The rapid evolution of technology has led to dramatic changes in the way people work. One thing that’s never changed, however, is that documents are the lifeblood of any business. Whether it’s correspondence, financials, reports, marketing content, customer data or something else entirely, all that information amounts to your most valuable asset of all. It stands to reason that you need a safe, yet easily accessible place, to keep everything. Enter the age of document management in the cloud.
What Is the Document Management Process?
Before computers, the document management process flow revolved around row upon row of filing cabinets, which hardly leant to an efficient process when staff needed to retrieve things like customer information and correspondence. Once computers came along, larger companies were quick to build their own in-house data centers for digitizing printed content and storing increasingly vast amounts of data. Today, companies are moving away from these costly in-house systems to take advantage of the cloud.
Read next: How Templafy integrates with Document Management Software
In a modern context, the electronic document management process typically takes place in the cloud thanks to the many benefits that this distributed, off-site computing ecosystem offers. In fact, it’s no exaggeration to say that the cloud has completely transformed the way organizations store and work with their documents. No longer do companies need to feel constrained by the limitations of their in-house IT and all the operational costs and staffing requirements that come with it.
Scaling Your Document Management Process with Demand
No organization can function without a clearly defined document management business process and the technology required to enable it. However, if your company is growing, and you find your in-house systems just can’t keep up with the demand – you’re faced with two choices: upgrade or outsource. For many organizations, upgrading in-house systems is prohibitively expensive, so they end up missing out on new opportunities. In other words, technology ends up being their worst enemy.
By migrating to the cloud to meet the needs of your document control process, you’ll have access to a fully scalable system that grows alongside your business or, if necessary, scales back when demand is low. That means there’s no longer a need for costly upgrades every time you find your in-house systems buckling under pressure. A cloud-based system is stored in an off-site data center, which will likely have far more resources than you could ever manage to accrue in your own workplace.
Enabling Workforce Mobility with Anywhere Accessibility
Mobile technology has led to an unprecedented change in consumer habits over the past decade. These changes are now having an enormous impact in the workplace too as more people work from home. Still, no office employee can do their job if they don’t have access to the necessary documents. While some industries might still be reluctant to embrace the new age of workforce mobility, there’s no denying that the ability to work anywhere is one of the most pervasive trends in modern economies.
Document management in the cloud brings everything together in a hosted environment. By defining security policies and access controls, administrators can allow their staff to shake away the chains of the office desk and collaborate with colleagues all over the world or even just get a head start on the day’s work during the commute. This ability to share and store all documents in a centralized, web-accessible repository is what’s making the modern businesses truly location-independent.
Find out how Templafy's cloud-based solution assists this Magic Circle law firm by streamlining business processes and providing best-practice content on all devices, both online and offline:
Simplifying Security and Compliance with Centralized Management
When you have customers, investors and partners entrusting you with confidential data, you can hardly afford to let information security take a backbench. Moreover, government and industry regulators all over the world are becoming increasingly strict when it comes to compliance legislation. However, when you’re using multiple disconnected systems for storing your documents, everything becomes exponentially harder to keep track of. That’s exactly the sort of situation that leads to a security and compliance meltdown.
A modern, cloud-enabled document management process brings everything together under a single system where administrators can define and enforce security policies and access rights, manage document lifecycles and perform audits for compliance and security. Factor in rock-solid integrations with other business-leading software, such as Microsoft Office, SharePoint, Dynamics, Dropbox and Salesforce, and it no longer even matters which applications your employees are using to do their jobs.
Boosting Operational Efficiencies with Streamlined Automation
If your document management process is more of a mismanagement one, then it no doubt takes much longer than it should for employees to retrieve the information they need. A top-heavy process typically leads to searching through multiple systems for documents and wading through piles of data. That translates into reduced efficiency, which will quickly take its toll on your business’s profitability. There’s also the issue of multiple data entry leading to inconsistencies and costly human error.
The modern document management process steps look very different. By automating many processes and negating the need to work with multiple systems, employees will have immediate access to the same information. At the same time, a centralized search function makes it possible to find any file pertaining to your organization in a matter of seconds. To streamline such processes even further, you’ll also be able to tag documents, set up notifications and maintain complete control over versioning. That means no more rifling through outdated and inconsistent data or using up valuable bandwidth downloading the wrong files.
Template and digital asset management systems are an important part of your company’s document management ecosystem. Templafy is a fully cloud-based template and digital asset management solution that integrates with both cloud and on-premise document management systems. We’ve also partnered with industry-leading document management systems, such as iManage, and other business solutions to suit the specific needs of your company. With Templafy, you can trust that employees have access to the tools needed to create consistently on-brand, up to date and compliant documents, which can then be organized and stored with a document management system.
Get in touch with us to learn more about how Templafy can complement your company’s document management solution.
