Today's Technology for Tomorrow's Firm.
Issue link: https://cpapracticeadvisor.epubxp.com/i/53322
FROM THE TRENCHES Are You Done with Document Management? 5 Steps to Make Your Firm More Effi cient Where can improve- ments be made? 1st: develop an annual review of processes where you look for things done well, identify changes to improve your pro- cesses, and any necessary re-training of your team. Watch for the opportunities when you are busy to help you prepare for the post busy season de-briefi ng or post mortem on process improvement. Firms that annually review their processes and make incremental changes see profi tability gains and time savings for the time invested. D Randy Johnston Mr. Johnston is executive vice president and partner of K2 Enterprises and Network Management Group, Inc. He is a nationally recognized educator, consultant and writer with over 30 years' experience. He can be contacted at randy.johnston@cpapracticeadvisor.com. 18 18 February 2012 February 2012 • www.CPAPract www w.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com Do you have document management done? Have you considered your strategy, chosen a product and implemented everything to your satisfaction? If so, congratulations on a great start! Wait! You say you're fi nished? Are you sure? Would you like to improve the return on your investment? Would you like to be more eff ective and effi cient? Many fi rms that have implemented paperless document management frequently have only started the job, not really fi nished the job or have done it right. T ink of your initial implemen- tation as "Paperless 1.0". Some charac- teristics of a "1.0" installation include: • Improved or easy access to data, • Documents are stored in searchable database, • Many docs are automatically fi led, • Reducing/eliminating misfi les and with Web-enablement and, • Documents are available anytime, anywhere. Some additional benefi ts of Paper- less 1.0 are: improved Business Con- tinuity/Disaster Recovery and security where you can lock down documents in database to prevent unauthorized access/changes. You probably also have some benefi ts with being envi- ronmentally friendly with a reduction in paper printed internally. Finally, you may be able to encourage or mandate vendors and potentially clients/customers to transact business electronically, rather than via paper documents. More improvements are possible, and the cost and time savings from Paperless 1.0 is typically only 2-5 percent at best. Paperless 2.0 might yield another 2-5 percent or more, while you spend very lit le hard dollars, with a small investment of brain power and time. 2nd: consider if the product you initially selected is doing the job. T ere have been enough improvements in the last two years to most document manage- ment systems that a review may be warranted. If you chose a do it yourself (DIY) approach, you may want to consider an Electronic File Cabinet (EFC) system, a Document Manage- ment System (DMS), or an Electronic Content Management system (ECM). Possible candidates for providing document management for your fi rm include: Office Tools Professional, AccountantsWorld CyberCabinet, T omson Reuters FileCabinet CS, Intuit DMS, Drake Document Manager, SmartVault, eFileCabinet, Doc.It, CCH Document, T omson Reuters GoFile- Room, Conarc iChannel, and Autonomy Worksite. T ere are over 200 products that could work well in an industry implementation.