Caspar Herzberg |
This article was originally published in the Winter 2018 issue of The Record. Subscribe for FREE here to get the next issue delivered directly to your inbox.
Today’s employees are checking their e-mails from the beach, submitting expense reports from foreign countries, drafting reports on the airplane and taking calls from coffee shops and home offices. And this is not a temporary fad. In fact, the number of digital nomads is expected to continue increasing as new technologies make it easier for people to do their day-to-day work tasks from anywhere.
Having the right tools in place to support employees is essential for allowing them to work flexibly and remotely. It gives them the opportunity to work from their preferred locations with all the data they need at their fingertips. Document management/paperless automation software makes it possible for companies to hire remote workers for three key reasons: visibility, compliance and intelligent workflow.
When employees aren’t all in the same place, it’s important that managers and C-Suite executives still know exactly what stage invoices are at in the payment process. A document management system provides real-time updates, helping managers identify bottlenecks, processes that are working well and areas that need improvement. This allows them to easily follow up with employees located all over the state, country or world.
Although it may seem unsafe to permit employees all over the world to access information, a document management system can actually help companies improve data security compliance. The system tracks every movement within the workflow process, so managers can access a complete audit trail showing who touched a document, what they did and when they accessed it. Many document management systems, such as Metafile Information Systems’ MetaViewer, are also role-based, so managers can control permissions for individual employees.
An automated intelligent workflow keeps business processes and procedures consistent, automatically routing documents to the proper approvals based on business rules. Exceptions are handled individually, while everything else smoothly operates without manual intervention. When the tedious processes are automated, it allows employees – remote or otherwise – to focus on more pertinent tasks and projects.
This modern technology makes it easy for companies to accommodate the growing nomadic and remote workforce, so managers can rest assured that the beach, the coffee shop or the plane won’t keep them from their important data.
Alyssa Putzer is the marketing communications specialist for Metafile Information Systems