Recently, a group of creditors discovered that several student loans – to the tune of $5 billion – were erased because of missing paperwork and poor record keeping practices on the part of the lenders.

While the students can breathe a sigh of relief, the lenders, on the other hand, find themselves in deep trouble.

So, what could be the cause of such a massive oversight?

Often, lenders buy and sell loans. That’s a common practice among lenders. In fact, a loan may change several hands throughout its life.

When these loans change hands, lenders are at risk of losing some of the important paperwork. In the absence of full and complete paperwork to prove the chain of ownership of the loan, collection of the debt can become impossible.

In fact, without the complete set of documented records collections cases brought against such borrowers will be unable to prove a thing. In the absence of sufficient evidence to prove loan ownership, judges often dismiss these lawsuits and the lenders often end up forgoing those debts.

So, what can we learn from this fiasco?

To put it simply, take the time to ensure you are managing and storing critical business documents correctly. While this case is at the more extreme end with lost paperwork costing companies billions of dollars, it is still a warning that lost paperwork can lead to severe financial and legal problems.

So, what can you do to prevent a similar disaster happening in your organisation?

Scan and Index Documents

The best way to ensure you don’t lose paperwork is to digitise all your paper records into a searchable, secure digital document archive.

With advancements in document scanning technology, it is possible now for many industries to do away with the complicated task of managing paper records. Scanning technology these days allows for very automated workflows than scan and create digital versions of your documents and index them into a searchable cloud-based document archive. With document scanning and indexing, you can easily search for records using a variety of parameters. For instance, you can search for a document using a date, keyword, bar code, customer name or ID number which can often be automatically read directly from the scan using OCR technology.

Being able to simply search for the files will no doubt save countless hours tracking down documents and greatly increase productivity and the retention of records.

Document scanning is not restricted to standard A4 size documents. A good document scanning company will have the equipment and the experience to scan and digitise all types of documents including microfilm, fiche and oversized engineering plans.

By digitising and indexing your documents, you are ensuring their safety and security. Going digital helps you to eliminate the risks that paper documents are exposed to such as floods, fire and misplacement.

Digital Transformation Solutions, Your Document Management Partner

Protect your business from the financial and legal risk of losing important documents. Take action before disaster strikes.

Digital Transformation Solutions offers document workflow solutions and professional scanning solutions to digitise your paper records.

Get in touch with us to know more.  

A recent survey by BPI found that 93% of businesses are document-dependent. Furthermore, the study found that 83% of employees feel they are spending too much time producing, managing, sharing and distributing documents.

93% is a significant number; clearly, document and records management is a critical component of business operations. Many businesses have started to notice how long their team spend retrieving an archiving documents, or that no one in the office knows when to archive or dispose of a record. These are common signs of inefficiency.

To rectify these common problems think about implementing a sustainable and efficient Record and Information Management (RIM) programme. It will require investing time and effort to ensure the programme works for your business, although it will deliver long term cost savings once implemented.

Why Does Your Business Need an RIM programme?

Data accuracy and access are the two pillars of an efficient RIM programme. If you do not ensure your records are archived correctly or that digital documentation is tagged appropriately, the programme will be ineffective.

In the absence of an organised system, you will end up with incomplete records and lost files. Without proper classification and tracking, you might be storing data beyond the retention date.

Businesses that store and share sensitive information like medical or financial records should have in place a robust document retention policy. Without a document retention policy in place, your business is at risk of regulatory fines and penalties which can cause massive damage to your brand perception and customer trust.

Information and documentation are crucial to every business. When you produce, share, present and research information, you accumulate data. The way your business organises and manages it’s data and documents will have a significant impact on its efficiency and profits.

How to Make Your RIM Programme Work?

Don’t wait until you are hit with an audit to recognise that your company has not been complying with regulatory requirements. Records management is a proactive process that must be driven internally to ensure the programme works.

When a record is misplaced, you lose more than just a piece of paper. You lose critical information that may be impossible to replace, leaving your company at risk of costly compliance issues. For companies without an RIM programme in place setting up a records and information management system should be a number one priority.

Here are some tips to help you make your RIM programme work.

Have a universal policy – Mention the word records, and the first thing that comes to mind is a piece of paper. However, your business is also creating, sharing and storing digital data. Information such as emails, digital forms, social media messaging, chat logs and more should be included in your overall policy. Ensure that your RIM processes and practices apply to all types of records – hardcopy and digital.

Keep it simple – Poor adoption is the number one reason a programme fails. Involve all departments in the planning and implementation of your RIM programme. Ensure all departments of your business buy-in to the document policies guaranteeing employees aren’t second-guessing.

Make Security a priority – Be sure to protect your records by storing them with a secure offsite storage facility. When documents reach their retention expiry, dispose of these records to comply with regulations and your data security policy.

Train your staff – Your programme will prove a success when your employees know their responsibilities. Record liaisons should brief senior management on the importance of the RIM programme, and train staff appropriately. Organise training sessions on the core fundamentals of the records management procedures. Provide tool kits detailing how to complete each step.

Digital Transformation Solutions Can Help You Create an Efficient Programme

At Digital Transformation Solutions, we work with you to create a customised solution that suits your requirements. We specialise in creating digital transformation strategies that streamline your document processes and bring new levels of efficiency and automation to your organisation.

Contact us today to get started.

With the move to the My Health Record platform now imminent, many medical practices are unsure of how best to evolve from onsite to offsite storage, or from paper to digital records management. Here are four ways your practice could benefit right now by moving to a digital records management system.

