Top Ten Tips to Managing Document Content and Productivity We are all guilty of it. You take an old document, cut and paste a few paragraphs, type in some new thoughts, save it with a new title and email out to a dozen people for their edits and suggestions. Pretty soon you are buried in multiple different versions with multiple, often conflicting, edits. After a lengthy "stare and compare" process you combine the changes into one document, save the final document and are good to go, repeating the same process for each of the business documents piled on your desk. When realizing how often we as individuals handle document content this way, it is frightening to consider how this approach can ensure significant problems at a company-wide level. One obvious problem is the time it takes to inefficiently herd the many different edits together. Another major concern is the potential to unwittingly share sensitive information. For example, the document you originally save over could contain hidden metadata comments, edits and dates that were made in previous versions of the document. New edits could also be added to this metadata and if not properly stripped can lead to some embarrassing, or potentially damaging, information leaking outside the office walls. There's no escaping it. Most businesses dedicate a significant amount of resources to managing and creating documents. A recent Gartner report states that organizations spend 10 to 14 percent of their time creating documents. That's at least half a day of company resources per week. It is vital for companies to communicate the importance of managing document content throughout the entire organization and, ultimately, to prevent any content-related issues that would have detrimental consequences that may even impact a company's bottom line. In an attempt to help clarify the major issues companies are facing, here is a list of the top ten tips companies should keep in mind when it comes to managing the content of their documents while also increasing overall productivity. 1. Measure document chaos Establish the scale of the problem in your organization. Are most of the documents you produce critical to your business and do most involve contributions from a team of people before completion? If you fall into the heavy document user category, then your organization needs tools and applications that address the area of content productivity. 2. Focus on ROI and high productivity Make sure that your revenue producing employees are focused on those activities that have the highest ROI, and employ practices that make them more productive. Time spent reworking corrupted documents and inputting edits into documents can take much time away from more lucrative activities. Sponsor Spot: "Classification, Taxonomies and You"--a Verity white paper that explains how to make the information in your enterprise more manageable, usable and valuable with made-to-measure taxonomies, high-value content evaluation, and tips to get started. Request your free white paper now. Click Here 3. Manage the amount of email Email use has become ubiquitous for us all and the amount of mail and attachments that are sent and received is tremendous. It's hard to keep track of it all. Employees need a way to easily manage their collaboration with others on documents that they have sent out via email. 4. Deal with multiple contributors Today's methods for keeping track of many changes and edits to a document are uninspired, to say the least. Understanding who made what changes, when and where can be a tremendously frustrating process. Then, trying to actually incorporate those changes that you agree with only enhances the problem. It is important to keep in mind that much time is spent on this seemingly simple task. One method to keep track of each change is in a document audit file. Having this outline of who, what and when in terms of content changes can help not only with managing edits, but also give companies needed reporting for many different government regulation issues. 5. Work the way you always have done Software should not enforce new working practices on your employees and should not require significant training. End users only become frustrated and do not use the software in the way it is intended to be used. Every business is different and many people have specific ways of working and don't appreciate change. Be sure to choose software that is flexible and allows your users to work in the way in which they always have done.
