How to Pair with an Electronic Content Management Solution (So You Don’t Regret Switching)

The arguments for businesses phasing out paper recordkeeping through digitization grow more numerous by the day with every advance in the technologies involved. Yet as the adage goes, the tool is only as good as the person using it; translated more precisely to the business world, how well you integrate ECM into the previously paper flows of your business determines how well you’re able to take advantage of its features. Without proper integration, what’s the point?

So, how does a business properly harness all of the latest archival tech at its disposal?

Perfect Your Processes

First, be sure your entire team gets the memo. (Or email - we are talking about saving paper, after all.)

There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Tighter and more expansive electronic content management integrations almost always require more wide-ranging shifts in departmental practice. Once an ideal digital solution is in place, everyone’s job becomes easier.

To get an idea of where to start, identify any processes in your business where information changes forms - say, where an email is printed for recordkeeping. Ideally you’ll want to minimize the number of transformations, as every change in “form” takes organizational energy. That can be as innocuous as a few minutes a day to copy a form to give to another department that’s unable to access the digital repository directly, or as potentially catastrophic as an important contract falling through the cracks in your organizational framework due to poor or misplaced communication. Too many pain points in the passage of information to its final form can create an even more inherently inefficient system, even if that final stage is digital.

Protect Your Intellectual Property (and Productivity)

One of the most transformative aspects of “going full digital” with your recordkeeping is the degree of granular access control. This makes digital content management far better at protecting your company from bad actors and conniving competitors than traditional means. Any modern Electronic Content Management solution maintains access logs, making finding the theft of intellectual property potentially traceable.

On the other side of the coin, you’ll also enable your employees to increase their efficiency by allowing simultaneous access to the same documents without creating copies as you’d likely need with paper. In your implementation, ensure the proper personnel can access enough of your digital content repository to fulfill daily responsibilities yet . Administrators can grant differing degrees of access to documents on a temporary or per project basis to further mitigate risk while maintaining focus.

Partner With A Proven Leader

Perhaps the quickest and most risk tolerant path is to partner with an established Electronic Content Management provider with extensive experience in the integrations that will best support your company’s operations with minimal overhead. A highly competent ECM will always work proactively with you to ensure their offerings meet your very specific needs and can keep you abreast of the latest document retention regulations - even actively examining your existing data workflow