Many businesses today have documents coming at them from many,
many directions and from numerous sources. Word documents, spreadsheets, forms, emails, order sheets, proposals, memos, contracts
etc. Multiple sources include customers, partners, suppliers, prospects, admin, legal, municipal - it never ends!
Putting in place a Document Retention/Paperless Office System
will make all these various formats & sources of documents available to anyone in the company who needs them. The access
can be controlled administratively and distributed from there - or - you can make your documents available on a network and
control access through network permissions. But in any case - every business needs a method of document access, preferrably,
in a common format without having to dig out the original copy and then have to deal with photocopying, faxing,
couriers, redistribution and re-filing of the document - all of which wastes time, resources & labor.
Additionally, many businesses, in order to protect themselves from litigation (see
Sarbanes-Oxely Act) as well as to comply with the ever-increasing industry regulations requiring the retention of records
from all sources of internal (corporate) - and external (customer) communications, documents and transactions - are needing
an organized method of saving, archiving and/or redistributing documents and records. There are additional considerations
of document security. Imagine a disguntled employee who copies a record or document - changes it - and then presents that
document as a factual original document?
Within a viable Document Retention System, a company can regularly archive it's
records & documents and digitally sign them, thereby fixing any document
in it's present state, preserving and protecting that document from manipulation, and the business thereby, from unscrupulous
litigation. Paper files can be lost - or stolen - or discarded. Digitally protected files can be easily archived, retained
and protected offsite.
There is the additional trouble of having to deal with
every worker having their own methods of locally storing and organizing the documents they deal with - which
might be exclusive to their department and nowhere else in the company - which denies access to those documents for
everyone else. Very often, if you have a Document Retention & Paperless Office System installed
- there is a central electronic repository for all documents without needing to have every application that
created these documents - installed at every workstation. That factor alone can be a big money saver - if nothing else.
Certain pieces of software and hardware are required to pull
this all together - but many times, these pieces are already in most offices or can be acquired through the replacement
of a single-function device - with a multifunction device. Below are listed some of the considerations and requirements to
pull together this very worthwhile productivity solution.
Keep in mind that *any* electronic or paper document can be scanned, digitally
signed & thereby preserved - protecting the company transactions and communications, retaining and preserving the
integrity of the business record. It doesn't take a large budget to do this - just foresight, planning and a little help from
the Argaine Consulting Group.
