Paper is not as useful as some believe it is; while it allows us to “store” information on it, it doesn’t allow us to utilize that information in another way. If you have a filing cabinet full of accounts payable invoices, you can’t easily compile information to draw conclusions. If you have a database with all those same papers captured and stored within it you can find the information you need. Using that database you can easily pull up invoices from specific vendors and check how much the company has spent there over a specific span of time. You can even see where the office chairs were purchased so you know not to buy them again because your back hurts. While a person may not possess this knowledge, the business does, and using document management systems can allow you to access the facts and information your business possesses.
Document management will allow businesses to use that knowledge to make better decisions about the future. These forecasts take the business knowledge and expands it into useful data. Paper certainly has the potential to do all of this, but it is going to cost you a lot more, take more time, and is prone to human errors.The more you know about your business, the more confident you can be in going forward. Accounts payable is just one of many applications that a document management system can improve, along with human resources, customer service, sales, engineering, and legal. With document management you can make your business, an intelligent business.