Ever spent time trying to find a copy of an invoice that has been misfiled ?  or a job card needed for a Warranty Audit?

Documents are painful to handle.  We need to receipt, process and store documents all of which take time and physical space in the dealership.  It’s worse when documents (eg Supplier invoices) are send by email, but we then print out to store physically.

However, the real cost of document storage is in retrieval.   We often need to access documents quickly to make business decisions.  Questions like “What was that Advertising cost for?”

This is an area where having a Document Management Solution can help.

A Document Management System will allow you to capture documents into electronic storage.  By linking to your DMS system you can easily click back on to the document from within the DMS.  

So, a great example is if you have a supplier invoice query.   You want to go into the Supplier Account in your DMS, and click on the invoice in question to view the original document.

Or, click on a workshop job in the workshop and view the job card, along with the technicians write up and signature, to fulfil that Warranty Audit.

And we won’t talk about the contents of your deal file.    Signed copies of sales orders, service history and all the other documentation that is in there!

Fortunately, most DMS systems will have a Document Management Solution either built in or available via integration – and the benefits to the business can be massive.  The benefit of having instant access to documentation at a click cannot be underestimated.

Actions:-

1.      Investigate whether your DMS has it’s own Document Management System

2.      If not, does it support a third party Document System

3.      Review the cost / benefit

4.      Implement solution !

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