The financial services industry often makes use of paperwork, but as it has become more highly regulated and more granular, companies large and small are beginning to implement document software solutions to increase efficiency and security, without sacrificing profitability.
Small to mid-sized financial institutions such as investment services, wealth management firms, credit institutions, mortgage firms and brokerages all need to reduce costs while increasing service levels and operational efficiencies. They also must meet various compliance and regulatory laws. Accounts and chartered accountants have the same issues.
A comprehensive document software package can achieve all of these goals easily and affordably.
For companies that still rely on paper, manually storing, copying, printing, faxing, and mailing these types of documents becomes an exponentially large part of operating budgets each year. Consider, for example, the ever-increasing cost of paper, on- and off-site storage space, filing boxes and cabinets, ink, toner, and postage. With affordable, easy-to-use document software, these expenses are significantly reduced, so your return on investment is fast and sustainable.
Perhaps most important for financial services companies, complying with SEC, NASD, The Patriot Act, and Sarbanes-Oxley regulations is easier and less expensive with the right document software. Electronically capturing, processing, storing, and sharing client information using document management software is a safe, cost-effective, and practical alternative to the administrative hassles and logistical nightmare of maintaining paper files.
Unless you have already installed document management software, your business will likely create thousands of documents – for example forms, invoices, receipts, files, emails, presentations, and spreadsheets. As your business grows, the task of managing, filing, storing, and retrieving these physical paper files becomes a huge, time-consuming hassle, not to mention a significant operating expense. So if you’re still paying with paper, here are the top five reasons why you should implement a document management software system in your business ASAP:
1. To increase efficiency
Document management software instantly increases productivity because saving and retrieving documents takes place in seconds with employees never having to leave their workstations. Lost or miscalculated documents are a thing of the past with custom indexing options and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) features.
2. To improve security
Unfortunately, many small and medium-sized businesses still rely on filing cabinets and bankers’ chests to store even sensitive information. Document management software It enables companies to customize security settings, set strict password access, and track every time a document is accessed or updated.
3. To maintain compliance
Companies and organizations are under tremendous pressure to properly manage information for the purposes of risk reduction. Failure to comply with privacy and security regulations can result in severe fines, penalties or other legal consequences that can easily be avoided with document management software.
4. To reduce operating expenses
Keeping paper files costs your business money, time, hours, equipment and space. Saving, restoring and processing files takes a long time – 3-4 minutes per file. That starts adding up quickly and exponentially. Document management software can also greatly reduce, if not eliminate, expenses for paper, bankers’ funds, filing cabinets, ink, toner, maintenance of copy and fax equipment, and so on.
5. To improve accessibility
Document management software allows authorized employees to quickly and easily view, share, modify, and store documents from anywhere, even remotely.