CocoDoc Blog

A Guide to Document Management for Your Small Business

Meri Minasyan -

Sometimes small business owners think that they do not need to invest in a document management system due to the small number of deals they make based on their size of business. However, for a small business to succeed every single detail matters, even the things you might not consider important or relevant. No wonder that by 2023 it is expected to have document management market value increased up to 6.78 billion US dollars.

This guide will not only include “how-to” -s but also why you should have a proper document management system for your small business.

In this guide you will find:

  • What is document management for a business?
  • The benefits of having a document management
  • Guide to establishing good document management for your small business
  • Introduction to using Cocodoc for document management

Image source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/white-paper-folders-with-black-tie-1764956/

Continue reading to learn the benefits of document management for small businesses.

What is document management for a business?

To learn what are the benefits of document management for small businesses, we first need to understand what it is and how it works. From the phrase itself, it turns out that document management is the process of collecting, classifying, putting in order, and storing the documents that the company has. In terms of business viewpoint, it refers to storing all the documents, both physical and digital, the business created or signed during its existence. Those can be partner agreements, contracts, transactions, employee hiring, and onboarding documents and papers.

Imagine, your small business only sells a few products online per day, signs a new contract once a week, and hires delivery service 35 times a week. You receive some money on a daily basis, as well as make payments every week to the delivery company and for the purchase of the raw materials. Pretty simple, right? Just sales of five products to take care of!

But, did you notice that although you were just selling five products in a day you still have a lot going on? Now, would you like to handle all those documents, arrangements, and payments manually?

Or you would prefer to have a document management system to make sure each and every deal of yours is gently collected and stored in the system for further use. An effective document management system can also streamline the tracking and management of business referrals, a key asset for growing your small business.

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Staying updated with crypto news and market trends is vital, as the dynamic nature of cryptocurrencies requires careful monitoring to make informed decisions. By integrating your document management system with tools that provide real-time crypto insights, you can maintain both financial and organizational efficiency effortlessly.

Even if you sell five products weekly, you would still enjoy having a document management system for your business to be more organized and disciplined. For seamless image format conversion, consider using a reliable heic to jpg converter for Windows to ensure all your documents are accessible and compatible across different platforms.

When you are all set up and highly organized, you have more chances of increasing your customers and moving your business forward. The latter can be just one of the many benefits that having a document management system gives your business. Down below, we will learn what benefits would document management give to your small business in detail.

The benefits of having a document management

We have already learned what document management is. Now, it is high time to observe and underline the key benefits that having document management gives to your business. If no benefits, businessmen, and managers would doubt the fact that document management is a necessity, even for a small business. Below you will find major benefits of document management for your small business.

Having a document management system has a lot of benefits. Some of them are:

  1. Complete Management System

Full management of your business deals for better results.

  1. Protection of vulnerable information

Security of confidential information and data.

  1. Accessibility to information

Easy access to the information for the assigned roles.

  1. Supervises the finances

A single glance observance of the finances and transactions.

  1. Organization of the daily tasks

Inner processes and workflows are organized day by day, weekly, or monthly.

Image source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/white-sheet-on-brown-surface-590037/

Let us discuss and more explicitly present why the above-mentioned points are considered benefits of having a document management system.

Complete Management system

Your small business has a compound management system, including best human resource management software and software necessities. However, you always lack having your documents in hand and your managers do not easily find the information they are looking for. They keep asking from each other and eventually waste time and resources which could be saved if your business already had a document management system.

Having complete management of your small business is one of the key benefits. Similarly, integrating a data room into your document management strategy can streamline the secure sharing and storage of sensitive business documents, enhancing both security and accessibility for critical business operations. To have a complete management system and go in harmony with the ethics of your business, you should consider using document management.

Protection of vulnerable information

These days the most important aspect of keeping the business alive and secure is to have high-level protection of business-related information.

It is obvious that if your documents are not properly collected, stored, and managed, there are high chances that the information those documents carry may leak into the hands of unwanted people. Even, some of your employees might not need to know the details of how this or that deal went, how much money was received and gathered.

