There was a time not many years ago when large amounts of floor space in every office would be dedicated to filing cabinets. For some that’s what made an office look like an ‘office’! Luckily we have come a long way and most of the documents in any organization are in digital form making them easily accessible to the team. But if you are still having these documents in hard drives, flash drives and optical media (if you still use an ODD) you aren’t leveraging what technology has to offer. Important documents can easily be lost when you are storing them locally on your drives. In the worst case you can lose them forever when your local storage media fails.

Thankfully we have enterprise document management systems to offer you a safe and secure storage system along with accessibility. In today’s day and age where organizations work from multiple locations with dispersed teams and the work process involves generating tons of documents you need to invest in a platform that allows you to manage your documents easily. However with dozens of enterprise document management systems available in the market choosing one isn’t the easiest of jobs. In this brief guide we shall look at some of the things you must keep in mind while choosing a document management system.

Ease of Use           You don’t want your employees to have genius level IQ’s to use a document management system. Don’t dismiss this as a joke as there are document management systems that require rigorous training to get used to. It is important that you choose a system that is easy to use as this will ensure your team uses it in their daily work. The user interface should be welcoming and guide the users in terms of accessing the documents and using them. The vendor you choose should offer the basic training on the use of the system to your core team and they should be able to easily pass down the knowledge to the field team on the use of these systems.

Compatibility In your organization you’d be using several tools to create documents such as MS Office and their likes and the system you choose needs to be compatible with the document creation tools you have. The best tools available in the market are compatible with the tools that are used by organizations to create documents. Before you choose a system it is important for you to figure out its compatibility with the different file formats used in the organization.

Cloud Based System             There are two types of document management systems that you can choose – on-premises system and a cloud based system. The former defeats the purpose of having one if your team is scattered around different locations or your executives are on the move constantly. Having an on-premises system also adds to the infrastructure costs at your office. With the prices of cloud services falling rapidly, it goes without saying that you should opt for a cloud based system. This will let you access documents easily irrespective of your location and the device you are using.

Security Protocols               Loss of documents or documents being accessed by unauthorized employees can offer a body blow to your business. The very essence of having an enterprise document management system is to have one that comes with strict security protocols. The system you chose should allow you to define access to the documents including rights to delete, modify etc.  This ensures that only authorized employees are able to access documents and use it for business purposes.

Activity Tracking   Apart from letting you define access to the documents the management system must also have activity tracking feature along with analytics. All details with respect to access of documents, their modification and use should be logged and made easily available to the system admin. You should also have in-depth analytics on the use of the documents. There are enterprise document management systems that gamify the whole experience. This increases the productivity in terms of accessing the documents and their use in an organization.

Mobile Access       Last but not the least you need to make sure that the document management system you choose is easily accessible on mobile devices. We are living in an age where employees are constantly on the move and need to have access to the documents on their mobile devices. This is also important given the fact that BYOD (bring your own device) has almost become the norm in many organizations.

To conclude you can clearly see the importance of considering the points mentioned above while choosing an enterprise document management system. Your ultimate goal with such a system is to find one that helps you streamline your operations, cut costs and increase your productivity. When you consider the things we have mentioned above you will stay aligned to your goals.

Summary

Recall the last time you attended a lecture session where the speaker ran a 60 minute marathon lecture and didn’t care to ask the audience a single question. You will be able to recollect how bored you may have felt, how the person next to you was yawning or another attendee busy texting! The truth is audience attention spans have their limits and irrespective of the stature of the speaker or the subject a speaker needs to take his/her audience along. The speaker has to actively engage with the audience to make the sessions worthwhile. Thankfully technology allows for such active engagement and you can easily make use of an audience response system for this. These systems make your sessions engaging and entertaining. Here is how you can energize your lecture using an audience response tools during your next session.

# Start with an ice breaker The very manner in which you introduce your audience to the lecture or the training content often decides upon its success. Your idea should be to warm up the room the moment you start talking. There is no better way to do this than an icebreaker question or poll. Start with a simple quiz related to your topic and ask the audience to make use of their response system to answer it. This will help you strike the right chord with your audience and also give you an insight into the kind of knowledge that they have. Once you have results to your quiz you can get started with the session. The benefit here is that you will be able to grab attention of the entire house at one go.

# Engage by asking regular question The biggest challenge for any trainer or presenter is to be able to keep his/her audience motivated. If you are dealing with a complex topic or a lesson the chances of your audience loosing track of your lecture is quite high. As we have mentioned in the introduction most listeners tend to loose attention after a while and this is where you need to boost their attention at regular intervals. Throw a question to the audience every now and then and ask them to share their answers and views. Summarize the results and share your own position on those results. This will help in reigniting their attention and give necessary breaks from marathon lecture session.

# Finish by taking feedback A lecture session is as much for the audience to gain new knowledge as it is for you to know how you fared in explaining the subject and helping enrich their knowledge. After you are done with your lecture and presentation you should ask your audience to provide feedback on the content as well as your presentation. This helps you improve your performance as a trainer and also make the content more engaging for your audience.