It always seems to happen at the worst possible moment. You are about to meet with your most important client, and you can’t find the document you prepared just last week. You search every location you think it could be, all to no avail. After winging the meeting, you return to your office only to find the missing document. Situations like this cost you time and maybe even clients. Consider these 5 reasons to work with a document management consultant.
How Can A Document Management Consultant Help?
Developing and implementing a good document management system takes a lot of work. A consultant can help make sure you choose the system that’s best for you. This process includes:
1. Analyzing your need
Is your primary need with paper documents, digital documents, or both? Maybe your issue is with your scanning process, office equipment such as printers or copiers, or data entry into a database. A good consultant will be well-versed in many technology disciplines. They have many tools to assess your need and develop a solution that works best for you.
2. Defining your problem
A document problem is often only a symptom of a greater issue. You could be dealing with a management issue, inexperience, or an organizational issue, for example. A good consultant will help you identify the underlying causes of your document problem.
3. Accounting for all your systems and document types
You will need to manage documents from all your departments which likely already have different systems. Your Human Resources may use a different system than Accounting or Sales. You may utilize different document formats such as photographs, drawings, or forms. You also may have several document types you are using, such as MS Office, Google Drive, and PDF’s. A document management consultant will help you streamline a system to accommodate all the above.
4. Developing an organization system
A consultant will also help you establish a consistent naming convention and metadata for all documents. This makes searching and retrieving documents faster and more reliable. Think of metadata as different tags you can attach to documents for easy retrieval. Examples include department, subject, document type, month and year, etc.
5. Selecting a Document Management System that’s right for you
A good document management system will help you keep all your paper and digital files organized in a central location. Documents will be searchable by keyword and accessible to all appropriate parties. You will also be able to track all edits and revisions and retrieve previous versions of edited documents.
Organization Makes Life Easier
Most businesses create, modify, and distribute documents at high rates and it’s challenging to keep up with. Consider working with a document management consultant to streamline your document management processes. Contact Us to learn more about how document management could help your business or for more information on our Sharp copier support services.