Safeguarding sensitive information is paramount for sustained success. Implementing robust practices for sourcing deals in private equity ensures that critical business data remains protected and accessible only to authorized personnel, safeguarding against potential breaches and unauthorized access.

Accessibility to information

Looking for data, or wondering whether your partner was registered as an LLC or PE, but you do not remember where exactly to look?

That would be a familiar situation for your business if your documents are not organized and stored properly. If you have a document management system, you would be able to have all your documents sorted out, and finding this or that document would be just the simplest thing when looking for it in the correct folder or file.

All in all, your documents and the information from your deals would be easily accessible for you to get in a time-saving manner when you have document management. One service in particular that is being revolutionised with digital document management and matter management are legal wills. Companies like Willed, who are pioneering online wills, make the administration of these critically important documents easier by digitising them such that they are accessible and organised for everyone involved.

Finance supervision

No surprise that finance management is a significant aspect of managing a business. How would document management assist you in supervising your finances?

With a document management system, you can collect, sort out and classify your transactions and money transfer documents. Some businesses are exploring options to Buy Solana as a digital asset to diversify their financial management strategies. You can even capture financial data from paper forms and PDFs with the help of a bank statement conversion tool in order to make it more useful. You can also edit PDFs wherever it’s necessary.

This is all about convenience and efficiency, but also has the added benefit of making it less of a pain to comply with regulations when tax filing season rolls around. Check this business tax guide to help you navigate tax regulations and ensure compliance.

Of course, the document management system will not work as an accounting solution, but all the information from your transactions and money transfers will be there for you to know how much you spent on this or that purchase and how much revenue you got last month.

According to the Small Business HQ guide, dedicated accounting software has its benefits. A document management system can also help streamline your finances as it’s not only for storing your documents. It also has this type of side benefit.

A document management system is not only for storing your documents. It also has this type of “side-benefits” which make your entire business management complete.

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Organization of work

Being organized is an important benefit of having a document management system. The reason beyond that is that when your documents are organized, so are your entire work and daily tasks.

You can not only store legal documents, transactions, or contracts in your document management system, but also include information on daily tasks, responsibilities, employee onboarding practices, and so on. Additionally, a robust document management system can streamline the process of creating legal documents, ensuring proper formatting, version control, and secure storage for critical contracts and agreements.

This way your work will not suffer, but even be more organized and you will always be able to keep the track of what is going on in your company by just following the Step-by-step guides and templates included in your document management system.

It is important that your daily tasks and deals are also being monitored and managed properly. Hence, having a document management system to include this type of files information would be a valuable achievement.

Guide to establishing good document management for your small business

Things sometimes seem difficult when you try to make your first steps. The same is relevant also for document management. It requires some skills to start document management. Almost the same efforts, as you first try to design your business from the scratch. However, when you know how to start, what you will need, and what approaches to take, the process will be a lot easier.

Here is why we suggest you follow this guide to help you with establishing good document management. In this guide, you will learn the key important steps to take when you first start document management.

Planning is an important step for every deal. It will help you to know what you are going to do, when you will need to apply this or that approach and what obstacles you may find on your journey to implement document management.

Next, you will need to know what types of document management systems are available. This way you will find the most appropriate system to choose for your business, depending on the characteristics of your business.

Not only finding and choosing the system but also integrating it into your management system is an important step. The latter will help you also to decide and plan the maintenance of your document management.

Continue reading, to learn more details about the above-mentioned steps and prepare yourself the best before you start your document management for your small business.

Plan before you get started

The first step of this guide is planning. When you plan before you get started, you are more prepared for any surprise issues. Planning can help you measure and foresee your steps of getting document management. The steps of planning, in this case, would include:

  1. Research of document management systems

Start with a simple Google search to identify the existing document management systems. You can check for their reviews, write down the pros and cons of each of the systems you found and then decide which one is more suitable for your business.

Even checking on what systems your competitors are using is worth finding the best system for your business. When using competitor analysis tools, include finding the document management systems your competitors are using in the competitor research and analysis process.

  1. Estimate the current situation of the business and its scale of operation

You do not only need to plan what system you want to use but also scale and measure the operations of your business both at the moment and what it will be in a month, 3 months, and a year. This planning will help you with your choice of a document management system.

