Preferred Blog

Every person has documents that they need access to, so it stands to reason that a business has hundreds. If you and your staff are tired of sifting through dingy file cabinets to find that the document that should be in a certain place, isn’t, considering a document management system may be right for you. Today we will give you five good reasons why moving to document management can be a benefit for your business. 

For decades, companies have been looking for an efficient way to manage their documents. For the longest time, the best way was to fill one side of an office with filing cabinets and file the documents away. With most of the workplace now being run by computers, and with hard costs at an all-time low, companies have begun to file all their new files on computer network. 

Consultation is something that can save businesses a considerable amount of time and resources. After all, you can’t expect a business professional to know everything there is to know about everything. Professional services, like those of lawyers, financial consultants, accountants, advisers, and marketing specialists, are required by just about all businesses to at least some extent. Suffice to say that each of these specialists has dedicated software and IT solutions that are needed for success.

Consider for a moment how many documents are floating around your business at any given point. Memos, notes, invoices, receipts, and whatever else you happen to accumulate in the course of business, all floating around the office. This isn’t a great approach, and unfortunately, the classic solution for this, the filing cabinet, isn’t the most effective solution anymore.

When looking to cut costs in the workplace, one of the best places to start looking is at your printing costs. While paper documents were once incredibly important for businesses (they still serve a function), no one can deny that they take up a considerable amount of space in the workplace, as well as take up precious assets that could be better spent elsewhere. What’s the best way to minimize the resources you spend on printing?

In some situations, competition is good for a business; and, for others, it can be terrible. As marketing, and specifically online marketing becomes more imperative for the success of every organization, all the content that is created for this purpose has to be managed. For this week’s technology term, we take a look at the different kinds of content management services (CMS) and what they do to make managing your organization’s content simpler.

The file cabinet. It may be a staple of the office, but boy can they be a pain in the neck. Every file needs to be printed and collated only to be filed in a dingy file cabinet with the off chance that it will ever be needed again. For businesses that have a lot of paper filed away, a document management system can go a long way toward modernizing your organization, and providing a access-controlled database where you can find any file in seconds.

Paper can be incredibly expensive, especially with the quantity that a normal business goes through every single day. However, not only is it expensive on the monetary side, but also on the environmental side as well. By making some changes around your office, you can be more eco-friendly and budget-friendly by reducing the amount of paper waste your organization suffers from.

How many documents does your organization accumulate just by simply staying in business? There’s no doubt that you’re sick of the traditional filing cabinet, which is both hard to move around and a pain to organize. Thankfully, modern technology solutions have afforded businesses just like yours with the ability to host and manage documents in a digital, cloud-based environment.

There’s no denying that digital records have quite a few advantages over paper documentation. Benefits of ‘going paperless’ include simplified search capabilities, more efficient storage, heightened security and automated backup capabilities. There are plenty of sources around the Internet that discuss making the switch to paperless documentation, but to keep your business documents safe, it is better to know what you’re getting into.

Businesses today want to save money and cut costs whenever possible, and technology has made it much easier to do so. Now, organizations can eliminate unnecessary hardware, clear the office space of file storage systems, and even eliminate clutter associated with paper documents.

The Benefits of Going Paperless
Your business can benefit greatly from eliminating paper consumption. The following are potential gains that will improve your business’s operations and bottom line.

• Cost savings: How much does your business spend annually on ink and paper products? If your organization can cut down on the amount of printing that it does, you’ll naturally spend less on paper and ink, increasing your bottom line and freeing up funds that can be spent elsewhere.
• Clutter and wasted space: You don’t need us to tell you that filing cabinets are huge and bulky wastes of space. While they might help you keep paper clutter to a minimum, they’re a pain to move and an even bigger pain to take with you if you relocate your office. Wouldn’t it be nice to just store your files digitally and not worry about dragging unnecessary furniture with you?
• Easily-searchable file archiving: How much time do you waste digging through filing cabinets whenever you need a specific document? With electronic record storage, searching through files has never been easier.
• Backup services: In the event of a disaster, what’s more likely to survive; your digital files that are safely stored in the cloud, or your physical documents that are vulnerable to water and fire damage? Not only does storing your files digitally make them more secure, but it also makes them much easier to back up and restore in case disaster strikes.

How it Helps the Environment
According to PaperlessProductivity, one tree produces, on average, 17 reams of paper. This same tree takes at least 100 years to grow. If you consider how much paper your business uses every day, and then multiply that for every business in the world, chances are that you’ll come up with a number that well exceeds the amount of paper that a single tree can provide. That’s not to mention other users of paper products, like universities, individual consumers, government agencies, and so on. Just think - it takes over 100 years to replace what modern businesses use for paper documents every day.

How We Can Help
If your business wants the opportunity to drastically eliminate paper waste and printing costs, Preferred can help. We can equip your business with an electronic record storage system that’s designed to store your paper documents in a secure, compliant digital space. This helps to keep your documents safe and sound, while making them easy to find when they’re needed.

Plus, if you’re still (somehow) attached to your fax machine, we can help your business implement a fax server that can essentially transform your business’s faxes into emails that hit your inbox. To learn more, give us a call at 708-781-7110.