Why Digital Document Management?

Where Technology and our Environment Collide

Sustainability Advisory Committee – PresentationFebruary 23, 2017

Why Digital Document Management? • Reducing our Carbon Footprint• Reducing our Use of Paper, Toner and Energy• Improving Staff Workflow• Enhancing Document Security• Reducing Organization’s Liability Risk• Going Mobile!

Reducing our Carbon FootprintGreen practices are a growing area of interest around the world. In fact, according to research giant Gartner, “Green IT” is one of the top 10 technology trends driving major change in business processes today.

Document management systems play a key role in helping achieve greener workplaces. These solutions replace printing, postage and manual filing with electronic processes, enabling organizations of all sizes to reduce or eliminate paper consumption and waste.

Implementing a unified digital document management is the best way to achieve our goals of:

• Reducing the footprint caused by storing physical documents.

• Reducing future construction cost. • Enabling a more efficient workplace. • Protecting our documents.• Reducing our carbon footprint.• Enabling a Mobile Work Force.

Reducing our Use of Paper, Toner and Energy

Just like all organizations we use a lot of paper & toner These things not only cost money but they require recycling and consume energy.

With a Digital Document Management solution in place the use of paper and toner are greatly reduced, saving the organization money and reducing energy usage.

In 2016 we purchased & used

about 510,000 sheets of

paper!!

Improving Staff Workflow

Today when reports are needed by a customer or even a co-worker the responsible employee often (1) goes to a filing cabinet, (2) searches for the documents, (3) then make their way to a copy machine, (4) makes a copy, (5) issues the report to the requesting person and finally (5) re-files the document back into the original file cabinet.

This all takes time and if the document is misfiled it takes even longer.

A Digital Document Management System will greatly speed up this process making it more efficient for our staff – and for those we serve.

Improving Staff Workflow

Today it is very difficult to monitor work flow and make corrections or changes when appropriate. Physical documents including invoices, purchase orders, reports and many others simply make their way from one desk to another until eventually they end up in their final resting place - usually a file cabinet. The challenge here is that it is difficult to monitor how efficiently these tasks are being done.

A Digital Document Management System, with Work Flow integration makes these tasks not only possible but simple and effective.

Enhancing Document SecurityToday documents are stored physically in file cabinets which are located either in the department’s office or even worse, at offsite storage shelters. These documents are at risk of being lost, damaged, destroyed or stolen.

Digital Documents are more secure, accessible and protected when compared to filing them, physically in our facilities.

Digitally stored documents also use less energy and require less space!

Reducing Organization’s Liability Risk

Because documents are stored electronically they can be backed up and even secured against unauthorized access.

With this security & document protection in place – our organization is less likely to face litigation for lost, stolen or improperly accessed documents.

Going Mobile!

Because files are stored digitally, in our case “the cloud” our documents can be accessed quickly, from anywhere and from any device. This is very exciting!

Our staff will be more productive then ever before. Our stakeholders will be the beneficiaries of excellent service – like never before.

Digital Document Management is good for our environment, our productivity, our security and can even reduce our liability risk.

We are in the process of an organizational wide project to embrace & incorporate digital document management into every aspect of how we do our job & manage our documents!

Digital Document Management is not easy but it is worth the effort. In every area it helps to protect our environment while improving employee workflow, protecting the organization and even saving money!