ECM (Enterprise Content Management), but generally it is a computer system (or set of computer software) used to track and store electronic documents or images of paper documents.

What are the Benefits? Typical results from a Document Management solution will help you achieve:

• Increased productivity through efficient management of your information
• Greater customer service through this efficiency
• Achieving compliance by easily retaining and retrieving critical business documents
• Streamlining business processes and removing unnecessary manual steps in the process

But just how does Document Management save money? Here’s a simple example:
If it takes a $15/hr employee five minutes to walk to a file cabinet, locate a file, perform  their duties, re-file it and return to their desk; and if they do that four times a day, you’re looking at 86 hours a year or nearly $1,300 in wages – for just one employee. Implementing a document management system will keep those employees at their desks and instantly slash those costs.

Another example is by integrating this technology into an organization’s accounting/ERP system. Businesses can automate and streamline their procure-to-pay and order-to-cash processes. By doing so, companies will also appreciate additional benefits such as facilitating swifter cash collection, avoid late payments, and even receive discounts for earlier payments.

Other organizational bonuses to using a Document Management solution include simple benefits such as regaining storage space and freeing up staff from time-consuming administrative tasks. Greater benefits include records security, disaster recovery, document retention, archiving, distribution, workflow, authentication, and traceability.

Today, Document Management solutions have evolved to where they are affordable and easy to use for even the most novice users. And by helping businesses run lean and keep costs in check, that’s vital for survival during a recession.

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