Craig Freer, Vox Amvia

As personal computers became more popular, office managers started to wax lyrical about the promise of a paperless office – a world where no one would have to dig through dusty ledgers or archives, and employees could easily access, file and share information. The ledgers may be gone, but the promise has been sorely broken.

Organisations spend a good deal of unproductive time locating, reproducing and reprocessing documents... the modernday equivalent of rifling through lever arch files and filing cabinets. The result is that these organisations are not only information-inefficient, but at risk of being found in non-compliance with retention regulations. Unfortunately, when managing masses of documents using inefficient systems, employees may take shortcuts, and the true extent of broken processes and mismanagement won’t be evident until document access is at its most critical.

Businesses have to unify the process of capturing, processing, accessing and sharing documents so that employees are spared the laborious process of having to copy, move around and search for documents when they could be performing tasks that add value to the business.

Document management technology can identify, index and categorise documents in their entirety as they’re captured, which means that documents can be found using a single word, collection of words or a phrase. The right tools can also allow for the selective extraction of indexed information in structured documents like invoices, for example, by purchase order number.

The net result is that organisations can automate management of their document assets with minimal administrative overhead, and avoid legal or regulatory issues associated with not being able to produce documents.

Relying on employees to organise complex document systems without the help of such a solution may lead to a system as convoluted and inefficient as the paper-based archives of old. Having an intelligent and flexible system take the reins will not only eliminate human error, but enhance efficiency and response times.

About the author: Craig Freer is MD of Vox Amvia.