Document Management

Overview • EDM

What Is It?
Paper and electronic documents are everywhere in the modern business environment. Document management provides information retrieval when and where it is needed. Information contained in documents solves customer issues, keep creditors at bay and help make business decisions. Lost documents are the stuff of failed orders, lost business, legal liability and businesses in chaos. Electronic Document Management can tie any type of information together in a single place.

Who Is It For?
Varying aspects of document management systems can apply to any organization.

Why Do I Need It?
The whole concept of "information overload" stems from just two problems. One, we have to decide quickly what to keep and what to throw away as soon as it comes across our desk. Two, the information we keep must be handled as few times as possible. This means that key documents cannot be misplaced, mislabeled or misrouted. Although business may never be exactly paperless, it is possible to get the feeling that you are managing information instead of the paper managing you.

Consider these key points:

• 90% of corporate memory exists on paper.
• Of all the pages that are handled each day in the average office, 90% are merely shuffled.
• The average document is copied 19 times.
• 7.5% of all documents get lost, 3% of the remainder are misfiled.
• Companies spend $20 in labor to file a document, $120 in labor to find a misfiled document, and $220 in labor to reproduce a lost document.
• Professionals spend 5-15% of their time reading information, but up to 50% looking for it.
• There are over 4 trillion paper documents in the U.S. alone - growing at a rate of 22% per year.

Source: Coopers & Lybrand

How Can IAS Help?
IAS is a certified Document Management solutions provider. IAS will be happy to discuss your particular requirements and determine if document management technologies would work for you.

What are the Key Benefits of a Document Management System?

  • Prevention of catastrophic loss: Most businesses have a hard enough time dealing with a computer outage let alone a loss of paper records. The management system that is well-designed can create layers of redundancy preventing a fire, flood or other accident from destroying vital business information.

  • Customer service applications: When a customer calls in for assistance they may be inquiring about a product they purchased, a letter they received or a complaint about a bill or service. Having access to every essential piece of information relating to that customer involves correspondence, billing information, payment information and purchase history.

  • Information on demand: a single telephone call leaves your clients feeling well served. Finding the right document as a legal matter means serving justice, proving facts and backing up claims.

  • Business practices are streamlined: staff made more productive, and information overload is managed.

  • Improved information retention, storage, processing, distribution, or work flow.

  • Compliance with legal issues of records management

  • Allow customers to access their own records and information either before or after a sale.

  • Delivers products faster with better customer service (reduce cycle times)

  • Distributes a product or information in your own distribution system or across the Internet.

  • Streamlines a collections or billing process.

  • Makes your firm bulletproof from loosing a single document from accident, theft or disaster.

  • Improves employee productivity; stop wasting time looking for information and put information to work.

  • Secures documents

  • The list is endless