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What is a Document Management Solution? What Time Travel Can Reveal


We probably all wish we could go back in time and do something over again, if we only knew then what we know now.  

Case in point, suppose a crucial business document has gone missing and you need to find it NOW! Is it buried on someone’s desk at the office or at someone’s WFH office? Has it been misfiled on your network or, even worse, in a file cabinet or off-site storage facility? Boy are you in a major pickle!

You’ve heard about the need to embrace digital transformation and go paperless, but had other priorities and held off on implementing a document management solution – “We’ll do it next year,” you said.

Let’s pretend and time travel back in time…say, a year ago. And you DID implement a document management solution. Let’s take a look at how a document management solution like DocLink could have impacted your business.

More Than an Electronic Filing Cabinet

So, what is a document management solution like DocLink?  Some people think it’s an electronic file cabinet… but there’s so much more to DocLink’s robust system!

An important foundation of a document management system is its secure, central repository.  This is where all of your company documents and data are digitally stored. Think of DocLink as your own company’s search engine, like Google: 

  • You have options to store company data on-premise or in the cloud.
  • It’s managed by your administrator who assigns appropriate security permissions and user rights – what you can access, review, edit, route, etc.
  • Version control with check-in and check-out capabilities ensures the integrity of the document.
  • Manage and track the lifecycle of a document with full audit details so you have visibility and control of you company documents.

Getting Your Documents into the Repository

Document capture is the system’s ability to bring data or documents and index it into the repository.  DocLink:

  • Allows anything that is digitized to be stored in the repository, e.g. pdfs, images, data, videos, audio files, etc.   
  • Doesn’t care where your document comes from and depending on how your document was generated, it can be added via scan, OCR, print capture, email, barcode, etc. 
  • Provides automatic indexing, allowing you to classify it with metadata info, such as invoice number, vendor name, dollar amount, etc. so you can find it later.

As you can see, DocLink is a flexible system that offers many document capture options.

Creating Efficiencies through Workflow Automation

Beyond capture, index and storing of your company data, an important aspect of a document management system is business process automation, i.e. the ability to automate your manual business processes.

You have rules in your business for approving an invoice, purchase request, etc. Do these documents need to be manually routed to different departments or offices for approval? DocLink will essentially mimic your current business workflow and automate the many unnecessary, manual processes – reducing your processing costs by 60% or more. For example:

  • An invoice comes in via email – OCR can be used to extract data, AP can code the invoice, and then DocLink sends it off for approval.
  • You can set rules including approval limits – if it’s $10K or less, it gets routed to the Manager for approval; but if it’s over $10K, it will get routed to the CFO.
  • The approver gets notified via email that they have an invoice to be approved, and has the option to approve via email or within DocLink from any device.   

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to workflow automation, there’s so much more it can do.  In addition to invoice processing, DocLink can automate many other processes such as expense reporting, credit card reconciliation, contract management, HR onboarding, and so much more.

The Power of Search and Retrieve

The beauty of a document management solution is that it makes it easy for you to find and retrieve the documents you need.  Imagine the headaches you can avoid. With DocLink:

  • Documents are at your fingertips, searchable from the web on your desktop, tablet or mobile, whether IOS or Android. 
  • Full-text search allows you to type in any word, number or phrase to find documents that match your search criteria.
  • Automate delivery of documents to your partners or employees based on pre-configured routing lists and distribution methods.  A popular use is on the AR side. Wouldn’t it be powerful to be able to automatically send out the AR invoice along with the signed delivery receipt and customer PO?

The time and cost savings add up. No more searching around for related documents or manually attaching them to emails, no need to print, stamp and mail – it’s all automated.

So, what have we learned? If you are using a document management solution:

  • Your missing document would have been a non-issue – with just a few keystrokes, you can quickly and easily retrieve it.
  • Start in one area such as AP and expand as needed to AR, Sales Order Process, Human Resources, and throughout your company.
  • No interruption in your business processes – whether working in-office or remote, your employees have access to the information they need.
  • A better way to run your business – automation and efficiencies that will save you a lot of time and money and give you more visibility and control of your company data and processes

Unfortunately, you can’t go back a year and implement DocLink to reap all these amazing benefits, but you can certainly do it now. Make it a priority to go paperless and automate your processes, contact us get started.