Every business has its documents – there is always a need to keep them organised, secure and accessible to the employees who require them. Now that Australians are increasingly adopting a hybrid, work-from-anywhere model, that need has become exceptionally harder to manage.
Given the new complexities of the hybrid workplace, it’s time for organisations to take on a new (and simpler) approach to how documents are managed and secured. Let’s explore the challenges that your hybrid business might face and the solutions you need to stay productive.
Managing documents in the hybrid workplace
According to research from Robert Half, 4 in 5 Australian business leaders agree that a mixture of hybrid and in-office employees will remain a permanent fixture of the workforce – work-from-anywhere is now a part of normal business operations.
That means neither are the complexities that hybrid work brings to the workplace, especially when it comes to modern document management. Without a smarter solution at your side, your business could encounter difficulties across four critical conditions:
- Collaboration: Employees are more distributed than ever before, making collaborative workflows more difficult without the proper technologies. Working together is especially challenging if you’re relying on paper-based processes and not making information accessible in digital format
- Security: Because those collaborative workflows necessitate a digital transformation, data in transit is being put at risk. Businesses require a secure digital solution to safeguard against threats and enable safe collaboration, access and storage
- Oversight: Without visibility into your hybrid environment, it’s difficult to manage documents, oversee accessibility and mitigate risks
- Business continuity: Digitisation is mission critical, but if files aren’t scanned with purpose or organisation in mind, it could derail productivity and disrupt your business
Enabling transformation with streamlined scanning technology
For the reasons listed above, hybrid work and modern document management necessitate an effective digital transformation. However, facilitating that change is easier said than done if your workforce is without the digital technologies they need to complete the job.
According to Telstra, 71% of Australian employees say they face barriers to hybrid working, with home office technology being the biggest. Nearly a third of employees say they want greater file accessibility and security from their employer — indicating a major gap in document management capabilities.
Fortunately, there’s a way to meet both of these needs in a single cutting-edge solution. With advanced document capture technology, such as Brother’s fleet of scanners and multi-function printers, you can effectively streamline the way your business manages and accesses information.
Whether you’re already working under a hybrid model or anticipate a shift in the near future, the right digitisation tools can optimise your document management process through automated software such as Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Bundled with most Brother devices, OCR can automate data capture, eliminate manual entry and turn your physical documents into actionable, collaborative assets.
In short, OCR creates searchable and editable PDFs. This makes document retrieval fast and simple, and also cuts down on duplicate work or lost productivity due to misplaced or disorganised recordkeeping.
Tips for optimising your scanning process
Digitisation can be a time-consuming effort if performed ineffectively. Here are three tips for streamlining the process:
- Leverage 2-sided (duplex) scanning to cut time in half
- Use hot folders to automatically sort files into correct destinations
- Make scanning a shared or departmental responsibility
Scanners that leverage OCR can transform physical documents into actionable, searchable dataEmpowering hybrid collaboration
One of the great challenges of working in a distributed environment is that it’s much harder to put your heads together on a project. This is especially true for businesses that haven’t digitised their records or dedicated a central storage space for their documents.
The good news is that an effective document management solution offers many collaborative advantages. Forward-thinking organisations are leveraging cloud-first policies across the board, particularly as they pertain to document storage and retrieval.
Once documents are scanned, they can be stored in public, private and hybrid cloud storage spaces like OneDrive or Dropbox. Cloud storage secures your documents in a centralised location, enabling remote and hybrid employees to access, share and edit them as needed. This accelerates data retrieval — a major compliance concern in some industries — and streamlines the collaboration process.
Whether on the go or working from home, you can digitise a file and quickly share it with coworkers in any location. Plus, version histories of every document ensure that everyone is on the same page and working together as effectively as possible.
Secure document management
Naturally, many organisations are concerned about document and print security in the hybrid workplace. Per Quocirca data, over two-thirds of companies have had a data loss incident due to print security failures in the past year. It’s no wonder then that 70% expect print security spend to increase in the next 12 months.
And one of the best places to start? A secure document management solution. From the point of creation, Brother devices can safeguard scanned documents and protect your business against risk with various security measures:
- Password protection: Prevents PDFs from being read without the necessary passcode
- Encryption: Only authorised personnel can access encrypted documents
- Secure Function Lock: Limits user access to device settings and certain functions
- IP Filtering: Blacklists IP addresses belonging to unauthorised machines
- Version history: Produces an audit trail, allowing you to track changes to sensitive documents and investigate risks
Brother devices feature document security features that restrict access to authorised personnelIn an increasingly competitive work environment, nothing matters more than productivity and security. When it comes to your sensitive corporate assets, this is particularly true.
That’s why we provide businesses like yours with safe and streamlined solutions that can help you navigate the complexities of the hybrid workplace and focus on the tasks that matter most. Our technologies are equipped with the tools your company needs to accommodate its changing work model and produce to the best of its ability.
Learn more about how we can meet your document management needs by contacting our team today.
