A detailed guide on document management workflows

Nearly every business today has some form of digital document management workflow. It’s become the new way to streamline: replace repetitive tasks with automated processes and increase productivity through digitalisation.

If you aren’t an early adopter, that’s ok. Hopefully, by the end of this article, you’ll see why you need to cave -sooner rather than later.

Unlike manual documentation methods, a trusted document management system can simplify even the most complex workflows while maintaining compliance and supporting remote working.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, however. To ensure we are all on the same page, let’s get to know the document management workflow better.

What Is Document Management Workflow?

A legal document management workflow is an electronic system that allows you to create, sign, modify, store and retrieve documents related to your business processes.

Thousands of documents support functions like purchase orders, insurance claims, applications, medical records, and many more at any given time. Core documents are passed daily from employee to employee, off-site vendors, and between departments.

A document management system helps these documents remain accessible and updated at any time, in one location. Once a document has gone through the workflow, it can be printed and filed away or even stored electronically.

Just explaining that process gives you some idea of the amount of oversight necessary if this process was manual. Having a digital workflow, like Tessaract’s Business Management Software, on the other hand, helps to instantly streamline document management, saving time, improving efficiency, and increasing customer satisfaction through workflow automation.

Workflows and the DMS

Workflows are often managed through a document management system (DMS), which are computer programs that provide helpful features to implement your document workflow. Depending on the software, features include:

• Integrated Project Management: to help organise, assign and track tasks or project objectives
• Project Collaboration: to offer real-time collaboration within a single workspace for your project pipeline, great for supporting offsite teams
• Integrations: to quickly add all the tools of the trade your team already uses, knows and loves
• Automation: to automate repetitive tasks and reduce complicated processes down to a couple of clicks with corporate tools
• DMS Workflow Management: to allow 360-degree oversight of all your workflows from one screen
• Data Visualization: to allow you to create stunning charts and visualisations for reporting, document creation, and more

Now that we’ve answered the “what?” let’s dig into the “why?” Why do you need a document management workflow anyway?

In short, to remain competitive.

But let’s take a look at some more specific reasons.

Benefits of Document Management Workflows

As we said earlier, hundreds of documents are being used on any given day at any time. A document management workflow can translate that into an organised, concise, and easily retrievable way to manage all the chaos. Some more specific ways a document management workflow helps include:

• Document Security: You can keep those more important documents safe by managing who has access to retrieve, use or change an essential document. Compliance will be a breeze with an integrated security solution like Tessaract’s Business Management Software. This solution can adjust privacy settings and permissions to ensure your documents are handled correctly.
• Better Collaboration/Productivity: These go hand-in-hand if you think about it. But the power of streamlining the management of your documents is immeasurable, especially in our data-driven world. Better support a hybrid work environment with resource utilisation and resource levelling to encourage better document collaboration, and you will be more productive.
  With Tessaract’s Business Management solution, you can create custom roles and responsibilities for any team member, both on and off-site. Tessaract's project collaboration features to ensure that every member is kept up to speed to nurture a high-performance culture and achieve better work performance to fulfil project objectives such as your OKR and KPI goals. Other tips to improve work productivity include having a weekly workplan or utilising the pareto distribution.
• Unlimited Storage: Like physical files, digital files need a robust storage system to secure and store files for today and grow with the business tomorrow. With Tessaract’s Business Management software, you never have to worry about space. Stay ahead with the cloud with Tessaract's cloud-based storage, which gives you more freedom than you can use, and we’ll grow with you.
• Accessibility: This means better accessibility for document editors and document users. A document management system helps bridge the gap between creators, editors, and users of documents, ensuring 360-degree access for anyone, anywhere, at any time. Did we mention that Tessaract’s software does that too?

How to Optimize your Document Management Workflow

Tweaking your document management workflow involves careful consideration, fine-tuning, and patience. Here are a few steps you’ll want to go through to help you optimise your document management workflow:

1. Check Your Pulse: First, you need to consider where you are right now. Create a simple picture of a process map showing you your workflow and any connections.
2. Determine the Treatment: Next, you need to figure out what parameters you’ll measure for success. What is your goal, and where are you in those parameters now?
3. Look for Hiccups: Check the existing flowchart you created to see if there are any bottlenecks in workflows. The fish diagram below demonstrates a great way to figure this out.
4. Prescribe the Medicine: Now it’s time to take what you’ve learned in the analysis above and put a new plan into motion. Once you know where the problems lie, you can better provide a solution.
5. Digitise to Survive: The only proper way to tame the chaos in most document management systems is to digitise and automate many processes that aren’t working anymore—the more streamlined your document management, the more productive your employees are as they can work smarter and the happier the customers.
6. Test and Retest: Once you’ve tweaked your system, it’s not the end-all. You will still need to revisit the system to ensure the process is effective at different intervals. Keep your goals in clear view when performing your self-audits.

Take-Aways

In this digital age, it’s hard not to see the apparent need for document management workflows and automation. If you stop and think of all the transactions we now handle via online forms, it’s staggering to think from where we’ve come.

It’s OK if it’s a little overwhelming; managing a business involves many moving parts with various business needs. At Tessaract, we have developed our software to help consolidate these agile workflows into a single platform that increases oversight, efficiency, and productivity for you to keep up with digital acceleration.

Tessaract's legal practice management software is designed to implement seamlessly into your current workflow so you and your team can start reaping the benefits of this advanced software immediately.

Contact us today, and power your business with Tessaract!