  1. Observe and find the most relevant document management system for you

Based on the first two steps, your planning process should further observe and narrow down the list of document management systems that would best serve your small business.

  1. Learn about the integration process of the system to other working tools

It is not only important to observe the document management systems but also to look deeper into whether those smoothly integrate with the other systems your business has incorporated. This is an important step, as you do not want to end up slowing down your entire work process due to the wrong choice of a document management system.

Image source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-resting-their-hand-on-table-2058147/

  1. Evaluate and measure the scope of documents you want to collect and store

As there are a few types of document management systems, in your planning process you would better define the types of documents you want to include in management systems, as well as the amount of the documents to be included in the system.

  1. Personnel assessment and identifying the company roles that will have access to it

Apart from planning on what document management system is best suitable to your business, the scale, and the types of the document, you need to plan who will have access to the system and who will manage and monitor the documents.

The type of systems available

When you plan before you get started you will learn the types of document management systems. By their essence, there are:

  1. Content management systems
  2. Document imaging systems
  3. Workflow systems
  4. Records management systems
  5. Enterprise content management systems

Let us look one by one at what are these systems designed for and what are the most famous and tested systems.

Content Management Systems

Content management systems enable the users to create, edit and publish content immediately in the system and share it with the website visitors. A Visual Watermark to your documents can provide an extra layer of security and brand recognition for your business files. Along with professional SEO and link-building, the CMS you choose will highly affect your content success.  

Considering enrolling in the best SEO courses can further enhance your understanding and implementation of effective SEO strategies. It is perfectly suitable for e-commerce businesses, and bloggers, who like to share small pieces of articles about this or that product, the place they visited, or the tastiest croissants they had in Paris.

Using a content management software will help them quickly create the text, add a juicy image, publish it immediately and share it with followers. Most probably, the most famous and widely used content management system is WordPress, when you are starting a blog there.

Document Imaging Systems

During busy work, we sometimes need a magic stick to turn paper files into digital ones. This is the time when the existence of a document imaging system makes the magic. It is designed to turn your paper files, and documents into digital/electronic files.

No need to type all the information from the paper into a word file manually. Instead, using a jpg to word converter helps you turn paper into an editable Word file, or integrating a proper system would help you complete the same task faster and more easily.

You can turn the files into digital ones, and enable using those for different matters, for example, including those in the schedule of social media posts to share some statistics or achievements of your business. All in all, any business should have a document imaging system, to fasten the process of collecting and storing paper documents digitally.

Workflow Systems

Workflow systems are designed to help you speed up your daily tasks and routine activities. This type of system is for automating the employee onboarding and other workflow processes,  thus helping certain employees to accomplish their tasks without wasting time and more resources. This can increase employee experience and engagement by streamlining operations and freeing up time for more meaningful work and interactions.

Compared to the other systems, workflow systems are specifically for the organization of inner deals and works of the company for more effective and efficient use of resources.

Records Management Systems

Records management systems are mainly designed to store records of a wide variety of files and make sure they can be retrieved whenever necessary. This type of system is widely used for businesses that have to track a vast number of records, such as dental care, medical, and legal. Be it accessing digital marketing statistics, or the data of the patient visits in January, an attendance management system help you store and track your files.

Additionally, the long-term Medicaid program like ALTCS can leverage records management systems to efficiently handle patient care data and ensure seamless information retrieval. Along with that, the records management systems will allow you to gather data from the contact center software, thus helping your business to use the maximum leads for more sales. Moreover, these systems would be greatly integrated with the overall management system of the business, thus helping to find and restore the record that was made during the last visit, last year or five years ago

Image source: https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-pen-pointing-at-graph-590020/

Enterprise Content Management Systems

Enterprise content management systems are designed for storing content related to organizational processes at a larger scale. This type of system is great for large enterprises to take into account their own specifics and include management of documents, such as workflows, enterprise rules, orders, and processes.

Let us say you own a large enterprise with its own rules, work ethics, and procedures, going with an enterprise content management system would be a great shot for your business.

