Top Five Business Efficiency Goals You Can Achieve with a Document Management Solution (DMS)

Since the dawn of commerce, the ability to maintain an efficient operation offers a competitive edge. Today’s day and age is no different. From artificial intelligence to project management software – new ways of optimizing business operations continue to make waves within organizations across the world. However, there is one type of solution that tends to get overlooked among the ranks of these revolutionary technologies.

Document Management Solutions (DMS) impact productivity and efficiency at nearly every level of modern business.

The bottom line is: business users need important business documents on hand at all times – whether they’re on-prem or working across the globe. They also need to be able to collaborate on and distribute documents in real time. Information is your organization’s greatest asset, and optimizing how you handle the documents that contain that information has an immeasurable impact on your organization’s performance. The top five business efficiency goals you can achieve with a document management solution include:

Maintain a Single Source of Truth

Having a centralized repository for your documents is essential for several reasons.

First, having one source of information drastically improves the end user experience. Instead of wasting time searching for documents across a variety of platforms, users can simply navigate to the centralized storage and locate the document there.

Also, centralizing storage eliminates the silo effect created by users, or groups of users, storing documents independently. Not only can a document management solution centralize your storage, but it also enables centralized management of your document workflows – offering you a single point of reference for editing approval and distribution processes.

Revamp Accounts Payable (AP) and Accounts Receivable (AR)

Accounts Payable

Due to the document-heavy nature of the work this department performs, Account Payable has the most to gain from implementing a DMS. For AP departments, a DMS can eliminate hours of mundane and routine work and improve accuracy by using intelligent invoice intake to automate data entry.

AP users can also leverage a DMS to configure approval workflows and creation and delivery processes to the standards established by departmental business rules. Version control, history tracking, and easier implementation of security policies make having a DMS essential in for ensuring that your AP department is always prepared for an audit. Check out our document management guide to learn more about how you can eliminate the inefficiencies of manual document processing in your AP department.

Accounts Receivable

Similar to AP, Accounts Receivable entails document-intensive processes – from order processing to invoice delivery – that can be streamlined with DMS automation capabilities. These capabilities eliminate the most repetitive components of order taking and create a seamless document lifecycle for your AR department.

Orders are captured, stored, and converted to invoices with minimal effort required from your team. Some solutions, like Fortra’s Webdocs, make your AP and AR document management even easier by integrating with your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution or Line of Business Solutions (LOBS).

Lighten the Load on Human Resources

HR doesn’t always get the love that it deserves. Its core competency of ensuring that employees are accounted for and taken care of is one that requires a seemingly endless amount of documentation. Fortunately, HR departments that enlist the help of a DMS don’t have to endure the same struggles of HR past.

Using a DMS allows for easy and secure access to documents for both departmental users and employees. Most importantly, using a DMS is a necessity for enforcing the stringent compliance and regulatory mandates that HR departments must follow.

Often, HR is required to store different levels of documents with varying access requirements. Instead of making on-premises personnel manually enforce these processes, a DMS can act as your digital compliance assistant.  

Improve Report and Spool File Accessibility

Spooled files created by IBM i contain valuable data, but when left in their original form they can be difficult to access and interpret. This puts limitations on the milage that users can get out of these files that are rich with business-critical data.

Document management systems like Fortra’s Webdocs, which specializes in IBM i documents, can automatically convert reports generated by IBM i into a more accessible PC format such as PDF, HTML, Word, and Excel. Automating this process creates a more self-sufficient user base by eliminating the need for manual IT intervention and reducing the risk of human error in the conversion process.

Bring Efficiency Back to Your Users with Webdocs

If you are looking for a DMS that can optimize every part of your document lifecycle – including capture, creation, storage, and delivery – look no further than Fortra’s Webdocs. Webdocs gives your users their time back by automating laborious creation and delivery tasks and offering a secure and centralized single point of storage for all of your documents.

Webdocs also saves administrators’ valuable time by enabling centralized management of workflow processes, compliance enforcement, and Integration with ERPs and LOBS. Follow the link below to learn more about Webdocs.