Companies that appreciate the benefits of electronic document workflow and plan to implement it in the near future face the challenge of choosing the right software that will suit their needs. The implementation of the assumptions of electronic document workflow, as well as efficient execution of procedures and tasks related to document management in the company is enabled by document management system (DMS) solutions. Choosing the right software solution with an extensive set of features allows companies to quickly digitalise, automate and optimise their workflows and can be a very good first step towards a successful digital transformation.
Document workflow in the company – why digital is the way to go?
A decade or so ago, all companies were forced to store their documents and organise their circulation using the traditional paper form. This solution had many problems and downsides. Paper documents were exposed to accidental destruction, loss or misplacing. What is more, stacks of documents weighed down employees’ desks, and nearly everyone had access to them. Traditional document workflow also required building, managing and organising the work of an archive, paying the employees responsible for its operations, as well as constant expenses for stationery, maintaining printing infrastructure, not to mention the time that employees lost due to moving around the extensive repositories of paper documentation.
Fortunately, traditional document workflow is no longer the only way to go. Over the last few years, more and more companies and organisations turned to solutions and technologies that enable the implementation of electronic document workflows, which eliminates the majority of the main shortcomings of its traditional counterpart. Such solutions enable storing digital versions of documents on on-premise servers or in the cloud, which can be easily and quickly accessed from a user-friendly DMS application interface. The entire documentation is available to everybody — people working in the head office, remote branches and employees working from home, depending on their tasks and authorisations. Documents are protected against accidental deletion, all changes made to them are recorded and access to individual files is granted on the basis of imposed permissions, which protects confidential data against leakage.
Document management system in electronic document workflow
Choosing the right document management system ensures taking advantage of all the benefits of implementation of the electronic document workflow. Such tools are specialised software suites, whose feature sets focus on document digitalisation, as well as automation and optimisation of document workflows, and improving the operations and procedures linked with documentation management.
A high-end document management system is quickly becoming a key tool in the area of enterprise documentation management, not only due to its extensive feature set, but also its high flexibility and scalability, which enables ongoing customisation of its features according to individual needs of a given organisation, requirements of particular business divisions and circumstances of a particular process or business scenario.
Modern and innovative DMS solutions offer extensive feature sets, tailored to the needs of companies operating in the era of Industry 4.0 and ubiquitous digitisation, allowing them to speed up virtually all processes related to the workflow of tasks, information and documents and share documentation within the company and among its employees, as well as to securely and seamlessly integrate it with other systems already in place in the company. A top-of-the-line document management system also ensures that errors, omissions and other issues won’t occur at any stage of the documentation workflow.
Modern and future-proof document management system
Any noteworthy document management system should be easy to use, intuitive and scalable. It should also be able to handle high volumes of documentation. It needs to focus on security, ensure full audit trail and offer control over all changes and modifications introduced by users. Top systems of this class are increasingly using the latest IT technologies and bespoke solutions, such as workflow engine, machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), business process automation (BPA), robotic process automation (RPA), smart optical character recognition (OCR), digital signatures and many others
Among the systems available on the market offering document management functionality, modern and highly functional low-code platforms are particularly worthy of note, since they providequick, easy and cost-efficient way of building complete business applications without coding. In the best low-code platforms, this is often combined with ways to quickly and efficiently implement the required changes and modifications with immediate effect — the resulting solution is a comprehensive, flexible and fully functional tool, ideally suited to the requirements and needs of modern companies and organisations.
