Are you fumbling when it comes to document management?

At one point or another, we’ve all watched our favorite football team fall victim to a poorly played game. Whether it’s dropped passes, missed cues, or disheartening quarterback sacks, sometimes watching players navigate the field can feel like the frustrations we experience at work when it comes to document management. But we all love a good underdog story – which is why Record Storage Systems is here to help you overcome hurdles within your organization’s document management processes, tackle challenges head on, and ultimately emerge a winner.

1. Focus on fundamentals

Any good football coach will tell you that in order to work as a successful and cohesive team, you need to have a basic understanding of the game — a solid foundation on which to build. You may think that hard copy document storage is the only fundamental component of document management. However, as technology changes and evolves, document management becomes less black and white and more fluid. Document scanning and electronic content management, data storage, security and risk management all play an integral role in building your organization’s document management foundation.

The national trend over the last several years has shown us that the majority of professionals are focused on how they can achieve maximum efficiency and more automated processes with electronic records. Having a basic understanding of document management trends will increase your likelihood for future success. Now that’s what we call winning!

2. Create a game plan

If we’ve learned anything from watching football, it’s that it can be hard to succeed in a rapidly changing, unpredictable environment. Uncertainty often breeds chaos, but it doesn’t have to. Developing a lifecycle document management strategy from creation to destruction ensures you’ll be prepared with the solutions you need to face any obstacle.

Have you thought about a document retention schedule to help define your document management game plan? It’s difficult to identify the underlying causes of inefficiency without first establishing a goal or purpose. Maybe your goal is to go paperless, or reduce overhead costs by $1,000 per month, or simply cut down time spent on manual document scanning and filing. Creating a game plan and document retention schedule can ensure you’re making measureable progress to meet your goals.

3. Operate under any conditions
From hot and humid summer afternoons to snowstorms, football is played under any and all conditions. It teaches us that we will often be at the mercy of elements that we cannot control. The same goes for your document management strategy and the importance of disaster recovery. Fire, ice and snow, powerful storms, floods and chemical spills are a harsh reality. The consequences can be devastating personally and professionally. 90% of organizations have good backup data plans, but only about 25% are prepared to recover following a disaster. Be confident that you can operate under any conditions by implementing offsite data and information storage and developing a solid contingency plan.

4. Always make adjustments. 

Pat Haden, athletic director at the University of Southern California, said that football is a game of adjustments. Yes, there is strategy involved, but you have to anticipate that things will go wrong. That’s when they have the players huddle up and try to get it right.

A study from the International Data Corporation (IDC) demonstrated that professionals lose as much as 2.3 hours a week searching, but not finding, the right documents and another 2 hours recreating documents that can’t be found. All told, time wasted in document creation and management activities cost organizations $9,071 per employee per year or a 9.8% loss in the organization’s total productivity according to the study.

By understanding how a record is used within a company, strategic adjustments can be made regarding the management of that record. Are there internal processes that require multiple versions/approvals of a single document? Perhaps an electronic document management solution would help streamline tedious approvals and editing. Are there documents that have outlived their usefulness but you’re required to keep them due to retention regulations? An offsite document storage facility would alleviate the clutter. Think about your daily processes and see what adjustments can be made to improve your overall efficiency.

So suit up, put your helmets on, and get out there.

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