Why do I need a document management software?

Often, the biggest opportunities for cost savings are right under your nose. Did you know that recent research from IDC concluded that Fortune 500 companies as a whole lose an average of $12 Billion per year to inefficiencies caused by the lack of a structure for managing their documents and digital assets?

Still unsure? Did you know that according to Gartner Research, the average employee spends $4,800 worth of their time annually just searching for documents? In companies with large numbers of employees, this amount can easily reach millions of dollars annually. In smaller organizations, the dollars wasted as a result of searching for and re-creating documents that are already available can quickly amount to the kind of expense that small companies cannot really afford.

Consider the case of a company (not using a document management software) with 150 employees, each wasting $4,800 worth of their time searching for documents every year. The annual loss for this organization would be $720,000.

Perhaps you’re wondering how these figures can be accurate. Let’s assume for a minute that Gartner’s numbers are exaggerated. Would $350,000 annually sound more realistic to you? Even at that level, would it be acceptable to you? Anyway you look at it, the financial cost of not managing your documents properly is stunning.

If you implemented a document management solution that only helped you locate documents easily in your organization, that alone would provide huge savings. But why stop there? Now let’s say you are able to find documents quickly. How do you know that the document you found is the most current and accurate version?

There are hundreds of embarrassing stories about wrong documents getting to customers, users or vendors. Can you think of instances where something like this could make you lose an account, or damage a relationship with one of your customers, partners, or vendors?

In light of recent developments, do you know if you are in compliance with regulatory rules regarding document capturing and retention? Is your business-critical information floating around in unsecured laptops, instead of a centralized repository with airtight security?

Are your most important documents stored where they’re not readily available, or are they stored where they can be securely retrieved from anywhere where there’s an Internet connection? How do you know when critical information in your organization changes? If you depend on others to give you the information, you may never know.
Are you willing to trust hasty emails and hallway conversations as a means of distributing must-know information?

We now live in a world where chasing the information that you need has become increasingly a dead-end pursuit. Don’t work so hard for your documents -- make your documents work for you instead.