How to Find the Documents you Need FASTER.

We have all been in the situation when a customer calls and needs a copy of a document.  We put them on hold to dig through the filing cabinet where it “should be” and end up empty handed.  It’s never a good feeling to have to tell a customer that you will call them back with the answer but things are not always put away correctly.  Even if they are, it can mean digging through piles and piles of paperwork to find the exact document you need.  Document management is a technology that can help you eliminate that problem.

Document management software (DMS) rests in a central place that can be accessed right from your desktop.  Documents are scanned in then indexed so that you can search for the document in any way that you may need.  For example, if you are storing signed contracts you may want to index the sales order number, the customer name and the product purchased.  This would help you to immediately find a copy of the contract with the customer on the phone.   Most DMS systems have built in indexing options but you always have the option of customizing the indexing prompts to meet your company’s specific requirements.

DMS takes accessibility a step further by making any phrase in the document searchable.  If the field you need to find has not been indexed, you can type in the information you do know and the DMS will search through the text to find it.  This search method is not as fast as indexing but it is extremely powerful.

Many times a document cannot be found because someone else in the organization has it in their personal filing cabinet or worse, sitting on a mess on their desk.  When documents are stored electronically they can be accessed by multiple users simultaneously.  The document won’t ever be lost because the final copy is online.

Document management systems are a huge advantage to companies that have piles of paperwork to manage and struggle to organize it all.  It essentially takes the guesswork out of organization by storing everything in a central location and making all the content easily searchable.  To learn more about how document management may help you, view our video, “Armed and Paperless”.