Gadget and Technology

The financial services industry often uses papers, but as it’s become highly and more closely regulated, businesses large and small are starting to implement document software solutions to increase efficiency and security, without sacrificing profitability.

Small- to medium-sized financial institutions such as investment services and wealth management firms, credit institutions, mortgage companies, and brokerage firms all need to reduce costs while increasing service levels and operational efficiencies. They must also meet various compliance and regulatory laws. Accounts and Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) have the same issues.

A comprehensive document software package can easily and affordably accomplish all of these objectives.

For businesses still relying on paper, manually storing, copying, printing, faxing, and mailing of these types of documents becomes an exponentially larger part of operating budgets every year. Consider, for example, the ever-increasing cost of paper, on-site and off-site storage space, filing boxes and cabinets, ink, toner, and postage. With an affordable and simple to use document software, these expenses are reduced dramatically, so ROI is quick and sustainable.

Perhaps most importantly for financial services companies, complying with SEC, NASD, The Patriot Act, and Sarbanes-Oxley regulations is easier and less expensive with the right document software. Capturing, processing, storing, and sharing client information electronically with document management software is a secure, cost-effective, and practical alternative to the administrative hassle and logistical nightmare of maintaining paper files.

Unless you installed document management software already, your business is probably generating thousands of documents – forms, invoices, receipts, files, e-mails, presentations, and spreadsheets for example. As your business grows, the job of managing, filing, storing, and retrieving these physical paper files becomes a huge time-consuming hassle, not to mention a major operating expense. So if you are still pushing paper, here are the top five reasons you should implement a document management software system in your business as soon as possible:

1. To Increase Efficiency

Document management software increases productivity immediately because document filing and retrieval is done in seconds with employees never having to leave their workstations. Lost or misfiled documents are a thing of the past with customized indexing options and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) features.

2. To Improve Security

Unfortunately, many small- to medium- sized companies are still relying on file cabinets and bankers boxes to store even the mot sensitive information. Document management software enables businesses to customize security settings, set strict password access, and track every time a document is accessed or updated.

3. To Maintain Compliance

Businesses and organizations are under tremendous pressure to properly manage information for risk-reduction purposes. Non-compliance with privacy and security regulations can result in severe fines, penalties or other legal consequences that are easily avoidable with document management software.

4. To Reduce Operating Expense

Maintaining paper files costs your business money, time, man-hours, equipment, and space. Filing, retrieving and processing paper files is time intensive – 3 to 4 minutes per file. That starts adding up quickly and exponentially. Document management software can also greatly reduce, if not eliminate, the expense of paper, bankers’ boxes, file cabinets, ink, toner, copy and fax equipment maintenance, etc.

5. To Improve Accessibility

Document management software enables authorized employees to view, share, modify, and store documents quickly and easily from anywhere, even remotely.