Businesses have large volume of content that is necessary for every aspect of their operations. Typically, business documents exist in a variety of formats such as PDF, RTF, TIFF, AFP, JPEG, and Microsoft Office documents. Many organizations rely on document conversion services to convert data into a standardized format and streamline their document management. To manage these large volumes of documents, efficient document collaboration is needed that ensures excellent quality of work and efficiency. Studies show that employees feel a lot of time is wasted for document collaboration and lack of collaboration and communication are the causes of work place failure.
Working with team members across various time zones around the world can be a challenge. Sharing and collaborating on documents can be tricky if you don’t follow the right steps.
Here are 5 tips to improve document collaboration in your organization.
- Utilize reliable web-based document viewers: Finding files, real-time editing and tracking changes in a document can be easily done using advanced web-based document viewers that offer tools such as annotation and redaction to collaborate on documents. Organizations should evaluate their options and make sure they choose the right viewer that supports their specific reviewing and collaboration needs.
- An organization can ensure easy access from anywhere via public, private or hybrid cloud model. Security is a major consideration in this regard. With a secure cloud-based storage model, workers can safely share, edit and view the required documents.
- Email is a dominant way to communicate document updates. Some respondents use emails with attachments and some use them without attachments. Both have their own drawbacks that lead to poor version control. A new version of the document is created after each round of editing, and with the huge influx of emails there are chances of losing the current version. Different users use various versions of Word and other programs to work with documents and these documents are saved in different machines. This leads to major security issues. With the help of web-based document viewers and leveraging cloud storage, all people concerned can work with one and the same document that is saved in one repository. This is the best way to eliminate the above mentioned issues.
- Difficulty in tracking changes is another issue. Documents are saved in different types of formats and this leads to major confusion in tracking changes. Using a web-based viewer enables viewing and collaborating on hundreds of different documents. The right viewer ensures protection for sensitive information based on user permission levels.
- The burden on IT is reduced when using web-based viewers. They are supported by all modern browsers and can be used to edit all major document types. It makes it easier for users to access documents. The right viewer reduces production and support cost, which makes them attractive technology across a variety of industries.
Existence of diverse document types, sharing methods and other challenges make document management difficult. However, the tips provided above should, along with the partnership of a reliable document conversion company, help businesses achieve huge gains both in terms of productivity and efficiency.
