Is this the right file? How to Standardise your documents

by | Dec 19, 2020 | M-Files

You know that frustration you feel when you’ve finally finished getting ready and are about to leave the house, you go to grab your car keys from their usual spot, only to find that they are missing? You start looking everywhere for them. You get frustrated. You needed to leave 10min ago, and now you’re going to be late. All because someone put the keys somewhere else and not where you expected them to be.

This is the same frustration your employees face every day. This is why standardising your documents is important. Your company’s operations consist of tasks that must be completed on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis to ensure that it runs smoothly. But if these processes and the documents related to them aren’t standardised, you’re inviting chaos.

eep reading to find out how you can avoid inviting chaos into your business.

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Does the image below look familiar? 46% of workers say it is sometimes or always challenging to find the right information. It is estimated that on average, employees spend 1.8hrs a day just looking for the right information. This estimate goes up to 2.5hrs for knowledge workers. That’s almost 1/3rd of their workday!

Let’s say your co-worker has sent you an email letting you know that they have made some changes to a document. After looking for what feels like a lifetime, you find the right folder, you open it, and you see the picture above. How do you know which is the most up to date and correct version? It’s like playing version hide and seek. Over 2/3rd of workers say that it is difficult to find the right version, and 83% of workers have had to completely recreate an already existing document because they were unable to find it. This is a huge time loss that your employees could be used in a much more meaningful way. In fact, 91% of workers agree that their job would be easier if they could quickly find and access the most current version of the document.

How to find the right version, every time

By implementing a document management solution, you can standardise the way your company documents are stored and organised.

By implementing a document management system such as M-Files, you gain access to advanced document versioning and searching. The version control features of M-Files ensure you always have access to the latest version of a document. It’s easy to see what has changed, who did it and when the change was made, so you don’t have to worry about out-of-date documents or manually sorting through multiple versions.

Standardise Document contents

Standardising the contents of your company’s documents is just as important as standardising how they are saved and stored. A standard document format across your organisation not only shows a level of professionalism to your clients, but it also makes it quick and easy for your employees to compile these documents.

M-Files offered advanced document templating functionality. Templates are assigned to a type of document; anytime a new document of that type is created, it will be based off the template. Contents of the document can be quickly and automatically filled in using placeholders. Some basic information is filled in upon document creation, and this information is used to automatically populate the placeholders in the document. Imagine just selecting a company from a list and then when you create the document, that company’s address, contact details, contact person and other details relating to them come into the document automatically. 

M-Files has several other features available to help standardise your documents. From automatic numbering and naming, automatic classification and storage of documents, complete document history, document locking, collaboration tools, and more.

Interested in learning how M-Files can help you? Contact us to book a demonstration of M-Files, the pinnacle of Document Management Software and learn how it can elevate your business to the next level.

Looking for more info? Check out the following articles from our archives.