Document Management Software

The Case for Document Management

Document management is increasingly seen as a “bottom-line” organizational application with clear objectives such as reducing administrative costs, improving efficiency, and enhancing profits. Everyone has experienced the frustration of not being able to find that file or piece of paper with the answer to an important looming question.

 “IDC has estimated that the typical enterprise with 1,000 knowledge workers wastes $2.5 million to $3.5 million per year searching for nonexistent information, failing to find existing information, or recreating information that can't be found.” (Source: IDC)

BAE Systems conducted a study that discovered that 80% of employees waste an average of half an hour per day retrieving information, while 60% spend an hour or more duplicating the work of others. (Source: “Show me the Money, Measuring the Return on KM” Knowledge Management)

More statistics supporting the need for document management come from Coopers & Lybrand (Source: Imersion Technologies. Inc.):

1. 90% of corporate memory exists on paper.

2. 90% of all paper documents in the average office are merely shuffled and moved from place to place.

3. The average document is copied 19 times.

4. Companies spend $20 in labor to file a document, $120 in labor to find a misfiled document, and $220 in labor to reproduce a lost document.

5. 7.5% of all documents get lost while 3% of the remainder are misfiled.

6. Professionals up to 50% of their time looking for information, while they spend only 5-15% of their time reading the information they retrieved.

These statistics easily support the fact that most businesses will benefit from a well-deployed document management system. It is not an issue of “if” but “when”. From Accounting and Human Resources to Product Development and Customer Service, every department can realize productivity improvements. The sooner a document management solution is in place, the sooner the benefits begin to affect business bottom-line and become the basis for efficiently conducting every business function.