Cloud document management is key to productivity, regulatory compliance, and data security. Its benefits reach far into your bottom line and future success.

A cloud document management system is critical to your team's productivity in a fast-paced, on-demand business environment with increased remote work roles. Your enterprise’s document management system directly impacts the security and efficiency of your information, customer, and vendor operations.

According to a McKinsey Global Data Transformation Survey, 30% of respondents' total enterprise time was caught up in non-value-added tasks due to poor data quality and availability. Consider how you handle invoices, legal documents, contracts, proposals, and employee and customer data. Wouldn’t it be great if your team could find precisely what they need anytime from anywhere? How about doing so while enabling collaboration, data security, uniform data governance, compliance, and reduced costs?

What is Cloud Document Management?

Cloud document management enables teams to store, share, and manage documents in a centralized enterprise repository on the cloud, regardless of their location.

Cloud document management also helps enterprises with effective information archiving and governance. This entails processes to preserve and manage company data for future use, compliance, and regulatory requirements.

Modern cloud document management systems also streamline data and document search, retrieval, and collaboration delivering productivity gains. It improves access control and provides document security. In addition, the system delivers centralized storage and audit trails and saves time and money.

Let’s unpack some of the cloud document management benefits in more detail.

Eliminate Paper & Consolidate Content

Content consolidation involves merging multiple individual repositories and traditional paper-based documents into a centralized document hub. Typical international and multinational enterprises have many local file servers, paper-based processes, and NAS (Network Attached Storage) platforms worldwide. Consolidating these systems into a single highly scalable cloud platform significantly reduces overall data management costs and improves data security, productivity, and data discovery.

File Sharing and Collaboration

Regardless of your industry, staying organized and enabling employee collaboration is the best way to maximize productivity. Your document management system is lacking if employees constantly search for documents or hunt down information trails between departments.

A cloud document management system provides a centralized repository for all your business content. This means your team can collaborate on content and easily share accurate information across departments and even external partners while complying with information governance policies.

Information Governance

Information governance is the accountability framework in the handling of information. It aims to ensure appropriate behavior in the creation, storage, valuation, archiving, use, and deletion of information. Cloud document management helps businesses implement uniform governance policies—such as access controls, retention policies, and privacy rules—to handle, manage, and protect information properly.

Information Archiving

With a multitude of file repositories across divisions, long-term data storage for compliance and discovery continues to be challenging due to data fragmentation and the lack of uniform governance capabilities.

The right cloud document management solution can identify and archive your legacy file systems and less frequently accessed files from active file repositories in a low-cost and secure cloud repository. In addition, your cloud archive system offers the benefits of real-time search, on-demand access, centralized governance, and compliance.

Archiving data is an integral part of an effective information management strategy. Moving to a cloud-archiving solution is often the missing piece of that puzzle.

Intelligent Content Services

Cloud document management also serves as one of the key enablers of intelligent content services (ICS). ICS lets users take advantage of the potential of artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing (NLP), and other advanced algorithms to manage and leverage their content better. It enables users to search, analyze, and process content more meaningfully to gain better insights and more accurate results to automate various processes such as Accounts receivable/Payables or client onboarding etc.

Workflow Automation

Modern cloud document management solutions provide the ability to create and manage digital workflows that automate the process of handling and processing documents. The system facilitates and streamlines document production, tracking, editing, storing, reviews, and approvals within your business processes.

A business can, for example, use an automated cloud document management workflow to route invoices to the appropriate department for approval and payment. This significantly improves efficiency and accuracy, reducing manual administrative tasks and saving time and money.

Workflow Management — Source: Shutterstock

Secure Cloud Document Management With Solix Enterprise Content Services ( Solix ECS)

Across enterprises, workgroups/departments are burdened with a multitude of digital and paper-based content silos (active and legacy), adversely impacting information availability, productivity, collaboration, and regulatory compliance. As organizations transform to enable seamless digital experiences for employees and customers, it is imperative to empower workgroups with a unified and modern cloud approach to content management.

SOLIXCloud ECS SOLIXCloud ECS is a secure cloud platform to centralize enterprise content management and empower workgroups to seamlessly bring together content, people, processes, and policies.