A poor document management strategy is one of the money-leaks in your business that could – and should – be plugged.
Here are some shocking statistics according to Microsoft
- The cost of document management to corporations is estimated to be as much as 15% of annual revenue.
- 85% of documents are never retrieved.
- 50% of documents are duplicates.
- 60% of documents are obsolete.
- For every dollar that a company spends to create a final document, 10 dollars are spent to manage the document. (We don’t have a Rand equivalent metric but can assume that we have a similar 1:10 ratio in South Africa)
Therefore, it makes complete sense to invest in document lifecycle management. It may sound rather new-age and complex, but it is, in essence, a really simple way of categorising documents from origination to completion, so that you can develop document management interventions at each point.
The pros at The Document Warehouse have split the process into 7 categories:
- Creation – The point of origination
- Early Life Cycle – Collaboration, iteration and refinement processes
- Active – The document is finalised and operational
- Semi-Active – Document is required intermittently
- Inactive – The document is obsolete and is no longer considered essential to the operation
- Offsite Archiving – Securely storing the document
- Destruction – Point at which the document is disposed
It may be helpful to consider what your organisation’s protocol is at each of these junctures to make sure that filing is optimised and serves the business optimally.
Why is it important to have a document lifecycle strategy?
- In a legal or other dispute, it’s important to be able to retrieve your documents instantly
- Compliance audits become a breeze when you have a proper file management strategy
- Saving time in trying to locate documents
- Risks are offset in terms of IP and document misplacement with proper filing systems and strategies
Digital Guru Kevin Craine once said, “Documents are the one single thing that can stop a company cold, yet no one is in charge.” And he is right. A failure to systemise and organise your filing is a one-way road to wasted time, stressed employees and unforeseen costs.
But, it doesn’t have to be that way. Chat to the experts at The Document Warehouse, they will make sure you’re in charge of your documents in no time.
