The Datamax Thinking Blog

Information needs to be secured REGARDLESS of format. The best part? With a good plan, you can secure both digital and paper documents.

61% of data breaches within companies of less than 500 employees involve paper records.*

And now you’re probably counting or trying to calculate how many employees are in the office right now (and thinking about the amount of paper).

Just think about this for second: what if your law firm was on the news? Not because you won a high profile case, but because the firm had a data breach. Even worse, think about if that data breach was the result of something as simple as one of the lawyers accidentally leaving their briefcase at Starbucks (a briefcase containing two legal pads with client information written on them inside) or mistakenly throwing old case files away in the dumpster.

For the majority of business records, the legality of digital document images as legally valid substitutes for the originals has been settled for years.

Research* indicates that “Legal” is most resistant of any department to paper-free work processes.

How many paper documents are in your office that you don’t really need? If you do need all of those documents, how much are you spending for file storage off-site? Are rooms filled with filing cabinets of old cases (and are those rooms and those documents physically secured?).

You can – legally – get rid of that paper. Better yet, paperless (or at least less paper) processes are faster, more efficient, and have solid ROI. So remove that paper and turn office space previously occupied by paper into something useful – another office for a partner, a break room for employees to take a breather, a client meeting room, lobby or whatever else you need.

Read on for tips on how to get this done.

If you take advantage of document management software for productivity – and use your copiers as the beginning of an automated document process – you’ll add to your bottom line.

For 19 months from 1860 to 1861 the Pony Express was the fastest way to move information from coast to coast. Leaving from St. Joseph, MO or from Sacramento, CA; the relays of riders could make the 2,000 mile trip in 9 to 12 days.

Couriers are important. Wells Fargo began as a courier service, transporting packages and gold (remember all those stagecoach robberies in those old Westerns?).

Today, finding the right information (or even have that information proactively delivered to you) when you need it is key to business success.

How often do you spend 10, 20, or even 30 minutes irritably flipping through manila folders in a filing cabinet looking for that misfiled customer invoice? Or how many times have you been frustrated by not being able to find the correct version of an important document?

Using documents to get your work done shouldn’t and doesn’t have to be that frustrating.

Even electronic documents can be lost if you don’t take the time to ensure an effective workflow and index the documents for future retrieval.

Moving documents through your office and getting them to the right people at the right time so that decisions can be made (and invoices paid!) is important. 

It’s also easy for documents to go astray. Paper documents placed on someone’s desk could quickly end up at the bottom of a stack, never to be seen again. A sensitive document printed to the color copier down the hall could be accidentally picked up by a co-worker – and could even be a privacy or other compliance breach depending on the level of personally identifiable information contained in the document. 

Even electronic documents can be lost if you don’t take the time to ensure an effective workflow and index the documents for future retrieval. 

Operating with digitized documents means that you print less. So, not only is this a greener practice, this translates to less spending on supplies like paper and ink.

For companies trying to be more environmentally conscientious in their everyday practices, technology is often overlooked as a means to go greener. However, advancements in technology make eco-friendly easy by offering solutions to older methods of doing things. One of these technologies is electronic document management.

Online document management takes document security to the next level with security measures unlike ever before

Cloud based document management services are quickly gaining traction as the definitive document solutions for business. Cloud services offer a variety of benefits to businesses, from giving your employees the ability to access any file on your server from any device to fostering collaboration and a more productive work environment and beyond.

Many of you may be familiar with document management services as a way of enhancing document security and productivity. Cloud services take this one step further, enhancing the access that your employees have to your documents whether they are working in the office, remotely on location or across the globe. Learn more about the benefits of cloud based document management below:

Another industry that would see great benefits if they implemented a document management system is the education industry!

Document management is an effective tool for every business not matter what it does.

So many different industries have put document management to the test and are doing much better because of it. The medical industry and the law industry are two great examples of industries that benefit greatly from document management!

Another industry that would see great benefits if they implemented a document management system is the education industry!

But the chances of losing a paper document are much greater than losing a document that is digitally stored because it is backed up on multiple servers.

Companies have many many files and documents that need to be stored. Whatever the volume of security of the files may be, it all needs to be located someplace.

Most companies will depend on standard filing strategies use stacks and loads of filing units. Other corporations have selected to pick a document management system, getting rid of the need for physical filing units and rather saving the data in an electronic format.

This might scare some companies because what if there computer crashes or the thought that the files will be digitally lost. But the chances of losing a paper document are much greater than losing a document that is digitally stored because it is backed up on multiple servers.

Document management helps you take full advantage of your organization's information. Take back the key asset of information for your organization.

Your organization's knowledge is valuable; it's a key component to success. But creating, storing, and retrieving this information can be costly. Recent studies estimate that 15% of all documents go missing, while 30% of an average workday is spent searching for information that is trapped in inefficient unstructured documents.

Document management is the answer to this problem. With document management, your organization can easily find and utilize important information.