It may not be on the forefront of your mind, but document management, and specifically, establishing a document management plan, is extremely important and key to running a successful company these days. That is because paper is one of the largest mass-produced products in the world, let alone in companies. Your company probably goes through several thousand reams of paper in a very small amount of time. So how can you be sure that you know what is up with each document and where it is going? Well, that is why you need to know how to properly manage all your documents via what is known as a document management plan, or document management system. Doing so is critical for your business or organization, especially if any files are protected or secretive, such as in medical, legal or political fields. It may be scary to know, but it is estimated that eight percent of corporate documents are lost each year. Perhaps that doesn’t worry you, but for secure documents or data, you will know that the number needs to be exactly zero. Hopefully, this highlights to you just how important a good document management system (or plan) is to you and your company.

So how do you set up a document management system? Well, there are three basic steps. One you need to create the document management plan itself, then implement the document management plan and then lastly, follow through on the document management plan. When you are creating the document management plan, you will ask yourself (or your company) four major questions. The first is “what are the rules for creating documents in our company?”. The second is “how do we or how do we plan to store documents?”. The third is “how can retrieving documents be simplified?,” as it is often not easy. The last question is “how can we make sure our documents are secured and remain secure?”. For the last question of maintaining the security of your documents, it is now that you would consider security devices such as window bars/grills, patrol services, security cameras and more. You also want to make sure all your digital information is secure with a hard to guess password and other measures of online security.

Once you have created your streamlined, efficient document management plan or system, make sure that the details of the document management plan get spread and disseminated to every level and faction of your company. If even one person who accesses and uses the documents germane to your company doesn’t follow through or handle the new system in the right way, the document management plan itself may be comprised. Some of the details of creating, implementing and maintaining a document management plan or system may seem a little complicated, and that’s why you may consider hiring a professional shredding service such as Shred With Us to keep all records confidential and to obtain an official Certificate of Destruction. If you are curious, contact Shred With Us or visit our website to learn more.