This post is sponsored by Ricoh
We live and work in the Information Age. Whether your company makes physical products or provides intangible services, the way that you manage information will have a significant impact on your bottom line and the morale of your employees. A survey from M-Files found that 82% of employees said that poor information management had a negative effect on productivity, while 86% ran into obstacles when it came to finding information needed to perform their job. To help your workers manage company information efficiently, consider these steps:
Set up a user access management system
Not every employee needs or should have access to all your company information. There may be sensitive files that should only be seen by a limited number of authorized team members. Setting up a user access management system lets you control who gets to see which information. For example, you can have a system that allows personnel in one department to have access to data pertinent to their department only–or to other data sets elsewhere in your company. Employees who want access to company information outside of their purview would be required to submit a formal request. Managers might also want to monitor the flow of information for greater oversight.
Digitize your records
Before the pandemic, on-site employees could easily obtain physical records and paper documents. Now that remote workforces are here to stay and records are scattered across different locations, you should consider digitizing your records. Doing so gives your employees the freedom to access them from any location and on any device, saving time and effort. You can either choose a document management app that lets you do-it-yourself or contract with a scanning company depending on the volume of records to be converted.
Organize your curated content
In a business context, curated content is content taken from other sources that is relevant to the mission of your company or the goals of your team. To keep from drowning in the sheer volume of material available, you need to have some type of content management system that puts the material in a searchable order. For example, apps like Trello or Slack are popular tools for organizing and tracking social media postings.
Facilitate content retrieval
Amassing data and determining levels of employee access is just one side of the topic. Employees also need to be able to retrieve information quickly and efficiently. To do so requires some type of service that lets employees get the files they need through an easy search. Depending on your needs, you may choose an onsite or cloud-based retrieval system, or a combination model.
Harness an enterprise data management system
The data in your files is an enormous asset to your employees, provided they know the scope of material or intellectual property stored. An enterprise data management system can help you inventory not only the data that is generally known, but also material that has not been organized, such as Google documents, email PDFs and audio files.
Setting up easy-to-use systems that support your employees in accessing and managing information better can not only save your company time and money, but also foster a more loyal workforce.
Ricoh has Cloud, Security and a wide range of remote work solutions to meet your digital transformation needs. Watch the video to learn more: