Thanks to the cloud, document management systems are now best known for what they’re not—not costly and not complicated.
By Scott Erickson
Inefficiencies associated with traditional document management practices and systems plague businesses of all sizes. However, this can have a particularly adverse effect on small to midsize businesses, and owners and managers are often forced to waste their precious time sorting through business documentation that has been haphazardly organized.
Historically, the document management software market has been dominated by expensive, complicated products that require major changes in business processes and extensive IT services and support. Consequently, resellers were hesitant to recommend a document management system (DMS) to their SMB customers because most believed they were too expensive and/or complicated. As a result, many smaller companies still employ archaic processes for managing their documentation, which inevitably leads to a loss of data, productivity, and most important, money.
The truth? Cloud-based document management solutions already have a track record of delivering increased efficiency, flexibility, and convenience, and often at a much lower cost than the traditional on-premise software license approach.
THE PROS OF A CLOUD-BASED DMS
There are many documented advantages for an SMB to deploy a cloud-based DMS, a few of which are improved remote access to company documents, reduced costs, and increased protection against data loss or theft. Document management in the cloud enables SMBs to easily implement a DMS without investing in additional IT hardware/infrastructure and staff, and without a large up-front outlay for software licenses.
In addition, cloud-based document management solutions exist today that are both powerful and easy to use. These systems can be seamlessly integrated with existing business applications and require little training for end users to gain proficiency. Getting up to speed on a traditional DMS used to take days or months, but now it can be done in a few brief hours.
PROSPECTS IN THE CLOUD FOR VARs †
This current paradigm shift in how software is purchased and deployed presents an opportunity for resellers to provide a new type of value to their SMB customers. By educating customers about how hosted, cloud-based document management can be a cost-effective solution for improving efficiency, maximizing collaboration, eliminating redundancy, and avoiding conflicts and data loss, resellers have yet another resource and approach for expanding their portfolio and generating a recurring revenue stream for their businesses.
From the reseller’s perspective, it is important to select a cloud-based DMS that can be easily customized for vertical or other specialized customers that have specific document management needs or requirements, often based on industry regulations and compliance mandates. Every industry has specific types of documents, as well as processes for developing and managing those documents, that are unique to that industry, and often to the individual business.
Documents and information are the most critical assets of any business after its people, yet the vast majority of businesses still rely on manual, inefficient, and antiquated methods for storing vital information. This is a huge source of inefficiency, particularly in SMBs where this process is often managed by the business owner. The good news for resellers and SMBs is that these issues can be alleviated cost-effectively with a cloud-based document management solution.
SCOTT ERICKSON is the vice president of channel sales at Dallas-based M-Files Inc., the developer of†M-Files†easy document management software and the cloud-based document management service†M-Files Cloud Vault. To learn more, visit www.M-Files.com.
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