May 30, 2021

Get More Done: How to Facilitate Your Back Office in the Oklahoma City Area With Automated Document Management

Automated document management has turned into an emphasis for companies that want to develop a competitive advantage in the digital generation. Creating more agility and efficiency inside an organization begins by prioritizing back-office modernization and digital transformation.

In other words, swapping the tangible document management systems (DMS), like filing cabinets, and hand-operated processes for digital files and paperless, automated workflow. Even though nearly all companies are already fractionally digital, loads are poorly putting to use the tools to indeed facilitate their workflows and procedures.

Aided by automated document management software you can simplify organization, utilization, and ingestion of your concrete and digital documents.

In this comprehensive manual, we're going to share how a machine-driven document management software operates, its assistance to your organization, and we'll assess three of our front-running automated document management tools: OpenText, SharePoint, and M-Files. To kick things off, let's run through what we speak of when stating automated document management.

What is automated document management?

Automated document management, otherwise known as document control, is the method of taking advantage of applications and platforms to retrieve information, ingest, and manage. As soon as you computerize file management, you eliminate the manual tasks concerning handling documents.

Examples include: digitizing paper documents, firmly archiving files, tracking modification management of your records, using keywords to repossess records, distributing digital data among personnel, and securing files with sensitive data for a business with compliance needs like HIPAA.

How does automated document management software function?

Document management automation lifecycle bears resemblance to this:

First, your software program will ingest the record with a analyzation technique and translate it into an automated rendition. Then the file is categorized with detailed metadata, keywords, or tags so it can be easily found later.

Ultimately, the application will start routing the document to a predetermined, encoded area, where it is kept safe from unauthorized access but easy to reach for those with permission to obtain it.

Because the majority of document management tools is cloud-based, files may be retrieved from cloud storage as needed, from anywhere with a safe access to the internet. To make it even easier, numerous software solutions produce mobile apps for this very reason.

What are the benefits of automated document management solutions?

There several benefits to enforcing document automation solutions in your company. These include:

  • Getting rid of intensive, gruntwork

  • Greater adaptability for your organization

  • Enhanced security for classified documents

  • Modified search functionality for information

  • Ease in meeting compliance requirements

  • Established document workflows

  • Enriched cooperation for your team

How to Assess Automated Document Management Tools

The entirety of automated document management solutions allow you to digitize, organize, and efficiently retrieve your records. Nevertheless, each comes with a variety of augmented characteristics and technology, which will have different degrees of significance depending on your business demands.

While you're studying software, here are some of the deliberations you should keep in mind.

Usability

Acquiring and deploying the latest software in your organization needs an investment of both money and time. You should choose a platform that is easy to use and does not call for a significant learning process, as this defeats the objective of producing better competency and agility in your business. Preferably, we suggest making use of free trials before purchasing, to guarantee that you and your staff are pleased with using the software.

Access Controls

All digital document management tools empower staff to organize, participate, and collaborate. Though, they depend on how collaboration is facilitated. Quite a few permit multiple team members to collaborate and edit simultaneously. Others apply a check-in/checkout process as an audit report for who is varying and what changes they've performed, otherwise known as version control. Some applications present both alternatives.

Additionally, it's important to the safety of your company and your data workflows, to be able to manage who are allowed to access documents and folders within your enterprise, and what they're granted to edit.

Document Ingestion Features

One more of the critical features of your electronic document management software is in what manner it consumes the document. Image scanning functionality like optical character recognition (OCR) is an exceptionally effective way to automate concrete documents in extensive back-office upgrade tasks.

After digitizing the document, OCR extracts details from the text of a document and applies it to mechanically identify the tags that will make it easier to track down eventually.

eSignature Feature

For several organizations, one more significant element of automating document management is utilizing digital signatures. Provided that is is an important aspect for your team, it’s in your best interest to guarantee that you choose a document management platform that incorporates your electronic signature tool of choice.

Workflow Automation

Workflow automation is the next step above mechanized document management. Conclusively, you want to streamline as much of the monotonous daily work as possible. Common operations include data entry, accounts payable, and invoicing. Hence, it's important to select a platform that makes it practical to carry out task automation for other components of your organization.

Mobile Apps

We discussed this a bit earlier. Home jobs are becoming increasingly more prominent today, especially considering COVID-19. If your company is heavily giving priority to digital transformation and adaptability, it's crucial that you empower your team to safely access information from their mobile device or through a web browser while performing remotely.

Security

While the use of technological innovation, like automated document management, can produce stronger protection for your sensitive and proprietary information, it may also more susceptible to computer-based crime if not administered appropriately.

As a result, it's crucial that you select a platform that incorporates powerful safety (and compliance if necessary) regulations allowing you to assuredly streamline your company without rendering it unguarded to security breaches.

We endorse document management platforms that offer document and data encryption, routinary upgrades, frequent document backups, and imposed admission controls.


If you're inclined to pick a document management tool, we have three that we love and operate frequently for our organization and our clients. We've included some information for them below.

Automated Document Management Software Reviews

SharePoint

Pricing: Starts at $5 each month

SharePoint is a Microsoft Office software application that provides strengthened enterprise content management (ECM) and collaboration competencies. Highlights include:

  • Excellent for everyday content management and publishing

  • Convenient UX/UI, the negligible learning curve

  • Increased searchability through metadata

  • Automate processes with PowerApps' Power Automate integration

M-Files

Pricing: Call for a quote

M-Files is a broad document management tool that is proficient in handling wide-scale automation and digitization projects. It's a bit more comprehensive than Sharepoint, and this is a bit more expensive. Among the highlights are:

  • Windows UX/UI that is simple to learn

  • Available in on-premises, cloud-based, or hybrid environment

  • Amalgamation with Adobe Sign, for legally obliged electronic signatures

  • Increased searchability via tags

  • Accessible document templates

OpenText

Pricing: Starts at $5 monthly

OpenText is a document management solution that is excellent for organizations with heavy compliance standards. With that being said, its UX/UI is slightly more intricate and may need a larger learning curve. Among the highlights are:

  • Powerful categorization, filtering, and access control abilities

  • Recently acquired Documentum for further case management functionality

  • Provides greater flexibility and capabilities when matched with SharePoint

How Wave Can Help with Automated Document Management in the Oklahoma City Area

As companies expand in their utilization of innovative platforms to obtain a competitive edge, raise customer well-being, and prevent being troubled by their competition, they often disregard the process of computerizing countless of their back-office work thus undoing much of their newly-discovered efficiency. A perfect example being those physical archive cabinets we stated earlier.

At Wave, we think of the Back Office as the heart of your organization. If bottlenecks and efficiencies are introduced in your tasks and workflows, this will result in cascading effects through your entire organization.

Wave has decades of collective knowledge in Back Office Modernization, which stems from our culture in systems integration, enterprise resource planning (ERP), enterprise content management (ECM), business process automation, business intelligence, and intelligent information management.

We have triumphantly executed several processes geared toward streamlining back-office operations that can be gradually launched departmentally or throughout the entire organization. We confer with our clients on a strategic level to help identify those hindrances and areas where digital transformation and computerized workflows can most benefit your business.

We're also proficient in the most commonly used enterprise platforms suchlike Sharepoint, M-Files, OpenText, and more.

Let's discuss and figure out how Wave can support your company. Contact us today.