Organizing And Digitizing The Office For Workplace Efficiency

Now that everyone’s back, the New Year has really started in the UAE. Most of us are rested and recharged and full of ambition, goals, and focus for the year ahead, part of which for most of us revolves around increasing productivity and efficiency in our work. With the implementation of VAT, it’s going to be a particularly challenging month for a lot of people, and the collection and retention of documents and records will become increasingly important.

Organizing your office and digitizing documents is one of the best ways to make your business more efficient.

A tidy office can help keep your mind clear and keep you focussed on those resolutions and goals. This means that you get rid of all the clutter, think about having specific shelves or trays for incoming and outgoing files, and use organizers for everything else that you bring to work, such as chargers.

Maintaining a tidy office can boost productivity in the workplace. This is achieved in three ways. Firstly, a neat desk reduces stress and anxiety and instead provides a calm environment for you to work in. A calm environment improves the efficiency of your operations and your working speed. Secondly, a tidy work environment saves time. When everything is organized, you won’t have to waste time looking for something or creating space to place your files. The organization allows you to define where everything goes. Finally, a tidy office improves your state of mind. Working in a dirty or disorganized area can create negative impressions on your mind, thus affecting your productivity. Organizing your working space may not seem like a big deal, but it can play a critical role in productivity and thus should be taken seriously.

The most effective way to keep things neat however is to reduce the amount of paper lying around the office by digitising all documents and storing the originals in a secure offsite records management facility.

Using a system such as Microsoft SharePoint for your repository ensures that your documents are instantly available and fully searchable, as well as provides online and offline opportunities to automate business processes. There are many ways that SharePoint can be of benefit to organisations:

1. Enhancing Safety and Security

SharePoint can be used to promote the safety of documents through SSL authentication and network encryption. SSL authentication provides cryptographic keys to the company’s information, boosting security. Thus, with SharePoint, data transfer and user logins become more secure.

2. Controlling access rights

SharePoint can be used to control access to documents by employing strict security and encryption. The software can also be used to track the usage of documents in companies. You can lock the sensitive documents to deny access to everyone other than the management. You can also control access to reports based on departments, allowing each user access to records that are related to his or her duties and the business processes they are responsible for. Encrypting all the files except the ones available for public download boosts the security of company records.

3. Data integrity

SharePoint can be used to promote data integrity by ensuring that the customer’s data is stored directly in the repository. You can rest assured that the data stored in the repository is accurate and valid.

4. Document management

Paper documents can take a lot of time to find, time which could be better spent elsewhere. This affects the productivity and profitability of the company. It can also lead to delayed decision-making and unhappy customers. Digitization saves time by allowing you and your staff to access documents within a few seconds. SharePoint allows you to centralize all your documents in one place for easy access. These digital documents can be retrieved using the file name or keywords. Moreover, with SharePoint, users can search for data using author names, dates, tags, and descriptions.

5. Boosting collaboration

SharePoint can be used to boost collaboration by allowing different users to access and work on documents. Documents can be accessed globally, making it easy for different departments to work together. Moreover, SharePoint can be used to promote mobility by allowing people to work away from the office using mobile devices. You can also work when you travel since all the documents are readily accessible. These documents can also be easily shared with stakeholders and other interested parties.

We all know how easy it is to break those new year’s resolutions that you feel so passionately about right now, so to ensure you maintain your momentum, make sure you have the right systems in place and put in a bit of groundwork now. Feel free to speak to one of the Xeratek team to find out more about how we can help.