Document management concerns you? With reason! Poor document management inevitably leads to loss of time and efficiency, resulting in significant financial cost to any business. Moreover, it is estimated that, for an SME of 20 employees, poor document management in the workplace would cause 40 to 60 minutes of work to be lost per day (according to the firm Gandys and Ludsen, 2013). Imagine …

Here are our top 5 most common errors in electronic document management (EDM) that everyone does without even realizing it.

The first mistake – and not the least! – is certainly the lack of a structure for document management. It is often believed that the implementation of a document management tool with SharePoint or any other software will be done by magic.

Well no! Take the time to define a planning process before implementing SharePoint or other document management software, including:

• identify document management roles (which users work on documents, what are their roles and levels of authorization?);

• analyze the use of documents (what employees do with the data – input, reading, analysis, revision, modification, approval, etc.)

The goal of this approach is to take advantage of the many benefits of SharePoint to create structured document management based on best practices. One should avoid simply copying and pasting the current file structure, otherwise the return on investment will not be optimal. SharePoint is much more than a document management solution configured on another platform!

To classify the documents in the files, is gone! It’s time to move on to metadata. We have written an article on document management with metadata. In summary, the use of records can lead to a host of disadvantages including inefficient filing, duplicates and multiple versions of the same document in various locations. And, you can imagine, all these situations will make you waste time!

By choosing the metadata to perform your document management, you can create all kinds of views (by type of document, project, department, etc.). To do this, you must first configure your metadata. Then, just make public all types of views and use the filter function to select the view of your choice. Too complicated? Opt for the simplified view with only a few columns for an overview of the most important columns.

One of the keys to good electronic document management is certainly the use of versioning. By enabling versioning in a SharePoint list or library, you can track minor and major changes to documents, or even restore a previous version, as needed. This is an effective way to reduce the risk of error and track changes in real time (with alerts). To learn more about this popular feature, read our article on SharePoint versioning.

Push the experience to another level by specifying a maximum number of major and minor versions to keep in the SharePoint library or list. This is a great way to control the storage space used! In general, it is recommended to keep 10 major versions and 10 minor versions of a document (according to Surperfluid).

In addition to versioning (see error number 3), the co-creation of a document with SharePoint deserves special attention. It allows various users on your team to work on the same document at any time, without interfering with other people’s changes. Much more efficient than sharing documents by attachments, is not it?

The co-author feature is automatically enabled in SharePoint and therefore requires no configuration on your part. However, if you want to allow only one person at a time to edit a document, you must enable the SharePoint check-in and check-out mechanism:

1. Go to the SharePoint library of your choice.

2. Click Settings (with the gear symbol), and then click Library Settings.

3. In the General Settings, click Version control settings.

4. In the Require extraction section, under Require retrieval before you can edit documents? , click Yes.

5. Click OK to save your changes and return to the library settings.

Caution: Only users with full control or creation permissions can enable the check-in and check-out mechanism.

This is probably the most damaging mistake: do not consider change management as an important element when implementing SharePoint or other document management software. Yet, there is every indication that employee engagement and engagement is essential to a successful change, be it technological or otherwise.

Refer to our article on 10 tips for boosting SharePoint adoption among your employees. You’ll find some very practical tips, among other things to involve your most receptive colleagues, train your technology champions and encourage feedback. Remember that change management is paramount for a smooth transition and a good return on investment (ROI).

Now that you know the top 5 errors in document management and know how to fix it, it’s up to you! So where will you start?

Need a boost to adopt best practices in document management? Our passionate and IT experts are here for you! Contact us at no cost to see how we can help you mobilize your team and help maximize ROI with SharePoint.