Some things just make sense. Saving time and cutting costs are among every company’s goals. More and more people are starting to see how eliminating the paper from their processes makes things a whole lot easier. The key benefits that have the most significance to you will depend largely on your role in the organization, so for the sake of this article we will break down our document management story by employee.
When we sit down with AP clerks, their key concerns tend to be: gaining better control of approvals, minimizing data entry, eliminating filing, and having easy access to the documents they need. All in all, they want to make their job easier so they can spend more time on the important tasks.
Eliminating filing and gaining easy access may be the pieces that have the biggest impact on an AP clerk’s time. Instead of walking to a filing cabinet for paperwork, they can get everything they need right from their desktop. This is also huge because other people in the organization will no longer need to bother the AP clerk to find documents for them. They will each have access to all of the documents they have security privileges to see, allowing them to get information on their own.
AP clerks also struggle to keep track of documents in the approval process. Paperwork will sit on someone’s desk too long and deadlines will get missed. An electronic workflow brings along the option for email notifications of approaching deadlines and continual visibility throughout the process. Plus, since managers can view and approve documents via email (even from a smart phone or tablet), approvals are easier and can happen more quickly.
Which brings us to our next employee – the Accounting Manager. Their priorities will be making the best use of staff’s time, having visibility to everything in process, and being able to manage to the exception. Integrated document management solutions like doc-link feature the ability to capture data and activities for reporting purposes. If a document is viewed, saved, printed, or routed, this history is saved along with the document. An Accounting Manager can run a report to find out how long a document takes to get processed and how many documents have fallen out of the pre-set guidelines, which allows them to address the bottlenecks and keep things moving.
For the AR clerk, sending invoices out to customers might be the biggest challenge. Printing, matching, stuffing and collecting back up documentation to send takes up a good deal of their time. Using the output functionality of a document management solution will ensure that documents get sent automatically in the recipient’s preferred format with any supporting documents they need automatically pulled and included.
You don’t need to limit the system’s use to accounting personnel. HR Directors and Legal Departments have tons of documentation that shouldn’t have to be manually filed. The documents they process tend to contain sensitive information too, so the added security of an electronic solution will be a great benefit for them.
Your auditors will also thank you for going paperless. Instead of taking up your time hunting down back up documentation they need, you can quickly select a date range and document type and save all the documents they need to a flash drive. They can be on their way quickly and you can work uninterrupted while they’re there.
No matter who you are or what you do, you probably have paper to eliminate and process to streamline. Grab your team and join our upcoming webinar on August 13 featuring doc-link, integrated document management. Register Here to reserve your spot today.
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