1. Gain control over your patient’s records

Eliminate the risk of patient records being lost or misplaced across multiple practice rooms, accidentally destroyed, or accessed without your authorisation. Our Complete Online Management System (CIMS) has been custom built by our team, and is managed in-house to provide you with peace of mind, knowing your digital records are stored securely and in compliance with federal and state legislation.

2. More office space

Going digital means you can free up valuable floor space in your practice or specialist rooms. We will not only store your physical records off-site in our secure, state-of-the-art storage facilities, we will also scan your documents and store them online in our proprietary information management system, CIMS.

3. Records access at the touch of a button

Moving to a digital records management system means you can access patient data instantly; across multiple locations, from multiple devices. No more using up valuable resources to wade through cluttered folders or bulging filing cabinets. CIMS provides your staff with easy online access to patient data at the click of button.

4. Improved business performance

When you move away from manual processes the costs associated with managing sensitive information and compliance reduce significantly. A robust document management system (DMS) can provide the information you need to treat patients more efficiently, with medical records kept together in a single file with other specialist information.

Let DTS take care of your records management evolution process, so you can focus on those who need you most; your patients. Digitising your records doesn’t have to be brain surgery. Outsource to the experts today.

Industry sectors, like Accounts Payable, are facing amazing opportunities to be able to streamline their workflow processes through automation, making them more productive and valuable than ever before.

For decades the industry has been fraught with problems with existing processes and procedures, and no matter how much they change or evolve, there is still one element that will be the proverbial ‘spanner-in-the-works’ every time; paper.

In an era where digital reigns supreme (online ordering, purchasing, account management, etc.), Accounts Payable still relies heavily on the physical paper trail to function. Invoices, purchase orders, remittance notices, etc., all fluttering around the office until vendors are screaming down the phone wondering when their payment is coming through. That’s when the scramble begins to find the paperwork. How does this affect your business? 

The Bottleneck

Ever had to move through traffic at a snail’s pace, not knowing why everything has slowed down? As you continue forward you notice the lane you are in is merging with another, and once in the lane you see a car has broken down and is blocking traffic, but once you get passed the car everything speeds up and moves like normal.

That is a bottleneck.

And the same thing can happen in your workflow process. When you need to rely on people to push the paperwork down-the-line, things can go wrong. People forget, while their intentions may be honourable at the beginning, things can change quickly. People get busy and the document can end up just sitting on their desk, or they give it to someone else to action. Maybe it’s misplaced, which then means a new one needs to be requested and the process has to start again.

What happens when this occurs?

What if your company was in the construction industry? Suppliers aren’t paid, materials aren’t delivered, work halts and your customer is losing money every day work is being delayed. This could result in seeking compensation in the form of a lawsuit.

The further flow-on is you now have a black mark against suppliers because your invoices weren’t paid, or paid late, and the customer is spreading your name around, but not for the reasons you want.

All of this because some invoices were forgotten, lost or just sitting on someone else’s desk. However, if the process was automated, it would pass through varying checkpoints digitally, making it far easier to track its progress and help with pushing it further down the chain of approval.

For some businesses the thought of digital transformation can seem daunting, and sometimes ends up in the ‘too-hard-basket’. However, there are some seriously significant advantages to digitizing your workflow process and system. 

Compliance

With compliance a big part of business, having an automated process makes it simpler to adhere to internal policies and external mandates. An automated workflow system can be set up to follow proper procedures that will be recorded for auditing purposes and will prevent the creation of fraudulent invoices.

A physical document system has the potential to place a business in a far worse position than can be imagined. Aside from monetary penalties, a business’ reputation can be tarnished should they neglect compliance around their workflow processes. 

Valuable Data

More of a happy ‘side-effect’, a digital automated workflow system will be able to capture data that would be beneficial to your business and its decision-making process. The type of data that could be captured and utilised includes, but is not limited to you:

• Employee productivity: this is a great way to measure KPIs and set new goals for employees.
• Transaction volumes: can help determine if additional staff is required to help with the processing of invoices and purchase orders. It can also help provide insight or bring to the fore pain-points within the Accounts Payable division of the business.
• Financial liabilities: you will be able to determine what transactions are being actioned regularly, which can then help with budgeting requirements and reporting to help with forecasting.
• Vendor interactions: the processing of invoice and purchase orders can be translated in to the frequency and volume of interaction you have with your vendors. It can provide valuable insight in to what they are buying from you and how often. 

Eliminate Inefficiency

As we can probably agree, a manual workflow can cause untold inefficiency within your Accounts Payable department. Two of the biggest problems is around missing or duplicate invoices. Missing invoices can lead to missed or late payments and depending on the vendor there may be penalty fees imposed for late payments.

Another issue is that of duplicate invoices and the biggest problem being double-handling. Having an invoice processed twice means it requires twice the amount of time to process and approve. Which comes to the second problem, double payment. This has an effect on cashflow and budgets, and in most cases happens more than once a month. 

Cost

There is an old saying that ‘time is money’, and it’s true. With paper invoices, and even electronic ones, there has to be someone to process them in to the system, approve them, move them, file them and store them. Also, if there are any faults within the process the costs can grow exponentially.

An automated workflow system helps invoices enter the system quickly, route them automatically to the people along the approval chain and can be accessed from anywhere, which reduces the amount of labour required to maintain or even increase productivity and quality assurance.

Click here for more information on how DTS can provide an automated workflow system for your Accounts Payable team, or call us on 1300 559 778.