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How many physical files are on your desk right now? How about your drawers? Look at any company and you’ll find countless folders, cabinets and the like holding the most diverse types of documents, won’t you? Have you ever thought about the cost that all this paperwork brings, or how having to search manually for a document actually lowers your productivity and even makes you miss important deadlines? Or even worse: what if a confidential document falls into the wrong hands? With so many files, how do we address the vulnerabilities printed documents leave behind?
Maybe you already took these questions into account, but you still wonder “how could I change something that has been done the same way for such a long time?”. You’re not alone, for this is a rather common concern in the corporate world. So, let us reassure you with a resounding “Don’t worry! There is indeed a solution (and it’s called Electronic Document Management)”! The Electronic Document Management (or simply EDM) is, like BPM and Analytics, one of the modules available on the Fusion Platform. Although EDM may not be the most popular tool around (perhaps due to its perceived challenging implementation), it has essential features for those looking to reduce costs, organize their workflow, increase productivity, and gain many other benefits that will be listed in the following sections of this article.
What is EDM, and how can it contribute to my organization?
EDM deals with the management of different types of documents, enabling functionalities such as creating, storing, editing, processing, printing, and executing actions on a wide range of image, video, audio, and text file formats. In addition to these management features, it also makes it possible to organize, retrieve, distribute, and dispose of documents effectively and securely, ensuring that they will be available at the right time for people with the appropriate access permissions.
Implementing an EDM system means transforming the organization into a paperless company. Initially, this may seem daunting, but rest assured, it’s not! However, it is a task that will require dedication and collaboration from everyone.
To encourage your company to implement an EDM system, it’s good to assess its main benefits:
● 1. You go paperless by transforming physical files into digital data;
● 2. You greatly reduce costs;
● 3. You become a more environmentally friendly company;
● 4. You get access control for all documents, thus increasing security;
● 5. You better organize workflows resulting in more efficiency and productivity;
● 6. You get better version control, revisions, and approvals;
● 7. You get certified digital signing;
● 8. Searching for content and keywords within documents becomes quick and easy. Once you learned about the benefits digital transformation brings to this area, a new question arises: what tools do you need to achieve them?
● Simultaneous editing coordination to ensure that changes made to a document by one person do not overwrite those of another, with a Check-In to signal documents available for editing and a Check Out to indicate those which are unavailable because they are already being edited.
● Version control, saving different versions of a document, each with its change record and responsible parties, making it possible to restore previous versions as needed.
● Access control and security, enabling permissions to be assigned to each new document according to users, roles, or groups.
● Certified digital signing in the ICP-Brazil standard for electronic documents.
And now that you know the features of such tool, it’s time to learn the steps to actually implement an EDM system in your corporate environment.
EPSDDA: A step-by-step guide to implementing an EDM system
To help you and your company to implement an EDM system and make this transformation an easier process, we use to recommend what we call the EPSDDA step-by-step process (which stands for Encourage, Plan, Set Deadlines, Dispose, Automate):
1. Encourage: motivate your staff about the implementation of Electronic Document Management (the benefits we mentioned previously are excellent arguments!). This way, everyone will be informed, willing, and prepared for the digital transformation;
2. Plan: many important tasks and analyses will come with EDM. They must be done carefully and mindfully, so we suggest you plan ahead all related activities. Only then can you determine how long it will take you to become a paperless company, and ensure that you won’t miss the mark.
3. Set Deadlines: Along with planning, come deadlines. Set dates for document digitization. Initially, there will be a large volume of documents to be digitized, so it’s necessary that at this stage you run an evaluation of what actually should undergo the process. Each department can classify their physical files in two ways: those that can be discarded without digitization and those that must be stored digitally. This will require its share of effort (which can vary from company to company, as it depends on how much paper documents are used). Nevertheless, don’t give up!
Each department can classify documents in two ways: those that can be discarded without being digitized, and those that must be stored digitally. This will require a greater demand for effort (of course, this can vary from company to company, as it depends on how much your company uses paper documents). Even so, don’t give up!
4. Dispose of documents: but only after a period of 30 to 90 days, this way you ensure a kind of backup in case there is an error in the digitization process during step 3. After this period, your confidence in electronic document management will be strengthened, and you will feel much more comfortable getting rid of all that paperwork!
5. Automate: after drastically reducing (or even eliminating) physical documents in your company, you need to:
● Organize them in your Document Center: the document publishing process includes the document types stage, which occurs before it goes online. Fields are defined for
that document standard. For example, let’s suppose customer registrations are being digitized along with a service contract. The “Customer Registration” will then be registered in the Document Type. You will enter the necessary fields to identify each one, and in the file field, you will append the digitized contract.
In the next step, in the document center, you can then publish a document with its type, filling in the necessary information and attaching the digitized document. Then, you repeat this action until all documents are registered.
File organization also includes folders and subfolders which are kept in the document center, as well as their respective access permissions, which can be configured in both folders and individual documents.
● Automate processes: previously, how was a customer registration and contract done in your company? Which department initiated this registration? Did it go through the approval of certain employees? Who has access to this information? Think about all the possibilities regarding a process that generates or comprises a document. Did you think about it? Notice that working with a simple document requires a sequence of events, each with its specific user permissions and availability. For instance, who can view, edit, or delete a given document?
In general, automation allows for the publishing and control of documents in a more secure and precise manner, as well as the advantage of centralizing a large volume of documents in a single place.
In conclusion
Many people still feel more secure with a printed document because it is tangible. However, when you consider the cost, productivity, efficiency, security, and convenience benefits, EDM becomes an essential tool in managing your business.
At first glance, implementing an EDM system may raise concerns in companies with a large volume of documents. For this reason, taking the initial steps and, more importantly, following through with this process can be challenging.
To achieve this, encouragement is necessary. All employees, engaged and informed, should embrace the paperless environment, following the step-by-step process to implement it efficiently and organized.