Choosing the right document management system

As discussed previously, choosing the right document management system is important. The reason why it is important is that it should greatly operate with your other integrated systems for smooth organization of work and ensure that it meets the expectations and your business's work procedures. With this in mind, here is the list of what we think of choosing the right document management system is:

  1. Suitable for your business
  2. Working in harmony with the other integrated systems
  3. User-friendliness of the system
  4. Security issues

All in all, if the chosen system is secure, is easy to use and navigate, fits the best of your business’s essence, and works in harmony with the other systems, you use to organize your work, then you have got it.

Now, it is time to learn how you should easily find the right document management system for you. So, to make sure your chosen document management system is the right one for your business you should ask some questions:

  1. Does this system enable search in the documents by name, keywords, date of entry and date of modification, file type or not?

If the answer is yes, then the document management system you have in mind is fine.

  1. Does it have easy upload and download files sections?

It is important that the system works smoothly, including uploading and downloading files properly. So, if the system you narrowed down your choice on meets this criterion, then it is worth trying.

  1. Does this system ensure security by enabling access only by permissions of the owner/admin of the system or not?

If anyone can access the system, the documents and files in it without authorization and granted permissions then that system might cause some problems later, especially if you aim to store confidential files in it.

  1. Does this system enable storing and collecting files and documents of a variety of formats, from Docx to pdf, png to jpg, and others?

If you have documents and files to be stored that are of a wide variety of formats, images, texts, pdf, and so on, you would most probably need a document management system that accepts all the file structures and formats.

  1. Does this system get easily integrated with your devices (printers, scanners) and other software you use?

When you choose a document management system, you should pay attention if you can use it along with the other systems, devices, and software. If it goes well along with the small business CRM software, the DMARC generator, your scanner, or the rest, then you are good to go with the chosen document management system.

All in all, these are the key features you need to consider when making up your mind on which document management to choose. If with all of these features your document management system satisfies your needs, then you are on the right track to choosing the perfect fit for your business.

Integrating the perfect document management system

In this guide, we have already explained how important it is to have a document management system that perfectly matches your current software and devices. Hence, the integration is an important step to complete on the way to getting the document management system.

The integration process would include:

  1. Connecting the systems
  2. Setting up the systems
  3. Testing the work

As your first step in integrating the perfect document management system would be to download the file or subscribe for cloud-based use, depending on which document management system you chose. Following the given steps to create a profile and adjusting the settings should be what follows at this stage.

The next step of having integration is to connect the existing systems with the document management system. For example, if you have an e-commerce business, you will need to set up BigCommerce integrations with your choice of the document management system, smoothly connect it with your customer relationship management system, and so on.

Hence, you should do all the steps that the software requires to connect with the system, thus avoiding the cause of any obstacles during your work, in the existing communication platform, or the integrated devices. Incorporating an effective IT peripheral management process ensures seamless connectivity and functionality across all devices. Last, but not least, before you launch your document management system, test a couple of times to make sure you are all set for the workload.

You can add documents of different formats to see if they all get stored properly, and later you can access all of the files. Check if you can search a single word or data from the files and see if you can find them easily.

Make sure your devices are connected and when you want to print a document, you succeed. Pay attention to the given roles and the list of employees who can access the documents and folders in your document management system.

Maintenance of the systems should come after the steps stated above. It is as important as choosing and integrating the right document management system for your small business. More detailed information on the maintenance will follow next.

Don’t forget about good maintenance

As many benefits would having a suitable document management system give to your small business, a well-maintained one would make the benefits last longer. This is why it is significant to have good maintenance of the document management system you chose. Let us learn what good maintenance would mean for a document management system.

By saying good maintenance it is generally meant to:

  1. Keep up with the system updates
  2. Install new versions whenever available
  3. Complete the system notices and policies
  4. Arrange the folders once in a while
  5. Clean up the unnecessary files
  6. Clear up the storage

The completion of these steps might seem boring, but it will generally increase the positive outcome of your work on your document management system.

As your laptop may slow down because you did not check for updates and install the recent ones, the work on your document management system may slow down as you did not keep up with the system updates. Implementing predictive analytics in the cloud can further enhance the capabilities of document management systems, enabling businesses to gain valuable insights from their stored data, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions to optimize processes and improve overall efficiency. Incorporating a web scraping API can provide real-time, external data, enhancing the accuracy and depth of predictive analytics.

