Article first published on bizcommunity.com on 7 June 2021, written by Paula Sartini

Document creation and management have a big impact on the day-to-day life of a knowledge worker and subsequently on a company. Generating documents is a time-staking process with the average employee spending approximately 50% of their time creating and preparing documents.

Despite this time investment, approximately 83% of employees recreate documents that they cannot find on the company network. All of this time spent creating and recreating brand documents is estimated to cost a company $20,000 or over R300,000 per annum.

Yet, many companies do not have content governance systems in place to manage brand templates, documents, presentations or content which results in duplication of work, employee inefficiencies, inconsistent branding and increased workloads particularly for the IT and branding departments. The value of having the correct brand assets easily available when they are needed, extends beyond improving employee inefficiencies, it also improves customer and employee experiences, driving customer and employee retention and positively impacts the company’s bottom line.

Whether employees are developing documents, presentations or emails, content should be easily accessible and companies need to gain control of this process to overcome employee inefficiency, drive down costs, improve brand consistency and enhance customer experiences.

Saved time means money saved

According to Tech Crunchies, document issues account for over 21% of daily productivity loss. The average salary in South Africa is R22,500 per month which means that companies spend on average, R4,725 per employee per month on document issues. That amounts to R56,700 per employee, per annum in lost productivity.

Having correctly branded and up-to-date templates, document, presentations and email content easily accessible to employees as and when they need them, helps to improve employee efficiencies as it saves time spent searching for documents that have been misfiled or accidentally deleted. This also prevents the need for employees to spend time reproducing branded content that already exists and gives them peace of mind that they are sending the correct and most recent and brand compliant documents and templates to customers.

On-brand document compliance across the business

Brand consistency is a key driver of business success. When you take your brand seriously, customers believe you pay attention to every detail and this reinforces your values and builds brand trust. As part of this, templates are an important component of business communication and need to carry the correct content, logo and brand elements including the font used.

Within organisations, many employees can access, edit and save company templates and documents, resulting in brand inconsistencies across documents. In some instances, outdated templates are used carrying incorrect company details from the director’s details to contact numbers which raises questions about the legitimacy of the document. Further, brand inconsistencies across documents dilute the brand, influence brand perceptions and impact customer trust in the organisation.

To overcome this, companies should be able to share the latest documents and templates across the organisation with immediate, permission-based access. However, employees should be restricted from being able to override content on these legal and binding documents which can result in incorrect information being sent to customers. This is supported by findings from Kroll Ontrack, which attribute 26% of data loss incidents to human error.

Improved security

By implementing user permission access to branded assets such as letterheads, templates and documents based on specific departments or individuals, adds a layer of security to this content. It also allows for companies to monitor who accesses the documents and the changes they make to them.

While managing document accessibility within the organisation is important, it is equally important to safeguard access to company assets and templates by third-parties. In some instances, companies save all their brand assets and templates on an extranet for employees and partners to easily access, but it is just as easy for third parties to access. Companies should save these documents within secure, access-controlled environments, such as a cloud-based platform, to allow for content to be updated, shared and managed while protecting against third-party access which could have dire consequences for the brand including potential fraudulent activities and reputational damage.

Better customer experience

Empowering employees to access the information they need at the right time, enables them to work effectively and improves employee satisfaction levels. This has a direct impact on customer experiences as inspired employees put in more effort. With the brand compliant content easily available when it is needed, employees can focus on meeting customer expectations with improved response times and on-brand content every time.

The real value of brand-compliant templates and brand governance lies in the ability to remove the content clutter from the workplace, empowering employees to meet customer expectations and deliver customer experiences that drive satisfaction levels and retention. It also reduces the need for IT and branding departments to fix mistakes after the incorrect content has been sent out and aids companies to meet governance and compliance requirements. In addition, with a secure, cloud-based solution, the company can minimise potential reputational damage to its brand by preventing third-party access to branded templates and content.

This month we celebrate World Backup Day which aims to remind businesses and individuals to back up important data and files. While this day was initially created by student Ismail Jadun in 2011 as a joke, today it serves as a very important day in the calendar, as backing up, even just once a year, can help to save several business hours of searching and recreating valuable documents and files.

In fact, the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington DC, states that 93% of companies that lost their data for 10 days or more filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster, and 50% filed for bankruptcy immediately. With this in mind, backing up and saving your documents and files could save your business from future disaster.

According to Nitro[1], workers spend on average 50% of their time creating and preparing documents. If those files got lost or deleted, recreating them would come at a major expense to the organisation. Adding to this, businesses already spend on average $20,000 and lose over 21% in employee productivity on document issues. 

Despite the cost associated with lost documents, 60% of backups are incomplete and 50% of restores fail[2]. Adding insult to injury, Egress Software Technologies has found that employees are the biggest risk to data loss incidents in the business world. 

With this in mind, companies need to overcome the challenge of failed backups and accidental data loss by implementing data management solutions that will not only help to free up employee time and improve customer experiences but will also help a company to recover from a disaster quicker and easier.

DOCUMENT GENERATION AND MANAGEMENT: PEACE OF MIND FOR BUSINESS CONTINUITY

Data loss should be top of mind for all businesses, and rightfully so, as it has been reported that 60% of businesses shut down within six months of data loss[3]. As such every business needs to have a continuity plan to recover from a malicious attack, hardware failure and even human error. This is where document management can help.

According to Cybersecurity Ventures[4] the world will have to store 200 zettabytes of data by 2025. While data creation is on the rise, searching through company files is estimated to cost companies almost $20K per worker, per year. On top of this Tech Crunchies[5] estimates that employees spend approximately 18 minutes searching for a document while M-Files[6] states that 83% of employees recreate existing documents that they can’t find on the company network. All of this contributes to productivity loss and increased costs for the company.

A cloud-based document generation and management solution that is easily accessible using the technology solutions employees are accustomed to using daily, makes business sense. It also meets the requirement of 81% of employees who want to have access to company documents remotely. This is particularly relevant and useful as many countries have implemented Covid-19 lockdown regulations and employees are trying to meet customer needs whether they are office-based or working remotely.

By implementing a sound document generation and management solution, not only does it improve employee efficiencies and save the company money on time wasted searching for and recreating documents, but also helps to ensure consistency across all templates and standard documents that the company uses to send to customers. This aids in delivering consistent brand experiences across the organisation, regardless of who sends the files and contributes to a positive working environment.

Many organisations make the mistake of storing templates and documents together and yet they are not the same thing. For example, how many times have you asked for a template, only to be sent a document? One of the biggest issues employees face is that of colleague’s accidentally overriding templates stored on a shared location. This results in lost employee productivity and unnecessary costs in retrieving or recreating these documents.

At the same time while document generation and management are related, they are not the same thing. Great templates and easily accessible content can save employees tons of time and reduce the risk of overriding all-important templates. Having a document management system in place provides added peace of mind that no back-up solution can; after all a back-up solution cannot prevent human error.

If you are looking for a solution that allows for quick and easy template and document creation, is managed centrally and easily accessible by employees according to a permission-based system and can be retrieved whether online or offline from anywhere in the world, read more about BrandOffice here.