Essential Trends in Handling the Lifecycle of Digital Documents

As more businesses go digital, Human Resources (HR) departments are looking for better ways to go paperless. Smaller businesses can benefit a lot from new technology. For example, cloud-based solutions can help small teams work as efficiently as big ones. These solutions can handle many tasks automatically, freeing up valuable time. 

Choosing the right technology for your business depends on your needs. However, it helps to know about new trends in record management. These trends can help you reduce paper use and better manage your information. 

Document Ingestion 

New tools are being added to document management solutions to make tasks easier. These tools can sort documents or collect data automatically. 

Many businesses use both paper and digital documents. So, they need tools to upload digital documents without having to print or scan them. They also need to be able to turn paper documents into digital ones easily. There should be different ways to add documents to the system, like email, fax, uploads, and secure file transfer. 

Secure Access 

The system should let users decide who can access documents. Not everyone should have the same rights. Users should be able to control who can see which documents. 

It’s also important to control what a user can do with a document. This can mean restricting actions like printing, changing details, or downloading. Temporary sharing with people who aren’t users should be possible too. This removes the need to print those documents. Secure links and data rooms can help with this. 

Digital Signatures 

Printing a document just to sign it is a step back in going paperless. Some document management solutions include digital signatures. This feature speeds up the signing process. It also removes the need to print and send documents for signatures. A good digital signature tool should have user checks and time/date stamps. 

Retention 

Companies have rules about how long to keep documents. Documents shouldn’t be kept past this time unless there’s a legal reason. When choosing a solution, ask how it removes documents that are no longer needed. Certain events often start the countdown for keeping documents. So, it’s important to keep track of dates and document statuses. If your solution doesn’t manage this, sticking to your schedule will be hard and expensive. 

Responsive Design 

As more people use smartphones and tablets for work, mobile-friendly design becomes more important. This is called responsive design. It lets apps adjust to different devices. This feature is usually found in cloud solutions but is becoming a standard for new ones. 

There are many trends and features in document management solutions. But, it’s important to focus on what your organization needs. A solution should be easy to use and set up. If it’s hard to use, people might not adopt it, making it harder to go paperless.