Why Should Offices Adopt An Online Record Management System with paperless office

The evolvement of technology has brought ample of changes across the globe, both negative and positive. Technology has highly transformed and bloomed the corporate sector. Incurring higher costs on paper for document management is highly expensive for these corporations. The companies have now thought of going paperless office with an online record management system.

What Is A Record Management System (RMS)?

A Record management system is a system used to access, track, store and manage records along with reducing the utilization of paper files.

A Few Questions Worth Giving A Thought Would Be -

• Is it really possible to go totally paperless when even today paper dominates every single form of currencies and is utilized as the most preferred medium for making even the minutest transaction?

• In the time of technology, humans still love reading handwritten stories, content and documents. Will the highest priority for paper ever give RMS a chance to take over paper records and files?

Technology being a hegemony makes lives simpler, stress-free and easy. Actually, both paper records and electronic documents are interlinked to each other. A paper file is the printed version of an electronic report while, an electronic record turns into the soft copy of the other, making no differences as such.

Technology has a harsh reality that not every worker is knowledgeable about it nor are they specialized in technology. This drawback of RMS makes individuals think of never actually stopping to make use of paper document management system. But the problem remains that, this kind of record management system has some high expenses over it and therefore, the corporates are more oriented to opt for an RMS over paper files.

Statistics say that for every 30 copies that are printed, 39 percent of it gets trashed.

Moreover to such facts, according to reduce.org reports, the cost incurred over papers is nearly 13 to 31 times more than the price incurred for paper purchasing.

Record management system has more benefits, viz., getting easy access to documents whenever and wherever needed and most importantly, saving the costs incurred over paper.

For getting a clearer idea regarding it, let’s know the merits and demerits of RMS:

Benefits of RMS

• Easy To Record And Backup

Looking for a particular document in a bunch of files is definitely an uneasy task.

With RMS, you can just type a keyword related to the document and that will save time for the workers and keep a backup.

• Easy For Carrying Everywhere

Think why would you carry an entire file for presentation or a meeting when gadgets like cell phones or tablets can give you access to documents you need?

• Records Every Activity

RMS records every activity performed or conducted on the software. You can know everything, be it the person who accessed the documents and at what time and from where it got accessed . Moreover, it’s very easy to know what editings have taken place, which is definitely impossible in that case of a paper record management.

• Difficult To Destroy Easily

Paper documents are more likely to get destroyed, say by, natural calamities. Quite often we tear the papers unknowingly. When the files get recorded in a RMS, it would be saved secured and can be accessed with a password only.

Even the files on an electronic system can be deleted. But then, it has a procedure. They’ll hardly be lost unknowingly. In fact, these deleted files can be recovered .

• Easy To Edit

If you want to make any changes in the work related paper documents, it will have to be done from the beginning. This will firstly consume more time and will also be very stressful for the workers.

RMS doesn’t require files to be rewritten. Changes can be made straight away and they’ll get automatically saved.

• Everlasting Documents

Paper files are get easily damaged and become useless. An electronic record will remain the same even after many years.

Demerits Of RMS:

Let’s discuss some of the demerits of a record management system

• ‘Security’ becomes the major concern for workers relying on RMS over paper files.

• Accessing RMS makes workers open to litigate files. Of course, if an illegal activity takes place, it can get tracked and can be made liable to litigation.

• Moreover, as all the information gets globally accessible, it is very important to make sure that the paperless offices have high security.

• A high-level IT team is required and smaller or budding businesses may find it difficult to cope up with.

• Computer hacking and viruses related to it can be a major threat to paperless offices. Therefore, the record management system must facilitate security to the transfer system.

Nevertheless, adopting a record management system should not just focus on moving on with the motive to transform but also to simplify work and save costs that are incurred on unnecessary paperwork.