Document, contract, and record management require a secure and accessible way to access necessary documentation and data. Unfortunately, this is not observed by some organizations – causing them to fall behind.
Outdated document storage methods that rely on file cabinets, shared drives, and locally-saved documents no longer cut it. Document scanning and subsequent file share can waste time and decrease oversight.
Thankfully, organizations no longer need to face storage limitations and decentralized file management. With enterprise content management within contract management software, organizations can up their storage game. Here’s how.
What Are Document Storage Systems?
Document storage systems are used to organize important business documents. In the digital age, most document storage systems no longer rely on paper filing cabinets and shared drives. Instead, digital and paper documents alike can be stored in secure and searchable electronic filing cabinets.
How To Use a Digital Document Storage Solution
A user-friendly document management system within contract management software allows organizations to create a document in-system or import a document for data extraction.
Let’s discuss some of the benefits of a robust system for storing documents.
#1 – Easily Search for Documents & Data
After document creation or import, organizations need to avoid storage limitations and decentralized file management. As such, they need to avoid shared drives, filing cabinets, and less-than-current storage methods.
Thankfully, organizations can use a robust document repository for storage and searching.
A secure document database can allow organizations to easily search and locate documents, document metadata, and much more. Advanced document management solutions make documents and data easily searchable down to the document, attachment, name, and metadata field level.
With “Did you mean…?” functionality, users can forge ahead with searching even if they mistype the term they seek. Search history allows them to revisit recent searches – speeding up their processes. With saved searches, teams can quickly access commonly searched results. Filtering allows users to narrow down their document database to make search processes more efficient.
#2 – Protect Sensitive Documents & Data
Confidential and sensitive data needs to be carefully stored to avoid data breaches. Data breaches are to be avoided because of their disastrous consequences, such as:
- the potential revelation of banking information and social security numbers.
- pending legal issues and lawsuits.
- the potential leaking of names, email addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth.
- health information falling into the wrong hands.
Thankfully, cloud-based contract storage can empower organizations to store documents and protect data within a highly secure system. Administrators and decision-makers can control access and user permissions.
Sensitive data can be identified, and administrators can establish rules for protecting that data. Organizations can further foster robust document management with a system that is SOC 1, SOC 2, Privacy Shield, and HITRUST compliant. With such an accredited document oversight system, teams can be confident that documents and data are centralized and secured within cloud storage.
#3- Simplify Document Extraction & Creation
A key aspect of robust document storage is the ability to create, manage, and extract documents within a document management solution.
With artificial intelligence – specifically, contract AI – organizations can streamline data mining and extraction to supplement document storage.
With automated data entry, teams can decrease the amount of time it takes to introduce new documents into a document storage platform. Organizations can trust a system that identifies and extracts text and sections using natural language processing (NLP) with intelligent fuzzy logic matching of crucial phrases, terms, and structured data.
For importing documents, OCR technology can make it easy to extract document data and break it down into metadata fields. Additionally, existing metadata can be merged with templates to create a new document with more accuracy and ease – such as a contract document within a contract database.
#4- Enjoy More Efficient Document Archival & Destruction
The majority of business documents have a limited active life – especially contract documents. Once there is no longer a need for documents based on organizations’ needs, they should either be archived or destroyed. Whether archival or destruction is required depends on organizational rules, industry compliance standards, and other specific factors.
Thankfully, document storage software can allow organizations to virtually ensure that corporate policies are observed regarding document archival and destruction.
Audit log history allows teams to track every action a document encounters – from creation to archival or destruction. Audit log history maintains actions performed, employees who performed them, and the date and time of the action.
Advanced solutions allow teams to configure expiration dates, renewal dates, archival dates, and purge dates for documents – depending on their document lifecycle needs. Organizations that need to maintain document status after a document’s purpose has been fulfilled can label documents as:
- Inactive
- Declined
- Held
- Expired
- Or any other statuses that specify that a document is not currently of document lifecycle concern.
With bulk text extraction and migration functionality, archival and destruction can be even easier. Migration scripts can be created to copy data from one document oversight solution to another instance of the same document management system.
A Better Document Storage System – Contract Management Software
Now you know how to swap inefficient document storage systems and methods for something better. All of the tools mentioned above can truly transform document management of contracts, requests, purchase orders, agreements, and more.
It is important to note that all of the functionality mentioned above is available with contract management software. The contract lifecycle management solution that offers the tools mentioned above and more is CobbleStone Contract Insight®.
CobbleStone® is an acclaimed and highly configurable contract management software platform that affords document management teams optimal oversight, low friction, and heighten flexibility from document creation to archival and destruction. CobbleStone has been a visionary CLM software leader for over twenty years and counting.
CobbleStone’s native tools and seamless interface API integrations and connectors have been praised by users and third-party analysts alike. It’s no wonder why CobbleStone is deemed the CLM Leader in the SPARK Matrix™ 2022 Report.
Book a free demo with a CobbleStone expert to see these document storage system features and other functionality that can help your organization manage documents. Ready to try CobbleStone out for yourself? Enjoy a free trial of CobbleStone Software today.
*Legal Disclaimer: This article is not legal advice. The content of this article is for educational purposes only. The information on this website may not present the most up-to-date legal information. Readers should contact their attorneys for legal advice regarding any particular legal matter.
