Document Management System All You Must Know

Documents play a vital role in every walk of life – right from birth certificates to death certificates and everything in between. Everything you do creates a document. Just like your life, your business also runs on documentation- contracts, invoices, receipts, audit trails and much more constitute a documented business ecosystem.

Putting down everything in black and white is crucial for reducing the risks to your business- what better way to do this than having a document that protects your interest? Since digitization has taken a stronghold, more so since the onset of covid pandemic, document management systems have been a obvious choice for big and small firms to manage their documents.

What is document management?

We can simply describe document management a system that captures, stores, and tracks any and all types of documents. On a digitized platform, it can keep a record of word files as well as any digital images of any paper-based content. A document management system can also maintain your PDF or word files. A DMS is essentially an automated software which helps in sorting, securing, tagging, and digitizing your business-related files.

This results in quite a few amendments to the initial contract draft. Although these negotiations always increase the contract turnaround time.

What is legal document management system?

For the legal field, every piece of paper can be of importance, anything can be evidence. Having the right documents in place is the first requirement of any legal matter or contract.

A DMS can help with organizing all matter or contract related documents in one space. It creates a central repository so that every related paper is available when needed, that too in a digital format.

What are the challenges to document management

• Loss of important documents

  Working manually with documents is always a mess. There is always a chance of missing out on something amidst the volume of case papers or contracts that need to be dealt with. There is also a chance of filing the wrong document or loosing the latest version of a contract draft.
  
  This does not only to lead to loss of money, but also time and trust in a firm.
  
  What can you do? – With a digital management system, you can easily cut down on these administrative tasks. With a digitally saved document, you can make numerous copies even if you loose one.
• Time consumption

  Traditional methods of document management create a long, never-ending thread of papers being transferred from one employee to another – physically. This setup eats up a lot of manual efforts and time and it is also risky because of all the chances where things could mess up any minute.
  
  What can you do? – An automated tool for document management will save your time by electronically transforming your paper content into a more futuristic format.
• Secure documentation

  Law departments and lawyers work with very sensitive information. With manual document management, there is zero level of security and anyone who can get hold of the document can read through it and steal that information, or even the document. This spells disaster for anyone in the legal field.
  
  What can you do? - With a digital tool, you will always have a copy of the document stored on your systems – with backups. Along with this, it is possible to protect electronic documents using various ways like encryption, passwords, access restrictions and much more.
• Document versioning

  Legal has always dealt with numerous revisions for contracts and other agreements. These revisions give birth to numerous versions of the same document. Now imagine going through all these versions and finding the updated one.
  
  What can you do? - A digital tool will make changes in the same file which you can view in the same window as separate versions. You can also track what has changed very easily without creating more files.
• Editing

  Agreements and contracts have a lot of editing that is required. When you do this manually, here is a list of things you use (unnecessarily) – paper, printer ink, electricity and your time. If the contract or agreement is multiparty, it becomes more of a headache since every single person has his own editing put in.
  
  What can you do? - Electronically, you can easily edit documents without using extra resources. You can edit the same copy that others are editing. This makes collaborations easier with everyone involved in the editing process. Just print the final version, and your work is done.
• Document categorization

  With legal departments, it’s never just one or one type of document. There are numerous categories – invoices, property documents, copies of other required agreements, so on and so forth. Having to sort these out manually is nothing less to the office being converted into a research centre.
  
  What can you do? - Once an intelligent software is in place, all you must do is add smart labels or categorizes into the system. This will help categorize all your documents in the blink of an eye.
• Accessibility and workflow

  Document management for the legal teams may need it to follow a particular workflow or hierarchy of approvals. Imagine having to wait for a sign-off because the signing authority is on leave. It is so difficult to get that paper across to this person when you need.
  
  What can you do? - When you use a digital system, getting your documents to the required person with necessary accesses and workflows becomes a super task. Having the documents in an electronic form ensures that everyone can work unhindered.

Do you need a document management software?

It is obvious that you may not immediately understand if you need a document management system. Here are a few questions that you can ask to evaluate your situation.

Is my business dealing with too many files at the same time?

Legal industry has always been document centric. Every legal matter creates its own set of documents to created and maintained. If you deal with too many of these for different clients, you will need a better way to manage your documents.

Do I have a lot of people working on the same document?

Creation of agreements or contracts travel through multiple phases and changes hands very often, depending on requirement and experience. Thus, there can different people working on the same paper at different stages. If this is what you deal with this, a DMS is critical for you.

Do I heavily depend on manual work to creating and managing these documents?

Creating and maintain any document, be it legal or not, can be a time-taking process. Legal documents are tougher to manually and even tougher to manage since they hold a high value as evidence. Having a digital management system will surely take this pressure off.

About Us

Having a digitally powered document management system automates the otherwise standard and mundane tasks – saving your time. If this is what you have been struggling to maintain, then we say you most definitely need a DMS.

Our law document management software is a safe and secure platform to create, maintain, and manage all your critical documents and contacts. Curious to know more? Just drop a query and we will get back to you.