Not too long ago, your office was full of paper.
Paper came into your office as invoices and checks, it was printed in stacks by your employees who stapled and paperclipped the madness to share in (face-to-face) boardroom meetings, it was rolled up into balls to throw at nervously-focused interns, and it was filed away in monstrous filing cabinets that made it impossible to adopt the minimalist Scandinavian design trend all the cool offices had.
Fast forward a couple of years: you traded printers for scanners, staples for software, boardroom meetings for Zoom, and your overstuffed office for something that felt more like IKEA.
You waved a magic wand and all those stacks of paper disappeared. And by that, we mean that you engaged an enterprise document scanning company to complete your dreams of digital transformation—one tiny decision that leaped you forward into the mainstream. Within weeks you had future-proofed your operation against fires, floods, and possessive employees. You ended your monthly storage bunker expense, downsized your operations, and put a single couch in the middle of an empty office (with one plant on one table for one coffee mug).
Everything was sunshine, lollipops, and unicorns because you were finally light, nimble, budget-tight, and modern. Whoop whoop, n’am sayin’?
Not so fast! Things aren’t perfect. (It wouldn’t be a good story without a twist in the plot).
The piles of paper are gone, hallelujah, but you haven’t given your employees clickable bliss yet. Sure your staff admire your digital savviness already, but it’s a straight shot to Terrific Town from where you stand if you install a system to manage your new database of thousands of digital files. Terrific Town is all about supercharging productivity and team happiness while keeping a chunk of change in your coffer.
A Document Management System (DMS) makes digital files easy to create, share, track, search for, find, and store. A DMS gets organization going across departments, automates processes, and takes advantage of the digital base you’ve already put in place. It’s time to get out of the gross (digital disorganization) and get into the granular (efficient analytical insights)!
So you think, “Yes, okay, let’s do it!” and you feel like somebody oughta give you at least a pat on the back or, say, a mug for the minimalist Scandi-modern side table beside the couch in the airy room that used to be stuffed with filing cabinets.
But… don’t get cozy on that couch yet because there are different types of Document Management Systems out there and the pressure is on you to pick the right one.
What DMS is right for your company?
Good question! Here’s the answer:
They’re not all created equal. Choosing an under featured DMS creates gaps in processes and security, which ends up costing you that chunk of change you saved by going paperless. You don’t want to feel crummy in the end game!
You want the right system for your future goals that ticks all the boxes and sets off confetti in the minds of your employees every day. A system like that requires customization (because no two businesses are exactly the same).
You look different in your plaid pants than Marvin looks in his down the street (you look better in yours). Different industries have different needs for file structure, legalities, compliance, and security. Your inputs and outputs are different than Marvin’s company down the street. If you make a widget and Marvin makes a dongle, your system needs to make wonderful widgets, which simply won’t design dapper dongles if Marvin installs the same DMS.
Customization is key.
The best DMS for you is figured out by contacting the right vendor—who knows about Document Management Systems and what you want your DMS to do.
Let’s start by looking at the different types of Document Management Systems promoted by sales departments around the world so you know which ones to close the door on with deadpan eyes and which one to go for full steam ahead with surety in your veins and excitement in your soul.
Read on for the lowdown, padres.
Types of Document Management Systems:
Shared Drives (digital filing cabinets).
In-house systems built from scratch (custom but costly)
Single application DMS (too small)
Full feature DMS (ding ding ding!)
Here’s the big question: how do different types of Document Management Systems fail?
They fail in 14 different ways!
Break it down:
Shared Drives
Your nephew graduated from tech college and sold you on a shared drive as a great DMS solution, overseen by his geeky eyeballs, managed meticulously by him. Sounds like a money saver, right? Ermmm….
At first, maybe. But that system doesn’t scale without adding more servers and hiring more recently-graduated tech dweebs to keep the bleeps and bloops flashing and bonging. Even then, shared drives lack important features:
Indexing fail
Sorting digital files on a shared drive is the same as sorting paper files in cabinets. Files can be opened, changed, saved, and closed, but they can’t be cross-referenced or tagged. You can’t apply helpful metadata to them.
Snapshot fail
You can open Word documents and Excel spreadsheets, but what about contracts attached to emails? You need a complete file record of everything coming in from clients, employees, and outside contractors. This isn’t possible on a shared drive.
Version Control Fail
Shared drives don’t care about duplication. They only care about making those duplicated files easy to access and save. Redundant records create tracking nightmares that turn your digital files into disorganized soup. That’s risky because decisions require the right documents, not chaos chowder.
Access Fail
Assigning access levels and permissions is a cumbersome task on a shared company drive. Sure, you can limit access to certain folders, but that’s about it. And that doesn’t cut it.
Remote Access Fail
We’re working outside the office now. Setting up a server to handle remote access queries requires too much time and too much money—and that doesn’t make sense. Servers churning away in chilled rooms aren’t the proper infrastructure to offer fast, reliable, secure access from outside the organization—it’s a deal breaker limitation.
Lost File Fail
“Lorraine just deleted the file, everybody!”
“No I didn’t, Wayne! It’s right here (I think)……………..oh, shoot! I put it in the wrong folder.”
Shared drives don’t care if you delete a file or put it somewhere no one can find it, making it a lackluster solution for digital document management. Same problems as before, only digital.
