Document management solutions

Regardless of the motive, each of us must find new and innovative ways to adapt to the changing needs of our clients and our colleagues. That means we must find ways to make it easier and more productive to store, share, and manage our documents.

Make the time now to evaluate the expanding array of technological innovations aimed at enhancing our profitability. Every aspect of your company should be examined for new opportunities. There is no better place to start than to examine the one part of our practice that affects everyone in the company – document management.

If you think your document management system is meeting all your company’s needs, you likely have been lulled into complacency. There is probably no other single change that you can make that will have a greater effect on your company’s profitability than to critically evaluate your document management system. Few practice areas are more sensitive than document management, and we would not suggest that you contemplate a change if it were not such an important part of what you do. You are entitled to have technology that makes you better at what you do. Any new document management system must replicate the way you work best.

As you contemplate your own situation, you should begin by considering the top three most important criteria for evaluating yours or any document management system:

Security

Training and Ease of Installation

The File Management Paradigm

Security

The system must be secure. Everyone on the network – whether it is two computers or 200 – must follow rudimentary security procedures.

The system must have an easy to use “profile” function, allowing you to easily control access through user profiles that you can customize to fit your needs, rather than granting access by name alone;

Sensitive communications must be encrypted; all documents must be encrypted automatically;

Passwords must be protected, and not be predictable (avoid using birthdays, significant dates, children’s names, telephone numbers, addresses, social security numbers and bank account numbers);

Communication of any client- or business-related information must be done only on a need-to-know selective basis;

Remote access must be enabled only on secure lines, through well-established procedures;

Back doors, such as those established by connecting networked terminals to modems connected to fax lines, must be avoided;

Training and Ease of Installation

Everyone must be trained to use the system:

Elaborate, expensive document management systems are notoriously burdensome for busy lawyers, but if lengthy training is necessary, do it. There’s no point in having a system that only a few can use;

Technology is evolving rapidly – consider switching to a system that requires minimal training.

In order to obviate the need for elaborate training, the document management system must be intuitive;

It must store documents from nearly any application without requiring formatting changes or special “pre-save” maneuvers;

A simple “save as” command in the application you are using should be enough to route the document into the management system;

The File Management Paradigm

The document management system must complement the way you work:

The document management system must be able to easily and seamlessly store nearly any file from any application you use;

The document management system must be easy to navigate with simple, intuitive prompts such as “search,” “recent,” “index” in order to retrieve any document in the system;

You must be able to control access to documents through simple point-and-click commands such as “read,” “read & edit;”

You must be able to locate documents using any number of search fields;

The system should allow you to use “wild cards” to expand your searches;

This will make it easier and more productive to store, share, and manage our documents.