Document Management Software: Helping Financial Services Companies Stay Profitable
The financial services industry often uses papers, but as it becomes more regulated, companies large and small are beginning to implement document software solutions to increase efficiency and security, without sacrificing the profitability.
Small and medium-sized financial institutions such as investment services and wealth management companies, lending institutions, mortgage companies, and brokerage firms all need to reduce costs while increasing service levels and operational efficiency. They must also comply with various compliance and regulatory laws. Accountants and public accountants (CPA) have the same problems.
A complete document management software package can easily and inexpensively achieve all of these objectives.
For businesses that still rely on paper, manually storing, copying, printing, faxing, and sending these types of documents accounts for an exponential chunk of operating budgets each year. Consider, for example, the ever-increasing cost of paper, onsite and offsite storage space, boxes and filing cabinets, ink, toner and postage. With affordable, easy-to-use document management software, these expenses are significantly reduced, so the return on investment is quick and sustainable.
Perhaps most importantly for financial services companies, complying with SEC, NASD, The Patriot Act, and Sarbanes-Oxley regulations is easier and less expensive with the right document management software. Capturing, processing, storing, and sharing customer information electronically with document management software is a secure, cost-effective, and convenient alternative to the administrative hassle and logistical nightmare of managing paper records.
Unless you already have document management software installed, your business probably generates thousands of documents – forms, invoices, receipts, files, emails, presentations, and spreadsheets, for example. As your business grows, the work of managing, filing, storing, and retrieving those physical paper files becomes a huge time-consuming hassle, not to mention a major operating expense. So, if you’re still pushing paper, here are the top five reasons why you should implement a document management software system in your business as soon as possible:
1. To increase efficiency
Document management software immediately increases productivity because filing and retrieving documents takes place in seconds, with employees never having to leave their workstations. Lost or misclassified documents are a thing of the past with custom indexing options and optical character recognition (OCR) capabilities.
2. To improve security
Unfortunately, many small and medium businesses still rely on filing cabinets and bank boxes to store even the most sensitive information. Document management software allows businesses to customize security settings, set strict password access, and track every document access or update.
3. To maintain compliance
Businesses and organizations are under tremendous pressure to properly manage information for risk reduction purposes. Failure to comply with privacy and security regulations can result in hefty fines, penalties, or other legal consequences that are easily avoided with document management software.
4. To reduce operating expenses
Managing paper records costs your business money, time, man-hours, equipment, and space. Filing, retrieving and processing paper files takes a lot of time – 3-4 minutes per file. It starts to add up quickly and exponentially. Document management software can also significantly reduce or even eliminate expenses for paper, bank boxes, filing cabinets, ink, toner, copy and fax equipment maintenance, and more.
5. To improve accessibility
Document management software allows authorized employees to view, share, edit and store documents quickly and easily from anywhere, even remotely.