So, pay attention when there is a new update for the system, and make sure you complete it on time to avoid having complications in your system. One more thing you should take into account is to make sure the recent updates are still nicely working with your other systems, software, and devices.

You may receive some notifications on policy changes or subscription updates. So, for your own benefit, you should read closely all the changes and new information to make sure that you have up-to-date information on all the details of your document management system.

As frequent you would clean your desk or laptop desktop, so is the arrangement, clean up and clear up of documents and files in your document management system. By doing this, you will clear some space, and also make sure your files are in their correct folders and can be easily accessed and found.

Obviously, a document management system’s good maintenance is important, and doing so will ensure the benefits of having the system last longer.

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Managing your documents with CocoDoc

There are dozens of document management systems available. We have already learned the types, such as content management systems, enterprise content management systems, records management systems, workflow management systems, and document imaging systems. As we have discussed previously, you can do a variety of works depending on the type of the management system. Here, we will learn what you can do to manage your documents using CocoDoc.

CocoDoc is an online PDF editor, enabling you to accomplish a variety of activities on PDF files and accessing online. Here is a list of what you can exactly do while using CocoDoc:

  1. Modify and edit PDF files

Do you want to edit PDF files but just found out that you can not do it offline? No worries! Just upload your file on CocoDoc and edit or modify whatever part of the pdf you want.

  1. Convert PDF files to other formats, including DOC, XLSX, PPT, JPEG, JPG

If you want to easily convert your PDF files to other formats, CocoDoc is the right choice. Not only you can convert PDFs to other formats, but also other formats, such as Word, Excel, PPT, and JPG to PDF on CocoDoc.

  1. Insert pictures in the file

If editing the files includes inserting pictures and images in your file, then CocoDoc is worth checking. This highly developed tool allows you to accomplish any edits on your files.

  1. Add texts to the file

If you ever thought that once you have your file converted to PDF you no longer have the chance to add texts, then you missed out on the chance to check CocoDoc. It is possible to add texts to PDF when using CocoDoc.

  1. Erase the unnecessary texts

The same goes for erasing unnecessary texts. You just need to use the CocoDoc tool to cut out and erase the parts of the text you do not want to exist in that file anymore.

  1. Fill out PDF contracts, invoices, or tax forms

One of the key benefits of CocoDoc is that it enables filling out PDF contracts, invoices, and tax forms, such as how to fill out a W9, which speeds up your work and gets the job done in a simpler way.

  1. Share PDFs with your co-workers via a link or email

Once you have done all the editing of your document, you can immediately share it with your co-workers and teammates either by sending an email from within the site or copying the link, thus giving the desired people access to the file.

  1. Ensures top security standards

More importantly, CocoDoc ensures top security standards, meaning that your files, documents, and classified information is safe and secure with CocoDoc, with no leakage to third-party people.

  1. e-Sign PDFs

Last, but not least CocoDoc can help you sign files online through its e-Sign feature making putting online signatures an easy task to accomplish.

As you can see, Cocodoc has full capacity for managing documents online. It has a lot of features, that will make your job of managing documents easy and effortless. Check their tools and give it a shot.

Wrapping up

Document management is important for any business at any scale. Be it a small business or a big one, proper management of the company documents will serve the overall success of your company. A document management system is for storing a wide variety of documents, contracts, deals, and transactions for further use.

It gives a lot of benefits, including being more organized, easy access to the documents by simple and advanced searches, security for confidential information, and so on. Even if your business is small in its scale of creating documents, owning a document management system would only promote your work and ensure its portion success for your business.

All you need to do is to choose the right document management system for your business. As there are a few types of document management systems available, you will need to go over those and choose the one that suits the best your business type, gets along with other systems and devices well and creates no problems when in use. CocoDoc is an option for your document management, giving you enormous opportunities to work on PDF files, and adjust, edit, or merge files.

Make sure you plan on what system type you are going to use in advance, test a couple of times, and maintain the system by following up on the system updates regularly. You will have no other option but enjoy the benefits of having a proper document management system for your small business.