The Hidden Costs of an Inefficient Document Management System

No business wants ineffective systems, especially when they can result in a loss of finances, productive working hours, and other harmful effects. Inefficient document management contributes to obvious expenses, such as the costs related to filing and storing paper documents. But a cumbersome process could also result in less-obvious opportunity costs, such as the loss of discounts, difficulty communicating with vendors and more. An inefficient document management system can end up doing incredible harm to your company, and the problems it creates may work from the inside to the outside of your business.

Paper Based Systems

If your organization uses a paper-based process for accounts payable, for example, an employee must spend time copying invoices and filing duplicates before routing them to colleagues for approval. These approvals often take too long, either because invoices get lost along the way, or the approvers are unavailable for some reason.

Such a system makes it difficult to consistently pay your invoices on time, preventing your organization from taking advantage of early-payment discounts. In time, you could also end up on a key vendor’s “black list” and have a hard time collecting on receivables. This not only looks bad on your business, but creates a significant financial loss. Whether this be problems collecting cheques, collecting product for resale, or simply difficulty communicating with the vendor due to an unwillingness to speak with you, failures in your paper-based system could result in large problems.

Consider the Alternative

Now, instead of a paper-based invoice management system, imagine that you scan invoices once when they arrive, and the documents are automatically indexed and stored in a secure central repository. For approvals, the system pushes the electronic invoices out to approvers for review, with status reports and alerts to prevent overdue payments.

This way, vendor invoices are paid on time and your business operations move more smoothly with no invoice management headaches. Such a system exists, and it’s found in DocuWare intelligent indexing software. This software takes the struggles out of paper-based systems, and automates processes and systems to recall information, save documents and more for you. MES Document Hybrid Solutions is proud to offer this software to our clients, and help with the transition to a digital document management system.