Businesses around the world are obligated by law to maintain records of their activities, with different document retention requirements based on document types and sectors. Failing to maintain appropriate records can result in significant financial penalties and legal risks.
Despite a global trend towards digitizing document management systems and reducing paper usage, managing physical files remains a major challenge for many organizations. Here are the top five trends observed in 2020:
Security
Given the vast number of records processed by businesses on a daily basis, ensuring enterprise-wide security has become a priority and pain point for many organizations. Companies do not want their important records to be accessible to everyone without an audit trail in place.
You probably don't want important records to be available to everyone in the company either
Technology
While implementing software in document management has been a trend for some time, it is now an absolute necessity. Traditional journal keeping to track documents is no longer sufficient. Web-based document management allows for scalability for businesses of any size.
Traditional journal keeping to track documents is no longer sufficient.
Cost control
Depending on the sector, many companies accumulate a large volume of physical documents over time. Storing and managing such documents can be an expensive hidden cost, and outsourcing document management-related services has been shown to provide substantial cost savings.
Outsourcing document management-related services has been shown to provide substantial cost savings.
Efficiency
Optimizing operations to enable employees to access needed files quickly, easily, and accurately is one way to increase efficiency in document management. Studies have shown that some employees spend up to 2.5 hours per day searching for documents, which equates to more than one workday per week.
Studies have shown that some employees spend up to 2.5 hours per day searching for documents
Scalability
Outdated document management systems and methods can create bottlenecks when a company is expanding. It is important for businesses to have a system that can grow with them.
