In 2023 a Adobe Acrobat survey revealed 48% of respondents said they struggle to find documents quickly and efficiently, while 47% felt their company’s online document management system was confusing and ineffective. Sound familiar? Document management is one of those things you don’t realise is a real problem until it’s already too late and if left, can have spiralling consequences for businesses.
It’s important to get a handle on these things sooner rather than later, we explain some of these risks in this article.
Inefficient collaboration and communication
Human errors, no backup and recovery as well as the odd technical glitch, these are just some of the ways documents can start to become misplaced. The difficulty that comes with finding the right document or even the right document library can also present challenges.
This can cause delays, errors, confusion, and frustration among your team members and clients. It can also expose you to legal and financial liabilities if you fail to meet deadlines, obligations, or regulations.
Accidental granting of access via shared groups
When a site owner or admin adds someone new to a group, they may not be aware of how many different locations that group has access to. This type of indirect and accidental access being granted is quite common and groups can be used in many places.
Abuse of privilege by employees
Check your privileges. Employees having too much access poses a significant risk to an organisation particularly in scenarios where employees have been disenfranchised or possibly disgruntled with the organisation. Limiting access should be considered in difficult circumstances like a notice period being worked, a redundancy consultancy term being worked or an unresolved dispute/disciplinary for the user.
Difficulty in migrating and archiving of large libraries
As the size of a library increases, the probability of errors occurring during a restructuring or migration also increases. There have been instances where libraries have become so big that they cannot be moved. If this sounds like something you need help with, we cover alternative approaches to this in the storing and categorising documents section later on in the guide.
Loss of productivity and profitability
If your document management workflow is slow, complex, or manual, you may spend more time and effort on creating, managing and maintaining your documents than on your core tasks and goals. This can all impact your efficiency, creativity, and innovation. It can also increase your costs, such as printing, storage or labour expenses. You need to have a streamlined and automated document management system that simplifies your processes, reduces your errors, and enhances your performance.
If you need any more convincing on why SharePoint is a standout solution for document management, you can contact our team who can help discuss your options.
