Alleviating 4 Common Business Pains with an ECM Strategy

On average, with every new year in business, organizational content increases by 200% (Forrester Research). Although the popularity of digital documents continues to grow, paper is still dominant in business. With documentation moving between departments and file cabinets, not having control or a strong document management strategy in place could lead to processing challenges and a heavy increase in costs.

If document-driven processes are interfering with productivity, employee morale, or revenue goals, then you’ve hit a major business pain. By implementing Enterprise Content Management (ECM), you can address common challenges like these, while saving valuable time, allowing for document collaboration and business efficiency to improve. Let’s review four common business pain points, and discover how ECM can help:

Challenge #1: Lack of Visibility & Control

Where did that document go? Why are those numbers different? Who accessed this last? Instead of spending hours trying to identify who applied document edits and why, ECM software provides real-time updates of all document actions through a secure history log and audit trail reporting tool. Providing enhanced visibility, ECM delivers managers the opportunity to gain control over departmental documents, their workflow routes, and employee processing for improved business intelligence. Built-in business process management workflows provide insight into document analytics, scheduling, transactional activities and process queues for end-to-end process visibility. This type of digital document control allows collaboration with customers, clients and partners to improve dramatically, by keeping employees accountable for their document-driven tasks.

Challenge #2: Poor Service & Declining Customer Satisfaction

According to AIIM, 48% of survey respondents feel that their customer response time is lacking because of poor document management. Putting together emails and notes from the many people involved in a customer issue is time consuming and can lead to inaccuracies. Conversations can be made difficult due to a lack of information about the history of the problem at hand and not being able to find the resources necessary to solve it. Don’t make your customers wait. ECM software allows for faster and more consistent response times as employees can immediately search and retrieve stored documents in a matter of seconds. Via a simple keyword search – company name, PO number, etc. – users can pull up all documentation associated with a particular customer instantly, allowing for customer inquires to be handled in real-time. With a full display of data providing insight into customer history and past actions, employees can confidently assist customer call-ins, resulting in happier customers and the opportunity for repeat or add-on business.

Challenge #3: Time Spent Processing Data Across Platforms

From accounting to payroll applications, asset management and CRM software, there’s a plethora of business programs used by organizations today to manage information. With data spread across many different platforms, often the same information has been manually entered into multiple programs, causing duplicate efforts by employees and a risk for data entry errors. Users are then left wondering which program has the most accurate and up to date information. But with advanced capture integration, as part of an ECM strategy, valuable data is automatically extracted from your everyday documents – including PDFs, Microsoft® Office files, emails and their attachments – and routed to the destinations of your choice. Send critical business data directly to Microsoft® Dynamics, QuickBooks®, Salesforce®, Office 365™, or other existing business systems without any manual intervention to improve the quality and standardization of content distributions across all applications. Email notifications are then sent to the appropriate department or person upon document capture, as part of real-time content management designed to improve productivity and process visibility.

Challenge #4: Staying Compliant to Avoid Fees & Penalties

Do you find yourself struggling to meet compliance requirements? Are you racking up extra fees and penalties over simple regulation mistakes? Are you prepared in the event of an unexpected audit? ECM software eliminates risk, keeps documents secure, and enables your company to abide by regulations through efficient methods of capturing, storing, accessing and managing your digital documents. Whether you’re in a heavily regulated industry or one with less strict requirements, ECM software keeps your information secure, only allowing those with permission access to certain files, eliminating the hassle of upholding rigid security standards while protecting sensitive client information. From SEC, to FINRA, HIPAA and UETA, implementing ECM into your document strategy provides a flexible, yet rules-driven process for managing data in accordance with government compliance regulations, saving you the worry and unnecessary costs of noncompliant document management.

As a business owner, it’s critical to diagnose and solve any business headaches that can have an impact on your team. Identifying document-driven pain points will open the door to discovering an effective document management solution that will take your business to new heights. With ECM you’ll be sure to have a proven method to attaining a competitive edge by solving the most common, and pressing, challenges flagging businesses today. Are you ready to identify and understand ways to solve your pain points? Contact Square 9 today to get started.