Weak Document Management

Imagine your company has multiple documents in different formats, with various workflows and numerous updates. All these increase the risk of poor document management due to the lack of established structure for the documents in constant use; the repository will be uncontrolled and unmanaged. This can be called a systemless approach for document lifecycle, and it decreases productivity.

For example, your manager asks you to bring him the latest version of an important document. So you start to look for it. First, you look in your department’s files, and you fail — the document is not there. So you’re performing a search by the title. More than one hundred potential matches discourage you, especially after you open some of them and find out they are not current. The clock is ticking, the boss is waiting for the document, and you are nowhere near this unfortunate paper.

Sounds familiar? No matter how great you think you organized your work folders, documents can get lost, never to be found again. Your colleagues have their view of structuring and naming documents and folders.

Any company should remember that business documents are vital assets and should be treated correspondingly. Otherwise, the company may end up with:

• Decreased document utility
• Reduced efficiency
• Increased risk and cost.

Good document management ensures that businesses meet compliance and regulatory requirements and at the same time preserve the productivity of employees and business processes’ agility.

But how to achieve sound document flow? You can:

• Create a library to store and manage your documentation.
• Provide training for your staff so that they all knew how to manage the documentation and did it consistently.
• Incorporate elements related to history, versioning, and sigh off
• Remember to update your documentation. If you have documents that require regular updating, create a plan of updates and follow it correspondingly.
• Track the documents, so one person’s changes don’t overwrite another’s.

Document management is a way to capture all of your company’s documents and store them in a well-organized manner with the proper tagging to make them easily actionable.

Stay well!

Amrit.

“Follow the river and you will get to the sea.”