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How effective document management enhances your construction company

For decades, industry experts have predicted that the ‘paperless office’ would become the norm in this digital age, but a 2014 study suggests that this is far from the case, with the average office worker using 45 sheets of A4 paper each day. With an average of 7.5% of paper documents mislaid and another 3.5% misfiled, it’s clear that lax document management can have serious impacts on business. Digital document management removes much of the human error from these key organisational processes, ensuring that your business runs more smoothly. Integrity Software’s Evolution M software package features document management functions for medium to large construction firms – with many benefits.

Multi-site management

Almost all construction firms will have staff working on-site, away from the central office. If a contractor forgets to pick up or photocopy a key document before leaving for the site, efficiency is immediately compromised. One staff member may have to backtrack just to retrieve the document, or spend time on the phone trying to retrieve the required information. This wastes the time of the staff member on-site as well as the admin team back at the office.

Similarly, if your construction company operates across multiple offices, paper document management systems just don’t cut it – and neither do makeshift digital solutions. Instead, employees need a standardised, reliable document storage and access system that’s easy to use and maintain. Contract managers, admin staff and directors all benefit from a centralised document management system: it saves time, reduces confusion, and limits human error.

View by contract

It’s a hassle to manually trawl through old emails to track down specific attachments relating to your current contract. Evolution M’s document management module confines that chore to history. Not only will it automatically ‘file’ documents produced, such as Purchase Orders, Payment Certificates, Invoices, Payslips, etc, it will allow instead allowing you to quickly assign documents, including scans and emails to specific contracts so you can view all drawings, invoices and images for a certain job all in one place. This eliminates the need for printing and filing, and also means your contract managers needn’t spend hours searching through the system while on-site.

Security

Study after study has shown that the majority of data breaches are down to employees rather than external sources. One of the easiest ways you can reduce security issues caused by human error is to password restrict all documents. Document management systems let you set user permissions for many different processes including document access. For example, you can restrict top level financial reports to all but directors and senior staff members, or ensure that junior contractors don’t have access to certain invoices and accounts.

Integration

Software is only worth the cost if it saves you time and money. Using multiple systems from different software providers is a sure way of counteracting any efficiency gains each separate piece of software might have brought. Therefore, it’s important that your document management system and your accounting software integrate seamlessly.

Evolution M’s document management module ticks all the boxes, providing your construction company with an efficient and secure solution to all your document management and storage woes. Get in touch with your account manager or the Integrity team to learn more.