Why is it important to integrate systems with your DMS?

For many businesses, their Document Management System is a critical part of their enterprise architecture, with the system playing a central role in ensuring that teams work compliantly, efficiently and collaboratively.

Yet, for many, the DMS is only one jigsaw piece in their overall IT strategy. With this, a multitude of other solutions are added on top of the DMS itself, and their employee’s workflow becomes more and more complex, with users required to navigate a number of separate solutions, tools and web-apps in order to complete their daily tasks.

In light of this common struggle, we want to highlight three key reasons why we feel it’s now more important than ever to integrate relevant systems with your DMS.

3 key reasons to integrate systems with your DMS

1. To increase efficiency

It is crucial for all employees to have trouble-free access to your firm’s documentation so that they can quickly source the information they need to complete tasks. However, navigating a range of systems takes time, energy and clicks, creating inefficient workflows – which in turn reduces employee output.

For example, in the current Working from Home environment, as well as in the office, information such as meeting records and transcripts can be siloed to video conferencing tools. This means that users are required to navigate to this system and manually collect the data they need, which can cause delays in the delivery of their work products.

A common area of disconnect for legal teams is between the DMS and PMS (Practice Management System). Key information such as client contacts, client references and time spent on  client interactions are all stored within the PMS system, so it’s easy to see why making this available from within the DMS would significantly increase efficiency.

Integrating systems with your DMS minimises the need for your employees to leave their familiar DMS interface, meaning they’re never more than a few clicks away from the information they’re looking for – and they’re always sure that what they need is in the location they’re searching. This can help to shorten turnaround times for tasks such as creating contracts by keeping your employees within one centralised area of work, minimising time waste and reducing the risk of distraction.

2. To improve compliance

When employees are required to use a range of separate systems in order to carry out their work, the risk of noncompliance increases. Once the user has left their DMS, it can be inconvenient and time-consuming for them to navigate a range of solutions and return back to the central document store. So, often documents can be lost along the journey, or incorrectly stored.

Integrating your vital systems with your DMS helps to eliminate the risk of human error with documents stored in the wrong place, by keeping users and their work focused in one central and secure location, where the workflow for document creation and storage is clear, easy to follow and convenient for every member of your team.

Integrations also ensure that a full audit trail is complete for every document created, with document versions traceable, and processes undertaken in the creation of your business’ work product recorded in full.

For example, integrating your eSigning platform with your DMS ensures that eSignature requests and collections are recorded in detail, with information regarding recipients and signature dates all automatically stored in the correct, centralised location. So, the risk of non-compliance is decreased dramatically.

3. To make the most out of your investment in software

For many, Covid-19 has complicated the employee onboarding process, with remote working conditions making it more difficult for firms to train employees on the software their business uses. Software training can be costly and time-consuming, and in such challenging times, firms are looking to reduce time waste wherever possible.

By keeping your teams in one central area of work, you can ensure that your employee onboarding is simple for you and your teams, with both a simplified user experience and a document workflow that your new starters can easily navigate upon joining. With the DMS acting as your central focus for work and training, you can get employees working right away after training them on the DMS that underpins your practice.

On top of this, simplifying your workflow by using DMS integrations offers benefits to all employees, by making it easier to create content and collaborate with their colleagues at every stage of the work product life cycle. Document Management Systems are a significant investment for any business, so why not make the most out of your investment by maximising your firm’s use of it?

About Tiger Eye

To learn more about our existing range of iManage integrations (including PMS to DMS, DocuSign for iManage and more), or to discover how our Development Team could custom-build integrations for you, get in touch with our friendly team.

AUTHOR: Dave Wilson, Managing Director

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