Digital files are essential, but they can also be a hassle to organize. They take up space and can be lost if not stored properly. For businesses, it’s even more important to store their digital files efficiently because the information in them is vital for operations.
Fortunately, this feature will teach you how to organize digital files with a few simple tips. Here’s how you can start organizing your corporate files today:
1. Establish And Follow An Organization System
It’s essential that the system is well thought out, easy to use and maintain, and flexible enough to accommodate organizational changes. Creating a system can often be achieved using tools provided by the operating system or other document management software.
Before you begin organizing your files, determine your priorities. Define how you want your files organized and what you want them organized by: do you want them by subject matter? Chronological order? Alphabetical order? Once you’ve established an organizational scheme, it’ll be essential to implement different tools to make it stick.
Create folders with clear names and include labels for each file. Additionally, assign color codes for different documents for easier management.
2. Create Plenty Of Folders
To organize your corporate digital files more efficiently, you must ensure plenty of folders. Create a folder for each project, client, vendor, and team member. Because this will quickly add up to dozens of folders, it’s often best to create a folder for each department (and subfolders within these folders). You can then store all the necessary documents in these subfolders.
This is handy when a document pertains to multiple projects or team members. For example, you might have a marketing document that pertains to both the ‘New Product Development project and the ‘Company X Client’ project. In this case, you’d save the file using both the ‘New Product Development’ and ‘Company X Client’ folder names. Anyone who needs access to this document can easily find it in either of these two locations.
It’d help if you also considered creating additional folders based on periods, such as yearly and monthly folders. This can make it easier for yourself and others on your team to find older documents when needed.
3. Schedule Regular Purges
When it comes to purging digital files, most companies follow the philosophy that less is more. More often than not, purges are scheduled quarterly and range anywhere from three to six months. Most information management experts recommend not waiting longer than this due to the time constraints of accessing older documents.
Yet there’s no hard and fast rule dictating how often you should purge your digital files. Each company is different, and schedules may vary based on what types of files you’re storing, how long they need to be retained, how frequently you receive new records, and what type of storage solutions you use.
To determine your company’s optimal purge schedule, consider conducting an audit of your electronic records retention program.
4. Remove Unused Files
While you’re going through your digital files and organizing them, take the opportunity to delete no longer necessary files. If you don’t need a file, there’s no reason it should be taking up space on your computer or server. You should also delete old files you haven’t used in a while. While they might have been helpful at one time, they’re probably not worth keeping around if they’re not relevant now or haven’t been updated recently.
5. Utilize Managed IT Solutions To Make Things Easier
Managed information technology (IT) services can help you more easily organize digital files. The right managed IT services provider will use the latest technology to create a solution that works for your company. This may include transferring files over a secure network, so they don’t have to be on paper, or it can involve programming a computer system that makes it easier to manage and store files. These services free up your time and your employees’ time so that they can focus on other things.
6. Use Cloud-based Solutions To Share Corporate Digital Files Effortlessly
Cloud computing is a way to store and access data and programs over the internet, somewhere secured in the cloud with automated storage, retrieval, and maintenance. The cloud is just a metaphor for the internet. It goes back to the days of flowcharts and presentations.
Using cloud services allows you to share documents with your team, and they can all see each other’s edits in real-time, rather than sending dozens of email attachments back and forth with slight alterations every few hours.
We need to create systems that allow for easy access and retrieval of documents daily in the digital world. To efficiently manage your digital files, you should develop a system centered around your needs and evolve it as your business grows. In addition, it’d help if you considered utilizing cloud-based solutions or managed IT services to secure and store data.
loading...
loading...