Managing Documents for Businesses: Document Management System Best Practices
Having the right tools and a proper document management process is the key to managing business data effectively. When an organization doesn’t know what to do to control its documents, it can cause a lot of problems in the long run. Having a document management system can address tough business issues that are related to document control and enable compliance, easy and secure access to information, and improved workflows.
Document Management Pain Points & Best Practices
- Consistent Folder Structure
Having a disorganized file and folder structure can easily amount up to hours of lost productivity. Unfortunately, folder structures for a lot of businesses are still a huge mess and it requires planning and strategizing.
One of the most effective ways to organize documents is by category. Here are a few examples to consider:
- Departments – organize your folders by business function, such as Finance, HR, Sales, IT, etc.
- Clients – create separate folders named for each client with subfolders for all project details
- Products – if your business primarily focuses on products instead of individual clients, you may want to organize your folders by product.
2. Consistent Naming Conventions
File naming convention is a systematic method for naming files to make them easier to retrieve later on. Improper file naming can cause confusion and unnecessarily slow down work.
We recommend that you develop a standard naming convention that captures the information that is relevant to the document and is based on what’s most important to you. For instance, a file naming convention may include the following components in this order:
Example 1: [YYYYMMDD]_[Project]_[Location]_Event.xxx
/ 20210624_Godiva_Makati_FGD.pdf
Example 2: [Job Number]_[Document Type]_[Vendor]_[Date]_[Keyword]_[Revision Number].xxx / 1080_Quotation_ABC Corp_11-11-20_Flooring_01.pdf
3. Proper User Access and Permissions
The amount of confidential data companies collects increases at an exponential rate as time passes.
The implementation of document retention policies helps to ensure companies protect documents, comply with data privacy laws, and avoid data clutter.
Every company must have a document retention policy that states the storage duration of every kind of data that they have. Moreover, having a document management system will enable companies to implement a retention policy on all the documents in the system. Once a document reaches its maturity date, the system administrator can determine what action will be taken on the file.
The most common way to share documents nowadays is through email. Unfortunately, this method can cause problems, such as poor document control and document versioning. It can be difficult to find out the latest version of a file once it spreads in an email thread and everyone has their own versions stored on their devices.
In a document management system, sharing files is much easier and more secure. It can be shared directly from the system, and send notifications to the recipient.
6. Securing Data in Transit and at Rest
In Archive One, we protect data in transit and at rest. The documents in Archive One are encrypted using the latest 256-bit encryption when the files are stored and when it’s being transferred from the computer to the server where the files are kept. As an added protection, subscribers’ data are stored in their own databases.
Audit preparation can be intimidating for companies and usually takes a lot of time. You have to make sure that there’s proper document security and access to complete and accurate records.
The manual ways of managing documents no longer cut it in today’s business environment.
Archive One makes the audit process more efficient and less painful for both auditors and auditees. Designed with compliance in mind, it allows auditors to quickly locate documents that are necessary in performing audits and provides features such as a single interface for audits, a database of historical audits, and an audit trail to run reports on actions that are taking place within the system.
Archive One is a document management system (DMS) designed to help companies easily classify, store, secure, and retrieve essential company documents needed for retention and audits. With our partners' help, we provide an end-to-end document management solution from scanning to document storage at a highly competitive price.