Have you suffered from document chaos?
Document chaos is when documents are hard to find, are spread across multiple locations and systems, have elaborate and inconsistent naming conventions, and are hidden in a sea of useless old files.
All this chaos wastes time and exposes businesses to significant risks.
Since joining DocTech I’ve reflected many times on why I just accepted using a folder structure in the past.
We all know they’re flawed. When doing calls with prospective clients I give examples of the problems created by a folder structure and 100% of the time I get the knowing nod and smile as they remember instances where they’ve seen these problems over and over again.
Accidentality and unknowingly dragging and dropping a document or folder into another folder, never to be seen again.
Losing a document or folder so having to scramble around in emails to recreate it, only to find the original version weeks later. Now you have two versions and don’t know which one is correct.
Having to email documents back and forth between colleagues because they can’t remember where it’s kept or can’t be bothered to look.
Naming a document ‘Final version v5 FINAL’
After the knowing nod and smile people sometimes just shrug their shoulders.
It is what it is.
It’s the same everywhere, right?
No. It’s not.
The people on those calls have usually acknowledged something significant. Those issues I listed above can be frustrating nuisances but they can also pose significant risks to a business.
- Difficulty in finding documents leads to bottlenecks and poor customer/supplier relationships. Lost invoices lead to late payments. Lost order information leads to customer frustration.
- Having documents in different locations such as folders, email inboxes and other software makes it difficult to get a complete picture. Inaccurate information leads to costly errors and makes solving problems time-consuming.
- No clear audit trail affects compliance and can create conflict within your team when errors happen.
- Should an invoice, order, contract, etc be queried, it would be unclear who has made the error and at which stage. If you don’t know where problems are occurring, how can you fix them?
- The lack of retention rules leads to large, unmanageable archives which can breach data retention rules.
- To safely control the access to data requires elaborate password controls and permissions on folders and specific documents.
If you have a Document Management System, all these problems go away.
- Documents can be found quickly and easily by searching by specific index data (customer name, reference number, document type, date, etc.).
- Documents are never lost as you can search by the content of the document, not just the tagged index fields. Even if you don’t remember much about the document, a search of a keyword will bring it up in a results list.
- Having all documents in a central document pool gives a single source of truth for your documents.
- Document history, version control, and audit trails give clear transparency around document processes.
- Retention rules can be applied to all documents based on regulatory requirements or your individual business rules.
- Access permissions can be managed by role or user making changing access as simple as a few clicks.
If you find yourself shrugging your shoulders next time you lose a document in the black hole of your folder structure, take a moment to reflect on the “what if?” costs. If losing the document could cause a domino effect, exposing your business to risk, then get in touch.
If you think Nicky might be able to help you, get in touch.