A document management system allows you to store all of your office documents, physical and electronic, on the same network. Physical documents are converted to electronic ones via a set of document processing technologies, which can take a number of different forms. (Invoice processing simply applies these technologies to your accounts department.) The resulting files may be Word documents, if you have more advanced software such as optical character recognition, or they may be JPEGs, TIFFs and PDFs if they are regular scans.
The advantages of document processing are significant. Businesses can literally become paperless, since everything can be uploaded and kept centrally, allowing anyone with permission to access it as they need it. However, itâs not a panacea, and used unwisely there are some problems. One of the reasons youâll want to consider using such a system is because it is more environmentally friendly, since it doesnât waste paper. Another is that documents can be found and shared quickly.
However, there are knock-on effects to other areas of your business. Your IT infrastructure will need to be up-to-date and future-proofed to prevent issues. A major problem to head off is storage space.Â
Document processing turns physical papers into electronic outputs. The software involved does this in a range of ways and with a variety of outputs. Some outputs (file types) are more suitable than others. So, for example, a simple scan programme might output a TIFF or PDF. These images can be optimised â or they can contain a huge amount of redundant information. Where files are larger than they need to be (and they can run to many tens of megabytes) your storage space will fill up fast. Sooner or later you will have to do something about it to keep your system running. That might be adding further storage (which is relatively cheap but can come with the complications of restructuring), moving to the cloud (costly) or carrying out a complex de-dup.
The solution is to think long-term when you are moving to a paperless system. Document processing technology should be selected on your future needs, not just current ones or simple price level. Otherwise, your document management system will become overloaded and you will end up paying more for extra storage. Invoice processing, too, could become over-complicated, with customer and supplier goodwill eroded as a result. Since this is something you probably wanted to address and streamline with invoice processing, itâs as well to ensure it doesnât become a problem further down the line when the new system has been implemented.
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