There’s an App for That – If Your Business is Ready for It

Organizational apps have proliferated right along with apps of every other kind. If your business has started converting paper documents to digital documents, you can use a digital asset management (DAM) collaboration app to give your remote teams anywhere-anytime access to the documents they need. But if you still rely on paper documents alone, your remote workers are going to struggle to stay productive.

Remote work has grown over 91% in the past 10 years. Some companies have even gone entirely virtual. The staff of business-finance services company Guidant Financial, for example, works wherever they have a good internet connection. Guidant assists small-business owners with financing options, including retirement account franchise purchases, ROBS, and SBA loans. Business financing generates large volumes of loan and compliance documents for the SBA, the SEC, and the IRS.

Guidant uses a custom portal and app to electronically manage documents, including those which originate on paper.With all their clients’ documents accessible to Guidant’s finance teams, in servers that act as secure virtual “file cabinets,” Guidant’s staff can collaborate to complete and file all the documents their clients need for compliance or loan applications.

Employee satisfaction and retention are big benefits of Guidant’s virtual operations. An even bigger benefit is the company’s ultra-low real estate budget.With few documents to store, and most staffers working remotely, Guidant’s office space is far smaller than the average financial-services company.

Companies like Guidant commission custom software, but for many businesses, an off-the-shelf app provides all the digital asset management functionality their organizations need. Tadesite.com reviews 10 of the top rated off-the-shelf DAM apps with cataloging and search capabilities; some even have a search-within-document feature that is especially useful for collaborative teams.

But to get the best from your remote teams, you have to provide them with digital documents. And that requires converting your paper documents to digital format via a comprehensive digitization program. Digitization is a good bit more complex than simply scanning to a PDF. Properly executed, digitization creates “smart documents” that a DAM app can store, organize, and deliver to your remote workers with electronic speed. Paper documents are easily damaged, lost, or destroyed, but digitization adds a layer of security that controls accessibility and monitors usage.

Talk to an digitization expert and get your business ready for the latest productivity apps.

Photo © bongkarn/ AdobeStock