​an introduction to document archiving

Knowledge is power

Knowledge is power, as the old saying goes. In the digital knowledge society of the 21st century, however, data is the new king. For companies, knowledge and information have become the most important resources to be successful in the volatile markets of the present and future. 

Digital transformation is causing the volume of documents and information in companies to mount. This challenge, commonly known as exponential data growth, has long since arrived in practice. It not only affects corporations and large companies; it also impacts SMEs where individual employees often have larger areas of responsibility and perform more complex roles. 

A document archive within the digital transformation of your company is not a dusty storage area for discarded documents. Rather, efficient document archiving comes into its own in the digital enterprise as an intelligent interface to make business processes simpler, faster, and more effective.

document archiving: a topic that concerns all business managers 

You’ll be well aware that you have to describe a problem first before discussing which solution is appropriate.

Let’s take a look at the facts. The global economy is becoming increasingly digital. As a result, companies are processing fewer and fewer documents in paper form and using digital formats instead.

In the Digital Office Index 2022, a survey conducted by the industry association Biktom found that in 2021, for the first time, the majority of companies printed out less than in the previous year. Three quarters of all companies have already replaced letter post with digital means of communication and, at 40 percent, companies that predominantly use electronic invoice formats are by far the largest group when it comes to invoice processing.

The backdrop to this development is that more and more companies are relying on digital solutions. According to Bitkom, around three quarters of all companies use at least one enterprise content management (ECM) system, and the same applies to the area of customer relationship management (CRM). In fact, professional ERP systems are used by 95 percent of all companies, according to Bitkom.

In light of the coronavirus pandemic and the era of New Work, the Biktom data reveals just how much the business world has evolved in recent years. However, what falls by the wayside in these positive figures are the new challenges associated with this development. After all, digitalising individual process steps doesn’t automatically lead to seamless business processes.

Media disruptions, broken process chains, and inadequate process interfaces are still a problem. For example, when a process

  • includes both analog and digital documents;
  • uses the same documents in different digital formats;
  • has workflows that are not consistently digitalised and standardised in a binding way.

These interface problems have come to light in many companies, especially when many were working from home during the pandemic. This is because short official channels across the office corridor were no longer an option in the same way. Manual process steps and ingrained, non-transparent workflows then quickly become the sand in the gearbox of digital transformation.

In practice, this means obstacles to seamless workflows, e.g., because a particular employee isn’t aware of a process, which means the task was carried out incorrectly or not at all. For instance, this may happen because access to a document is unregulated:

  • Where is it filed?
  • Which version is the current version?
  • Who edited it last?

In this context, work steps that are carried out manually prove to be particularly error prone. If employees are sick or on holiday and no substitution arrangements have been made, the process will simply come to a standstill. This is especially annoying when payments or customer interactions are affected.

Last but not least, faulty or non-executed processes can also lead to compliance rules not being implemented or being implemented incorrectly. 

In summary, despite the numerous digital transformation measures already initiated in many companies, process digitalisation can fail due to a lack of transparency, a lack of overarching knowledge of process workflows, and minimal resilience in workflows to possible errors or blind spots in the company’s organisational structure.