How small is too small?

In a response to my LinkedIn post on Wednesday (22 May), the question was asked “What would be the minimum size of organisation that could see a return on investment in a DMS?”

What a fantastic question I mused. I then pondered how I could definitively answer without the standard “well any size of organisation could benefit from implementing a Document Management System (DMS)” response.

Can an organisation (business) be too small to benefit from DMS?

My original response (in the comments) after a few moments thought was:

?“Rather than the size of the organisation it is the complexity of the processes, regulations and life cycles (often governed by documents) that would influence the returns. The greater number of human 'touch points' in those elements the greater the scope to automate and optimise.

In reality this means a micro company or even a sole trader with a sufficient number of manual, time sensitive and consuming tasks could see sufficient benefits depending on how they 'value' time and the losses from delaying other work items.”

Well I thought it was a rather good answer - do you agree?

What can a DMS ‘save’ for an SMB?

Over and above saving the sanity of an employee (little ‘in’ joke there), a DMS can offer real savings through efficiencies in many different ways, hence the size of a company potentially being irrelevant in terms of benefit. Of course, the greater volume? / number of employees touched through implementing a DMS, the greater the return on investment. But where would it?matter most to a micro or small business?

? A typical paper based document takes between 5-10 minutes to process. A digital document takes on average between 1-3 minutes - 70% less time per document! If one employee spends 4 hours a week filing, a DMS could reduce that to 1 hour (or less). Scaled over the year that saves over 145 hours of employee time - approximately 4 days! What else could that employee do with 4 days of time?

Perhaps you have 2 employees filing or your organisation is experiencing growth - doubling or even tripling the documents processed in a very compressed amount of time. Very quickly it should become apparent how much time can be saved from the outset.

? An established DMS with process automation tools can bring potential time savings up to 80% within an organisation. For example - As a micro business with 5 employees, that efficiency saving could work out to be the equivalent of adding another employee without actually doing so!?

For smaller organisations with smaller budgets, such efficiency savings can be critical in providing the capacity for growth, increased client services etc without the expenditure of bringing another employee onboard - which of course is a far greater cost than simply their wages.

? Every business has experienced the issues caused by losing information. With a lost file on average costing a business ￡128, smaller organisations can’t afford to ignore the micro transactions through poor data management eating away at their revenue. Of course there can be extra financial penalties, perhaps fines for compliance failures, that could dramatically impact a smaller organisation when data goes missing.

What a DMS can do for any organisation is ensure data is stored securely, centrally, make it easily accessible from anywhere (with the right credentials), audited and managed throughout its life cycle. Lost file cases are dramatically reduced (if not eliminated), data control issues (duplicates, incorrect versions, data retention) handled and regulatory audits processed with relative ease.

The smaller the business the more critical, safeguarding both time and revenue becomes.

More than just a digital filing cabinet

When most people think of a document management system (DMS) they probably just see an application for storing files - quite a limited functional role, however, a modern (especially cloud based) DMS is so much more for an organisation. Yes it stores documents (and very well I might add) but it is the processes around those documents - the human touch points, the mundane (repeatable) actions - that a DMS can also remove from your employees day - data extraction, filing automation (from email for example), task creation and management (escalations), digital signatures, ERP integrations, audit reports, automated retention scheduling, form management, document collaboration?and more!

Through the implementation of tools such as DMS with process automation, an organisation can free employees time concentrate on complex issues or focus on supporting customers.

So when it comes to DMS, it's not the size that counts, it's what you do with it.

Maybe that should have been my original reply on the post….

#PacSolUK #DocumentManagement #BusinessProcessAutomation #SMB #SmallBusiness