A business involves handling a large number of documents such as invoices, contract details, client data, financial data, and others. When these documents are unorganized and scattered in different places, it can create confusion for you and slow down your productivity. Additionally, it can result in costly loss for your business.
This is why business document management is important. Effective management of documents will help you:
- Save time.
- Reduce your stress.
- Access any document/data when you need it.
So, document management is a necessity for every business. However, you might not know how to better manage business documents. In this guide, we will walk you through some simple and useful practices, following which you can efficiently manage your documents.
Why Is It Important to Manage Your Documents?
Before we go into the details of managing business documents, let us understand why it matters. Document management is the process that involves proper storing, tracking, as well as organizing of your important business files. It is done so that you can access the desired document easily and securely.
Here are Some Benefits of Managing Your Business Documents Effectively;
- A well-structured management of your documents will help you streamline the overall working efficiency. You will not have to spend a lot of time searching for the required files.
- With better management, you can ensure that all of your data is protected from theft and other threats.
- It will help you retain the particular records for a certain period of time.
And so on…
A Simple Guide to Managing Your Business Documents: With Useful Tips
1. First off, You Should Digitize Your Document
The first step to document management is going paperless. There are several reasons to digitize your paper files or documents, some of which are below;
- Physical documents are difficult to manage.
- They are prone to errors.
- You have to spend a lot of time to find the desired files.
- Your team members can’t collaborate on physical documents.
In addition to these, physical/hard form documents can be damaged in case of fire, water, etc. On the contrary, digital data is easier to store, organize, search, and collaborate. So, the first thing to do is to convert all of your business data into digital form.
For this, you don’t need to hire data entry experts or typing masters. You can do this job on your own with the help of a picture to text converter. It uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology to automatically extract printed or handwritten data from scanned documents and images into digital text.
All you need to do is capture the images of your documents and pass them through an picture to text tool.
For the sake of example, we practically converted a scanned business document using the photo-to-text converter tool.
Here’s the Demo;
2. Organize Your Data In a Clear Folder Structure
Converting your physical files into digital format is not the end. You need to create a clear folder structure that every member of your team can easily understand and follow. Organizing your documents in a folder structure will make sure that none of your data is misplaced or lost.
Below are some tips that you should follow to better organize your data into folders;
- First of all, we suggest that you create some broad parent folders. You can start by creating the main categories of folders. For example, Clients, Marketing, Finance, and so on…
- The next practice is to create sub-folders for each broad category. For instance, if your parents’ folder is named “Finance”, then you can add sub-folders like Invoices, budget of clients, reports, and other similar folders. Here, we suggest adding each sub-folder logically, not randomly.
- Another useful tip is that you should avoid creating too many subfolders. Doing so will make the navigation process difficult for you. So, the better practice is to keep each folder within 3 to 5 levels.
3. Use a Document Management System (DMS)
Another tip for effective document management is to opt for a Document Management System (DMS) software. When you have digitized and organized your business documents, you need to centralize them. In this scenario, using DMS software is a better option. It will help you easily store, track, as well as manage all of your digitized documents in a single place.
If your business is small or at an initial stage, then we suggest using the previously mentioned “Folder Structuring Practice”. But, if your business is developed or rapidly growing, opting for a “DMS Software” is the best option.
In the points below, we describe how using DMS software will help you.
- A DMS software will help you keep track of all the edits in documents. You can also access the previous versions of your files.
- Most of the DMS software comes up with an advanced option of controlling access to documents. So, you can control who can access your files, edit them, or delete any file.
- These softwares come with a backup feature as well. So, in case any of your important data is lost or deleted accidentally, you can easily back it up.
- Another helpful feature of DMS is that it allows you to find any file within seconds. All you need to do is just paste the keywords or metadata in the search bar and click Enter.
There are a number of DMS softwares that you can find in the market. Some prominent options that we found are: Zoho WorkDrive, DocuWare, and M-Files. You can integrate the DMS software with other business tools as well, and make the workflow smoother.
Conclusion
Effective management of business documents is important for your business. It will make sure that none of your important data is lost, making every file easily accessible, trackable, and storable. In this blog post, we have described a complete guide to managing your business documents. We used a simple and quick approach.
You just need to start by converting the documents into digital form and organizing digitized data into a clear folder structure that every team member can follow with ease. And when your business grows, we suggest considering DMS software for better storage, trackability, and centralization of documents. Following the above guide, you can save a lot of your time, protect documents, and improve team collaboration as well.
