How manual document storage and retrieval processes are harming your business

No matter what market your business operates in, manually storing documents and paperwork can feel like a never-ending task. But in addition to being an increasingly costly burden, traditional document management methods can cause efficiency issues throughout your business.

Manual document storage and retrieval processes can erode profit margins – so ridding yourselves of ageing filing cabinets can help you shed a lot more than just an office eye-sore.

Document storage – a costly problem that won’t go away

In an increasingly digital age, paper documents now represent the Achilles heel of the modern office environment. But although many businesses will be accustomed to ranks of filing cabinets and towers of paperwork, when does document management start to become a problem you simply can’t ignore?

It’s easy to view document storage as part and parcel of everyday life. But try to think beyond the obvious inconvenience – manual document processes can affect the efficiency of your company in a wide variety of ways:

• A burden on your employees: Information management is already overloading workers. Workers can spend up to 50 per cent of their day simply managing information, making employees sift through physical documents. 
• Lost or misfiled documents: At best this might delay payments, at worst your business could fail to comply with regulatory requirements
• Outsourced storage isn’t cheap: If you’ve run out of space in your premises and are having to pay for offsite storage, these costs can slowly erode the bottom line. And don’t forget the time staff may spend taking documents to and from off-site storage. 
• In-house storage: For businesses dedicating their own office space to document storage, this can often be just as expensive as outsourcing. As well as creating an uncomfortable office environment, dedicating rooms for storage, occupies valuable (and increasingly pricy) office space.
• Slower business decisions: If your business is relying on employees to manually source, locate and extract documents from storage facilities, your ability to make quick and informed business decisions could be compromised.