When you’re choosing a document management solution, it’s hard to know which features and functionality are going to be most relevant for your business. While every business has different requirements, it’s important to choose a solution that evolves with your needs and accommodates future technology.
Choosing A Document Management System: 5 Must-Have Technology Advances
1) A browser-based user interface: In the past, implementing a document management solution often required complicated software installations on individual workstations. To ensure maximum usability, look for a system that provides full functionality in a browser-based interface, sometimes known as a web client.
The main advantage of an HTML-based web client is that it runs on all platforms, and is therefore well-equipped to meet your current and future needs. At the same time, users find it easier to adopt a document management system when it has a simple, intuitive user interface that’s familiar from modern Internet applications.
2) Low-cost cloud infrastructure: While on-premises document management solutions were once the norm, many organizations are now realizing the benefits of moving to the cloud. When you combine the cloud with a browser-based interface, you get document management software that is consistently multi-tenant, service-oriented and scalable, offering tremendous cost advantages. Some providers offer both cloud and in-house systems, which may be helpful for organizations that require a hybrid solution due to compliance and confidentiality requirements.
Preconfigured, cloud-based DocuWare Kinetic Solutions can be deployed in three days, including time for user training. These solutions were created in response to changes in the way people want to implement document management and workflow automation solutions. DocuWare Kinetic Solutions solve universal challenges specifically regarding time consuming manual paper processing in AP and HR departments, including issues associated with waiting for approvals, storage, searching and capturing data. We speed implementation by predefining roles, access rights, search terms and retention schedules. Customers benefit from the fact that all the discovery research has been done in advance and already built in.
3) Mobile applications: To remain productive, it’s important that your users be able to capture, access and perform a variety of other document management tasks from their mobile devices. When choosing a document management system, look for one that provides mobile access to the most important features, and supports all major mobile platforms (Android, iOS, Windows Phone).
For example, DocuWare offers a free mobile app — PaperScan — that makes it easy to scan receipts and other documents with your smartphone’s camera. After snapping images of your documents, these files could be automatically uploaded to Dropbox, Google Drive or your document management solution, just like traditionally scanned documents.
4) Automatic indexing: When you capture documents and bring them into your document management solution, you’re gathering a variety of content — scanned paper documents, emails and electronic files — into a central repository. To ensure they’re easy to access and retrieve, this content must be indexed.
In a manual indexing situation, a user must key in data for different fields when capturing a document, which is time-consuming and tends to produce errors. Automatic indexing, on the other hand, makes it easy to store and archive your documents as they’re captured. Now, intelligent indexing technology is available that uses machine learning to identify the most relevant index entries based on a user’s previous actions. Such a system recommends increasingly accurate choices with each new document added, constantly improving system performance.
5) Scalable architecture: For many organizations, it makes sense to start small with document management and roll out a solution to one department or process. But if you decide later to expand your use of document management, you shouldn’t have to implement a new system and constantly re-train your users.
That’s why it’s important to choose document management software that’s truly scalable and performs optimally regardless of whether you’re starting with a few users in a department or covering all departments with a comprehensive solution. A scalable solution is able to grow with your organization’s needs, regardless of the number of users or archived documents.
In the end, every business is going to have different requirements, but these five innovations help ensure that the system you choose is able to grow with you and carry your organization into the future.
Editor’s note: This post has been updated for accuracy and new content has been added.
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