3. process digitalisation in the archive: what digital document archiving merged with business processes does 

what is digital document archiving?

In the digital archive, any electronic documents – whether PDF or Excel files, e-invoices, or JPGs – are stored electronically in a database. It doesn’t matter whether the document in question is digital or has been subsequently digitalised. The function of the document archive is to save these documents so that they can be accessed again later on if required.

primary functions of digital document archiving

There are various reasons why a company would archive documents:

  • In every company, documents and information are produced and processed continuously. All documents that have a business significance beyond the end of the day are included in an archive, e.g., contracts and agreements with customers and business partners, offers, insurance policies, wage slips, time records, and payrolls.
  • What’s more, there are documents that companies subject to accounting requirements are legally obliged to retain. 
  • In addition to these accounting requirements for tamper-proof archiving of documents, there are other legal requirements such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that affect the archiving of documents, e.g., for customer and employee data.

The digital archive is designed to perform these functions in a convenient and reliable manner. To do this, it functions in accordance with the applicable laws and also provides additional features that simplify the archiving processes: a high level of data security, seamless data access through search functions, and options for digitalising or converting documents.

digital document archiving in the context of process digitalisation

In addition to these basic features, however, a digital electronic archive also offers other benefits that become clear in the context of digital workspaces, process digitalisation, and process automation. Digitalising archiving processes enables companies to take all business processes related to the use of an archive to a whole new level.

This affects various departments: accounting, human resources, legal departments, procurement, customer service or sales – essentially, everywhere in a company where data and documents are outsourced to the archive or retrieved from the archive. After all, it only becomes possible to include archive processes in digital workflows through the intelligent digitisation of document archiving. This results in three major benefits:

1. collaborative work

​Digitally archived documents can be accessed and edited simultaneously by different people in different locations using a smartphone, tablet, or PC. This eliminates the cumbersome process of sharing and exchanging important documents via post, email, or team folders. It makes collaborative work faster and much less error prone.  

2. automation of process steps

It will only be possible to automate certain work processes once all documents are available in electronic form and the entire process structure has been digitalised. For example, certain documents can be automatically stored in the archive during certain process steps.

3. complete transparency in the handling of documents

Digital archiving puts an end to searching for the current version of a document and the question of who edited it. In the smart document archive, all authorised persons can see when and where a document was last edited and who made the changes.

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