Your documents go through a lot. And our document management services are here to help.

From inception to classification, archiving, travelling between teams, and even different sites or countries, securely, and economically. Printed to faxed. Only accessible by those who should have access. Making all of these workflows seamless for your employees to be as efficient as possible takes time.

What are Document Management Services?

Document management is the care of your document from the moment it’s created until it’s destroyed. Document management takes time and knowledge. From where it goes to keep it safe once it’s been created, to how it travels between team members, offices and even externally, how it’s secured in transit. Where it’s stored, and how it’s accessed. Even how access is controlled and then, when it becomes obsolete, how it’s disposed of is all part of the document lifecycle.

In the past, document management wasn’t given the importance that it is today. We didn’t rely on digital documents as much. Data wasn’t as desirable, therefore data theft felt further away. And data storage was cheaper, plus we didn’t need as much. There were fewer data protection regulations, and lower penalties for data loss as legislation took time to catch up with our transformation to a digital world.

So, why is document management becoming so increasingly popular?

Increasing amount of documents

In the past, we’d use a document, then throw it away or send it for recycling. Maybe we’d shred it first, but it was gone. These days, we’re not so thorough with getting rid of obsolete data so the amount of documents we have at any one time increases exponentially. Latest estimates are that we are producing 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day. With more data being produced, data hygiene becomes even more important. Without data hygiene, retrieving the files you need becomes impossible at worst or time-consuming at best.

Cost of document storage

And with so much of our documents being digital these days, organisations have moved away from floppy drives and flash drives, relying on the Cloud for their data storage. Cloud storage providers have become increasingly aware of the potential to make money from data storage, so it becomes more important that businesses remain aware of what they are paying for. For example, paying to store the company’s tax returns and financial information may be worthwhile, while paying to store last year’s cafeteria menu may not.

Increasing pressure of regulation

The responsibility for safeguarding data held by organisations has been shifted onto the holding organisations. However, this can be complex and ensuring the data is stored or managed in compliance with regulations such as GDPR, and Sarbanes-Oxley can be both challenging and critical, with high penalties for those who fail to do so.

Security and safety

With more data held in the cloud which can influence your business, your customers and even the wider markets, it has become even more important to ensure that data is safe as it moves and while it is stored. With effective and methodical data hygiene, this becomes easier and more cost-effective as it becomes possible to protect those items that are sensitive and not protect those that are obsolete or irrelevant.

Safety and sustainability

And data management doesn’t stop there. It’s also important to be able to recall and delete obsolete data to avoid paying for data storage unnecessarily, or to avoid data being leaked as devices are upgraded and recycled. Our document management services make it easier to ensure protection and effective management of all of your documents, both in print and in the virtual world, across their entire lifecycle, helping to keep your documents and your business safer, more efficient and more sustainable.

For more information about our Document Management services, call us on 0345 2077000