Boost Your Document Productivity Now with These 4 Tips!
Hello there!
Let’s start our today’s article with a simple question: Can you imagine your life without documents? It’s a high probability you answer is: Of course, I can’t!
And we won’t argue, no business can function without documents. And while people previously needed to handle tons of papers, now we have an opportunity to keep everything by hand — on a laptop or a phone.
Since word processors and new formats such as PDFs appeared in the business market, people started to digitise their business life. Cloud services brought us the modern way of doing business, opening new international markets and working remotely. Next, collaboration tools evolved and cloudless P2P collaboration technology appeared. Btw, if you want to discover more advantages and shortcomings of collaboration tools and document management solutions, check out this article!
So, as you can see, as new document management solutions appear we try to use them all to get more productive, but sometimes they only bring more mess to our business lives. We are here to share four useful tips to enhance your productivity when working with digital documents!
Tip 1. Organise Proper Documentation Storage
Let’s start with the fact that documentation must be created for every crucial business case. If you don’t do that, you won’t be able to trace results, why they are not as high as you expected, and so on. What’s more, consequences may be even worse, from ruining one’s business reputation to financial losses.
The solution is to create tactics for keeping business documentation. Set the rules within your company or team:
- In which cases to create new documents and what information should be stored there.
- How to name these documents (date + a short description; date + client’s name + short description,etc).
- How to choose folders or spaces for these documents.
Also, accessibility is a burning problem for people who work with digital documents. Sometimes employees spend up to 18 minutes to find the right document, so proper organisation of files and folders is crucial in the 21 century. Especially if you work together with a team. In this case, not only do you need to understand what and where is stored but also your colleagues should be able to easily locate the necessary files among all the others.
Statistics say that filing documents takes on average only 3.5 hours per week while searching for the necessary files takes people 5 hours! The difference is obvious and if we sum all these 1.5 hours per week throughout a year, we’ll see that it’s not a short time frame! So, use document management solutions to avoid such outcomes!
Tip 2. Collaborate Smarter
Collaboration plays a huge role in business life, as in most organisations people work in teams. When people support each other, it helps to maintain a smooth workflow, which drives better results. If collaboration suffers from obstacles, it becomes ineffective and teams can’t achieve results in time.
- For example, even in 2020, people are still exchanging documents via email! As one of our users explained in the previous article, sharing files by email can take a lot of time and creates a huge mess of different document versions in your inbox. The survey by Nitro, in which more than 1200 employees took part, found out that 43% of workers send 6+ documents by email every day!
- Also, 83% of employees state that they waste time searching for the correct document version. And you can save this time for more important tasks! ;)
- Truly, using paper documents is an old-fashioned way to exchange feedback. Please, digitise everything and you’ll be surprised by the boost of effectiveness!
So, use digital collaboration tools. You’re free to choose from cloud and cloudless apps, or ones that have both options. To learn how to introduce document management solutions like a pro, check out these articles:
- Managing Files Is Simple! Find Everything in Place!
- 21-Century Office. Convenient, Beneficial, Paperless!
- How to Organise Your Workspace Offline and Online
Tip 3. Be Mobile Not Static
The time when we were glued to papers is, fortunately, over! So, you don’t need to be tied to your office or home office to perform your working tasks. It’s convenient and saves you time.
People use mobile devices for accessing the web and performing work assignments more often. If seven years ago, only 16% of users accessed the Internet via phones and tablets, now their share is 53%! This means a 222% growth in mobile usage.
With only having your iPhone by hand, you are able to sign contracts (with e-signatures), immediately share documents with colleagues, partners and clients (with local P2P and other types of collaboration), scan documents (with a mobile scanner) and keep them organised (with spaces and folders).
So, when you choose a document management solution, pay attention to the platforms it offers and the benefits of the mobile versions. For example, we at Collabio Spaces, understand how important mobility is for people, so we equip our mobile app with several essential tools. Finally, one gets a fully-fledged powerful mobile office that can be your best helper in any place on Earth.
Anyway, desktop apps don’t lose their popularity and business people usually have light-weight laptops with them. In this case, pay attention to the functionality of the desktop version of the app and check out the next tip! ;)
Tip 4. Work Within One Ecosystem
There are plenty of tools for creating and processing documents. Have a maximum of two document management solutions. Otherwise, you can get lost in different versions and competing document formats.
Also, it’s more convenient for teams to work in one place, as you don’t need to switch from one app to another and wonder how to open an unknown format. It’s great that almost everyone uses popular file formats now, still, there are cases when you even need to install more apps to read and edit files!
We understand the benefits of a wholesome office for teams, that’s why Collabio Spaces has huge plans for 2021. We will add integrations with messengers and task trackers, a powerful cloud solution, launch convenient spaces on mobile, add access levels for co-editors, and even localise the app for Windows, Android and Web.
This will help you save time and not get lost in the documents cyberspace!
So, which tips are you going to use in practice right away? ;) Also, if you have useful insight to share, feel free to comment on this post or contact us on socials (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn)!
