5 stats that says it is time for a document management overhaul

Continued reliance on paper records among SMBs

A survey by Act! suggests that 45% of SMBs still rely on paper to handle customer, contact, and vendor details. The continuing use of these paper-based systems results in inefficient handling of customers’ information and the likelihood of errors. Furthermore, an astonishing figure of 11% of such organizations have no document management system at all to begin with.

Digital document management systems can avoid all these inefficiencies since processes are made effective, storage is no longer physical, and productivity is improved. Such systems help guarantee that all papers are digital and, therefore, handy for processing, modifying, and retrieving information.

For businesses in Australia, leveraging a comprehensive Document Management System Australia can significantly enhance operational efficiency.

Impact of data quality issues on company performance

One particularly telling figure shows that 91% of data professionals stated poor data quality hampers their business. When data is erroneous or scarce, it creates a hindrance to decision-making as well as other business operations, thus resulting in poor returns and low productivity.

These issues are well addressed in today’s advanced document management solutions, which are cloud-based. They increase the efficiency of document management and organisations’ ability to locate relevant and current information. 

These systems also contain elaborate tools for cleaning, validating, and monitoring data, ensuring it is clean and, hence, more reliable. They allow one to work with a team while using one database and eliminate discrepancies and inconsistencies that arise from individual work.

Difficulty in quickly finding documents

Another fact shows that 48% of the workforce indicates that operating staff can hardly find the documents quickly. Traditional paper-based document systems comprise time- and energy-consuming problems that create havoc among the employees, as many spend most of their time searching for documents. 

According to an Adobe Acrobat paper in 2023, 64% of people said they repeat documents because they do not find the originals. An employee spends over four hours per week trying to find files on the Internet. 95% of the company’s employees have been frustrated while looking for a document, and 13% regularly do.

Sophisticated record management systems help easily retrieve the latest documents, minimising the repetition of work. However, the best document management system achieves all this with fewer frustrations when it is cloud-based. 

Such a system ensures that all the information employees work with is evergreen and improves factors such as data and task duplication while providing documents at different interfaces. This efficiency does more than save time; it increases satisfaction and productivity among the employees.

E-signatures boosting close rates

PandaDoc has revealed that e-signatures can boost close rates by more than 28%. The typical signing process is time-consuming and tedious, requiring printing, signing, and scanning the documents. E-signatures also prove to be more effective as they enable organisations to close deals much faster, meaning improved close rates as opposed to traditional methods.

One way to ease the signing process may be to adopt a digital method since this can be done remotely with clients or prospects. Still, making it interactive, such as letting them select the colour and font of their preference, can be an option. 

The document recipients can sign contracts expeditiously by neglecting additional activities such as printing and scanning. It accelerates the transaction times and increases client satisfaction since it is much less inconvenient than traditional signing procedures.

Increasing investment in cloud technologies by CIOs

59% of key information technology administrators, or CIOs, say cloud technologies are their number-one investment priority, a Tata poll indicates. They expect the document management market to grow and this proportion corresponds to the expectations. 

These trends are evidence of the constantly increasing appreciation of the significance of cloud technologies for today’s business environment. Document management systems based on the cloud help stimulate innovation because such solutions are characterised by high scalability, flexibility, and reasonable prices. 

These systems exemplify several benefits, including enhanced data security, usability, and low demands on the IT framework. For that reason, such technologies place the participating businesses in good stead for future growth and keep them as relevant as possible in the modern digital world.

Conclusion

Contemporary document management approaches to handle data quality problems, decrease a paper load, provide better document accessibility, automate signing procedures, and synchronise with advanced developments. The data presented above provides a univocal answer to the necessity of document management overhaul. These are some of the digital solutions that can, when adopted, help in enhancing efficiency, productivity, and profitability, among other gains in any business.