It is both your ethical and legal obligation to protect your business’s sensitive data and information. This is not only for the benefit of protecting your company but also a matter of protecting any sensitive information your customers have entrusted you with. To ensure you can properly safeguard your information, here are five essential document management tips for your small business.
Organization Is Key
Unfortunately, your files won’t magically organize themselves, so it’s important that you develop and implement an effective filing system. Ideally, you’ll have done this from the get-go, but it’s never too late to implement or try another organizing system—it’s just more work. For an effective solution, don’t get too caught up in following example systems to the letter. Reflect on your needs and what kind of system would work best for your business model. If you want to simplify the organization process, we highly recommend you consider digitizing your company’s data.
Embrace Digitization
Technology has become more pervasive than ever in both business and our personal lives. Digitizing your data is one of the best things you can do because it makes organization so much more efficient. When you place information into a digital file, you can more easily sort it into its proper place and quickly recall it as needed. Furthermore, software allows you to take extra security measures to better secure your confidential information, the most common of which is passwords.
Disposing of Documents
Once you’ve moved all your data to a digital format, you’ll probably be looking to get rid of all that paperwork. Simply throwing it away is no good; that makes it too easy for someone to steal the information. For that, you should take advantage of our on-site document shredding services. We show up at your front door with all our equipment loaded in trucks. This allows you to easily transport your documents to our shredders and witness the destruction firsthand.
Keep Everything in One Spot
An important rule to enforce is compiling and saving everything to one area once you’ve implemented a digital storage system. Employees saving sensitive files to their personal computers or sending data through unsecured channels is a major liability for letting information leak.
Education for Employees
Lastly, the most essential document management tip is to make sure you keep your employees up-to-date and fully aware of how your storage system works. The most elegant solution in the world doesn’t matter if not everyone knows how to use it properly. A good way to make sure everyone stays on the same page is to implement changes in small increments rather than all at once. This prevents anyone from becoming overwhelmed by drastic changes.
