For many UK accountants, having a filing clerk or setting aside
time on a Friday afternoon to catch up on the filing is still part
and parcel of the way they work. Yet electronic document management
has proved to be one of the easiest and most effective ways of
driving efficiency and reducing administrative costs, while at the
same time improving service to clients.
Beginning an electronic document management initiative need not
be expensive. If you
choose a scalable solution, you can start small and add more tools
as your needs change.
Some worrying statistics show why it’s worth making electronic
document management a budget priority:research points to 80% of
employees wasting an average of half an hour per day retrieving
information, while one survey suggests that the average document is
copied 19 times.
Some familiar scenarios highlight the pitfalls of relying on
paper-based systems...
• You have a client on the phone and need to access a record
from a month ago
to answer her query. Asking the client to hold on for a moment, you
cross the
office, reach into the filing cabinet and... the document isn’t
where you’d expect.
Has it been taken out by another member of the team, or has it
slipped behind
another folder? Cue much riffling through the cabinet, while the
client holds
on - and on.
• In another scenario, you’ve been out of the office all day in
meetings and need to
catch up on some ‘real’ work. You load up your briefcase with a
mountain or
paper, only to find when you get home that you’ve left a crucial
bit of information
on your desk.
• And finally: you once again charge up your briefcase with
everything you
need for an important client review. Can you be sure you have all
the essential
documentation - what if a key piece of the jigsaw is missing? Will
you have it
We hope that this whitepaper will answer some of your queries
and will allow you to see why electronic document management tools
are justly recognised as delivering high levels of ROI for a
relatively low-cost of ownership.
 Continue reading the Document Management
Whitepaper
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