29 July 2024
Jana Blankenhagen
Chief Human Resources Manager
“Compared to the ability to organize a day’s work in a meaningful way, everything else in life is child’s play,” as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe clearly recognized over 150 years ago. Today, it applies more than ever.
We live in a VUCA world: We are – or at least feel as if – surrounded by volatility and uncertainty, while the complexity and ambiguity of things in our lives seemingly increases.
Everything often comes to a head in the work context, and it almost doesn’t matter which industry or profession you work in: HR management, finance, order processing, accounting, logistics and others – all departments are affected. In terms of resource management, one reason is that, according to statistics from the Federal Employment Agency, the rate of part-time employment in the economy as a whole in 2023 has reached a record high and will remain at this level in the long term, if not continue to rise. This means that work in companies usually has to be distributed among more people than was the case a few years ago. At the same time, employees expect companies to focus more on the people in the company, in addition to their products and services. Here, too, there is an increase in complexity and the number of tasks to be accomplished. This is not least due to the fact that the frequency and speed of communication is also increasing thanks to technological tools. E-mails, calls, chats, and video conferences as well as (once again) greater expectations for people working in the office to augment personal exchanges – everything happens at the same time. This quickly leads to disorganization or chaos in “daily business.”
This raises questions: How can smart software help a company? And how can it be used correctly so that all employees receive meaningful support in carrying out their day-to-day tasks?
Document management systems provide the answer. These offer functions for structuring, organizing, and making electronic documents accessible to others. These systems have long since gone far beyond mere archiving. They are not just simple digital files in which documents are simply stored on servers or in the cloud enabling them to be found and stored or deleted in compliance with the law. When companies digitalize all their documents and information, work can also be organized much more efficiently. And this is also the case if, for example, the use of artificial intelligence is (still) too insecure and therefore not permitted in the company due to IT security policies and data protection regulations.
Almost every request or task has a completion deadline. Many people work with to-do lists as a means to help them. But even these need to be kept track of and constantly updated. In addition, it is often only the task that is described, but any associated information or documents are lacking. They have to be sorted out first, taking time and potentially leading to a hectic pace and stress.
Follow-ups help minimize the chaos. In the relevant business context, documents, e-mails, or other information can be filed directly in a DMS such as enaio® or yuuvis®. If there is still work to be done, it just takes a few clicks to create a follow-up, indicating when, by whom, and how it needs to be completed. It does not matter how many people are involved. The DMS solution automatically makes the relevant objects and content actively available at the right time and notifies everyone who is in some manner associated with it. Thanks to the reminder function, completion confirmation and substitution rules, nothing is processed twice or forgotten. The follow-ups help organize day-to-day work according to time requirements and other aspects.
Tasks are often processed by several people at the same time. The complete integration of Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace into the DMS ensures that everyone can work on the documents at the same time. But how do you find out what the current processing status is and whether anyone has even started working on a task?
Additional features such as subscriptions are available in the DMS for this purpose. These come into play when several people are working on content, such as a new contract or a cost estimate, and need to be notified as soon as something has been changed. You can subscribe to the relevant documents or objects and be notified when metadata and/or content has been changed. Each time the record or document content is edited, the system automatically creates a new version in the object history, which is always provided with a time and editing stamp. The DMS actively reminds you of it so that you will not miss anything, provided that you have subscribed to this content. In this manner, subscriptions organize day-to-day work according to the relevance of content and time.
But how do you know that the work is really done and can be finally considered completed?
This is also easy! The edited document or data object is set to “completed” in the system and editing is complete. This means that neither metadata nor content can be changed while ensuring that everyone in the company always has access to the latest version.
All good things come in threes. This also applies to three of the most important DMS functions: follow-ups, subscriptions, and completion. That is why it is child’s play for any company with a digital document management system like enaio® or yuuvis® to organize a day’s work in a meaningful way.
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