It’s a well-accepted fact that paper heeds productivity. Of a total eight hours wasted per week in paper management, finding documents wastes one hour, difficulty sharing documents wastes one hour, distribution & storage wastes another hour, and archiving and retrieval wastes half an hour.

According to recent studies the average employee spends a whopping 400 hours a year searching for paper documents. Given that the average employee works a 48-hour week, that works out at over eight weeks a year! Here at Reckon we can think of numerous ways that we’d rather spend eight weeks a year and we’re pretty sure you can too. So in the spirit of helping more people to claw back some of that time, we think it’s time to talk about the benefits of electronic document management (EDM).

EDM helps lots of businesses save time by increasing productivity. That’s a pretty broad claim, but one that is achieved through several different features:

1. Electronically and automatically filing documents in logical locations.

Having all documents stored electronically means you no longer spend time trawling through irrelevant paperwork trying to find what you’re looking for. Also with an automated filing system you no longer need to spend time correctly filing documents where they need to be. This is automatically done.

2. Saving time when searching and retrieving documents.

Unlike storing paper files, it doesn’t matter how large your filing system, filing away and retrieving documents is always quick and easy. All your documents are filed automatically in their correct locations, so you’re able to easily find them. And on those occasions when you can vaguely recall a document, but can’t remember its exact name or location, you can find it via a Google-esqe search function.

3. Controlling in-house documentation processes.

Added to this, in today’s increasingly mobile world, new challenges have presented themselves, with documents and emails increasingly accessed on desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones. This plethora of devices and information means that it is more and more difficult to locate the documents you need, when you need them. EDMs simplify how you save, store and access information in this anytime, anywhere, any device era by:

  1. Allowing you to create, save and edit a document within one system and to access it from a variety of devices.
  2. Assigning security levels to stored documents. This means you can be sure that wherever and however documents are being accessed, they are only being done so by those with authorised access.
  3. Storing and managing different versions of a document. If your colleagues use more than one device to access documents, EDM makes it easy for everyone to see the latest version. This means the team will always be working on the most recent version and eliminates confusion and duplication of work.
  4. Automatically filing emails to ensure that essential business emails are accessible (even when a member of staff is on holiday or no longer with the business) and securely backed up at all times.
  5. Automatically capturing files that get sent to an external source (e.g. a printer). So if you are rushing to hit an online submission deadline or to get a printed hard copy of a document into the post, a copy of your document is automatically saved and filed.
  6. So rather than waste the next 30 minutes searching for a document, we suggest you take a fraction of that time to find out more by downloading our guide to electronic document management. And if saving that small amount of time feels good, imagine what you could do if you saved a whole eight weeks!