The more effective your document workflow processes are, the better your business will run. When you have a better document workflow, your company can react and adapt faster, operate more efficiently, and save more money. Because of this, you should be constantly seeking out new ways to improve your workflows. Here is how you can drastically improve your company's document workflows in a short time.
Make finding your documents easier
One the most time consuming parts of any document workflow is simply finding the documents you need to complete a task. You can prevent your employees from wasting hours on these searches by making your documents easily searchable on a computer.
Automate as much as you can
Taking simple tasks out of your workers' hands frees them up to accomplish much more every day. You can do this (and still get everything done) by automating your workflows.
Make your office more mobile
Your company's employees aren't always standing in one place. This presents a problem when someone needs to handle a document workflow, but they aren't in front of a computer terminal.
Adding mobility to your document workflows allows your employees to access and manage documents right when you need them to. Mobile document management even allows your employees to take critical actions when they're on vacation on the other side of the world.
How to make these things happen
Now that you know what to do for better document workflow, it's time to explore how you can take all of these actions. To this end, here are the three steps that you need to take:
Go paperless
A paperless office doesn't just make you eco-friendly. It provides your business with access to a wide range of resources that can enhance your company's productivity and efficiency.
You cannot, for example, make your documents easily searchable or automate their processes without a paperless office. As such, converting your documents from paper to digital files must be the first step.
This can be an easy process for your company, regardless of how many documents you have or the resources you possess to convert them. All you need to do is have them converted by a document management specialist.
Invest in a capable document management system
You can't make documents searchable and automate your workflow process manually. You will need the right software to make this happen. To this end, you must get an enterprise-level document management system. Such a system will enable you to find indexed documents with the ease of a Google search. It will also come with automation capabilities that you can take advantage of. Your document management system should also be cloud-based to ensure mobility.
Allow your team to use mobility resources
A good cloud-based document management system is only half of what you need to add mobility to your document workflows. You will also need mobile hardware that your team can use on the go. Although buying brand new tech devices is an option, you don't have to. Most of your employees will be heavily invested in their own smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. You can take advantage of this by launching a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) program, wherein you use your cloud-based document management system to give employees secure document access via their personal mobile devices.
How good are your document workflows?
A strong document workflow will give your business a major competitive edge. Taking the steps discussed in this article will make your document workflow more beneficial for your business than you ever thought possible.
