Gaining Control over the Official Records

An online document and records management system is an invaluable tool that every department within an organization needs in order to maintain productivity. With online document and records management systems, employees located across the globe can access and update documents for peer review. This new found collaboration helps organizations to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace.

Online Document Management is a process whereby documents are managed electronically, from their creation, to storage to being archived. The web-based document management system stores a scanned copy of a document, which can be retrieved easily, and quickly using indexing systems and searches. Online documents and file management systems can be accessed via the Internet, from anywhere, and at anytime. Just as efficient document management has become a growing priority for large companies; it has also become more important and viable at smaller nonprofits.

Data storage is an area of concern for both large and small businesses .The main area of concern for big businesses is data recovery and disaster management, whilst smaller businesses focus their concern on the wastage of money and resources through the manning of documents. A solution to all these problems is brought about by online document storage, which is both efficient and economical. Online document and records management systems are therefore the perfect solution for all businesses, regardless of size. Online document storage services give the freedom to edit, share and control the documents any day of the week and at any time of the day or night. One of the main advantages of online document management is mitigating the possibilities of loss of data. Online document storage systems are affordable, extremely useful, and help minimize cost and maximize returns.

The main aim of online records storage companies is to provide optimum customer satisfaction in whatever way possible. Online record storage systems help with improving communication, compliance and confidentiality. The system brings about an unbelievably smooth work flow and it becomes easier to track and correct the errors. Document management services are practical and economically viable, and an essential part of the business.

Online backup is basically a method of offsite data storage whereby documents, files, folders, or the even the entire contents of a hard drive are regularly backed up on a remote server or computer with a network connection. Online data backup service providers offer this offsite backup, which is absolutely necessary for disaster recovery in case files become lost or damaged.

Document Management – it is easy with electronic documents

Proper document management can make a major impact for your organization. Document indexing and retrieval all the way through business process management is fundamental to a dynamic document management practice. Document management is the capture, storage and retrieval of documents. With or without a document management solution, your organization already captures, store and retrieves documents every day. For many organizations, this process is amazingly time consuming and too often ignored.

Documents come in the form of both paper and electronic. An invoice that comes in from a vendor in the mail is obviously a paper document that can be read and acted upon. However, that invoice probably started with an order from your business. That order might be an electronic record in the accounting system. Now we have two related documents that need to be kept together for reference, yet they are very different in how they are stored. This is a simple example.

We could have complicated the example by adding a delivery receipt, an acceptance document, or even a contract. Again, these other documents could be in different formats or different systems. Worse yet, they might be in different departments. A contract might be stored in a file cabinet in the legal department. The delivery receipt could be at a warehouse or on the loading dock. The acceptance could be at the functional department that finally received the order. Now we’ve added different groups of people who may be in different physical locations.

Here’s the question: What if something was wrong with the order? Where do we find all the documents so we can review the contract, look at the delivery ticket to make sure all the materials were delivered, look at an acceptance from the department, look at the invoice and determine if we paid it? Without all of the documents, it can be very time consuming to resolve an issue. Not only does this take away valuable time from multiple people in your organization, think of what was not being done while your staff is looking for documents.

A document management system can be used to capture and organize all of these documents into easy-to-find electronic documents. The paper documents could have been scanned into the document management system. The electronic records could be either stored in the system or pointed to from another system. A document management system has the power to tie these documents together.

The documents could be indexed by department, vendor, purchase order number or any other concept that makes business sense to your organization. Unlike folders in a file cabinet, document management systems store documents in electronic folders that can be indexed by multiple pieces of information. This gives users the ability to search and retrieve documents based upon different criteria.

With a document management system, gone are the days of lost documents because they are all in one secure central electronic repository. Also gone are the days of wasted time because multiple people are retrieving documents from various locations and multiple file cabinets. With a document management system, the documents are immediately retrieved for the person looking for information. This not only makes them more productive for that one task, it shifts the focus from the document retrieval to solving the original issue.