In business, they say ‘Better safe than sorry’ for a reason. Paper documents are at a high risk of being lost or destroyed in natural calamities. Data loss is a direct form of damage to any business. As a means of preventing an incident like this, we’ve laid out some of the risks that your documents are susceptible to, and the role of DMS in protecting your critical files. The risks include:
1. Fire
Workplaces are just as likely to face fire as residential spaces are. While damage to documents can be prevented by taking expensive & drastic measures to protect them from fires, these steps cannot save large heaps of documents. Even if some are left untouched by the fire, files can still face damage from the water and chemicals used in extinguishers.
2. Storm
Cyclones and tornadoes are a literal force of nature that can mow down entire buildings. At even a moderate intensity, they can result in collapsing your office roofs, posing the threat of document damage if not outright destruction. Despite warnings, the conditions while transporting documents to another storage facility can be a hassle and most importantly, unsafe.
3. Floods
Office spaces that are prone to floods can easily lose everything with an overnight, non-stop rain shower. Water is a famous enemy of paper documents. If water fills up in a storage room, all the stored documents could suffer damage through text distortion, paper deformation and (if unchecked over time) mold growth.
4. Earthquakes
Earthquakes trigger without any warning and can cause immediate collateral damage. Since it’s barely possible to protect critical files at the eleventh hour, unless you have your documents backed up onto an electronic document management solution, your files will not make it.
Here we list down three ways in which a good DMS can save your documents from such natural calamities.
1. Backup Plans
Document management solutions can store digital backups of all your files. In the event of a disaster—however unanticipated—you can be relieved to know that your critical data is offsite, safely stored on a server. Whether you choose to host the files at a remote facility, or at your own server (with backups stored elsewhere), any physical damage done to the paper documents will not be the deletion of all stored data.
2. Remote Access
Access to data is a critical requirement as part of your disaster recovery plan. With the ability to remotely access all of your backed up documents, a laptop or smartphone with an internet connection can be used to safely carry on with your work when your office is unfit for occupation.
3. Workflow Automation
Now that you have remote access to your documents, your staff can easily continue staying productive despite the temporary relocation. Physical activities that are part of your regular processes can be configured as steps in your customizable workflows and the platform can be made available to all. Tasks that can’t be automated will stay queued until their users can get back to work. But, work won't stop.
In conclusion, a DMS is both a preventive measure, as well as a restorative fix in the case of natural calamities. In an age of uncertainty, we believe that a DMS, including ShareDocs Enterpriser, is an excellent investment.
If you would like to know more about the benefits of protecting your documents using a DMS, contact us here. You can read more about document management solutions on our blog.