In today’s society everyone strives to become the boss whether it’s the manager, president or CEO. People tend to discount the little people like the secretary, assistant and file clerk. These employees are essential for making sure every-day tasks are completed smoothly and efficiently, yet businesses insist on making life harder for them by keeping with a paper-based office.
Take for example a department assistant at a state university. He or she organizes everything from adjunct teacher files, instructor contracts, course schedules, money orders and background checks. For each type of document there are separate filing storage cabinets.
Also take into consideration the issue of employee manuals. Every task required for a job is provided in the inconvenient form of a 4-inch binder categorized haphazardly in a conglomerate of miscellaneous information.
Within any industrious employee there is an urge to find a more efficient way of locating the necessary paperwork.
Any of these documents could easily have been scanned and uploaded into an electronic document management system. The initial few days needed to do this would be well worth the couple keystrokes and click of a search button to find and print documents as needed.
Fortunately, document management systems are growing in popularity and soon the day will come when frazzled file clerks are replaced by relaxed assistants calmly searching through an electronic database.
