Fires break out all the time, and paper documents burn well. If all of your information suddenly went up in smoke, chances are good that you’d soon go out of business.
Creating redundant copies of paper documents is prohibitively expensive, but you can’t afford to operate without a backup. That’s why an electronic document management system is the best option for protecting your business information in the event of a natural disaster, cyber attack or other data loss.
One of the main problems companies face with electronic or digital backups is that they have a hard time finding a system that’s able to handle the sheer variety of information: everything from paper documents to email to electronic files, plus the data siloed in accounting software as well as CRM and ERP systems. Fortunately, modern document management or ECM systems offer a great solution to this problem.
Here are four ways that a good document management system helps to protect your business data:
- Integrating divergent systems: With an ECM solution, you’re able to scan paper documents into a central location, along with all of your email, documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint slides, and more. ECM also integrates data from databases, accounting software and other systems so that this data is connected to supporting documents, and managed in one central system.
- Backing up data to the cloud: A good document management system gives you the option to back up all of your business information into a cloud environment where it’s far more protected from a disaster than when it’s sitting on a local server in your office.
When your data’s in the cloud, protected through multiple layers of security, it won’t be disrupted or lost in the event of a fire or natural disaster. Instead of worrying about your business information, you’re able to focus on the people and physical building. You could have a disaster in your office on Monday and have the whole company ready to work from home or an alternate location on Tuesday morning.
- Protecting and improving data structure: Backing up your information is important, but if you can’t find it easily, you can’t use it. That’s why it’s important to also protect how you structure your data, ensuring that it’s easy to find and use. A document management system allows you to save everything into a common drive and provide a consistent structure for the data and all the content around it, such as documents and email.
- Providing secure mobile access: It’s essential for today’s workers to have access to business information from any mobile device. A good document management system protects your data by allowing you to secure how it’s used while providing consistent access.
In the event of a dangerous storm, for example, you’re able to access the data you need from a tablet or smartphone instead of having to go to a physical office to get information saved on your workstation. And since a good document management system stores all of your information in the cloud, you have even more freedom and flexibility to go about your business.
Information is the lifeblood of any company, and having a plan to protect it is vital to business continuity. One of the biggest challenges a company faces when it comes to protecting their business data is how to manage and back up divergent information sources. By bringing all of these sources into one central repository, ECM offers a great way to protect your company’s future.
