Why is Document Management so Important For Your Business?

For years we’ve been hearing about how technology is going to eliminate the need for paper in the work place. Well we’re still waiting! The fact is, that while technology has changed the way we do business, paper is, and will be for the foreseeable future, a reality. Many business owners don’t understand the cost for maintaining hard copies and most small and medium sized businesses do not have a disaster recovery plan in place. Not having a plan exposes you to the loss of valuable, often irreplaceable information in the event of a natural disaster or fire.

Here are some facts courtesy of The Paperless Project:

• 80% of information in your office is retained on paper
• It costs an average of $24 to process an invoice
• It can cost up to $125 to find a misfiled document
• The average office prints 10,000 pages per year – 17% are never used!
• 75% of SMBs have no disaster recovery plan in place

The truth is more than 70% of businesses operating today would fail within three weeks if they suffered a catastrophic loss of paper-based records due to fire or flood. You need a document management plan that addresses the needs of both your daily operations and prepares your business for the risk of a catastrophic loss.

Today’s MFPs come complete with internal storage, and using software products like Xerox’s ConnectKey allow you to automatically save scanned and printed documents digitally. Because it is cloud based you can save your documents on or offsite. The fact is, a well designed and implemented document management system helps your employees to print, scan, share, collaborate, store and save documents easily and securely.

Documents stored digitally with software like ConnectKey are searchable which means no more misfiled documents. And because documents are sharable, collaboration is easy and you can reduce the number of unnecessary prints your office produces. Digital documents can be automatically backed-up offsite, so a disaster becomes merely an inconvenience and not a reason to shut down.

If you’re interested in learning more about how a document management system can be a part of your business, ask us about a free document assessment.