So, weeks into your lockdowns wherever you are in the world, (1) you must already have gotten in the grove of remote working and effectively working at home and (2) you miss working from the office, with all its perks and quirks such as nosy and noisy officemates, free instant coffee, and your important printed documents so much. To have the best of both worlds in terms of having an easy time with work, you need to accept the advantages that remote working presents through technology, where document management and workflow implements may be made available. Here are some great practices that will allow you and your team to develop systems to process your documents over email and messaging. Don’t worry, these are easy and quick to implement, so you shouldn’t have such a hard time.

Do other things with documents

A key to seamless and more effective management of documents when everyone is doing remote work is allowing people not just to have copies of their documents but also to do other things. One, there should be an auditing tool that will allow the recording of all actions from you and the other recipients. Other features that can be included that will surely benefit you and your team are automated document creation and multiple tab views of the document so that recipients can see the different edits introduced to the document, and a record of correspondence (like a chat feature) that would come with the document.

However, thanks to the growing and emerging enterprise collaboration tools, working from home or any remote location can now be almost as productive and rewarding as working from the office. These remote work collaboration tools allow employees and companies to work together on professional projects and plans while not working under the same roof. They are meant to reduce the bottlenecks of communication gaps, feedback and approval processes, and more. They also help drastically in core aspects such as communication, planning, project, and task management, and file and data sharing. Here are our top picks for the best enterprise-level collaboration tools.

(Via: http://techgenix.com/remote-work-collaboration-tools/)

 

Turn on annotation, not just editing

Collaborative platforms like with OneDrive (for Microsoft) and Google Drive are magnificent as they allow you to distribute your documents to your teammates and other concerned parties (e.g., external clients), as well as allow them to review, download, and edit those documents. But what if you don’t want those parties to change anything in the document, although you would still want to know what they think of the document? That’s where turning on annotations comes in handy. Turning on annotations or comments allows you as the document owner to gather suggestions without other parties changing anything on your document. After all, getting and providing feedback is one of the tenets of effective collaboration.

For teams taking advantage of everything online content collaboration has to offer, effectively annotating shared documents is a skill that’s best learned sooner rather than later.

(Via: https://clickup.com/blog/the-art-of-annotating-a-shared-document/)

 

Get your electronic approvals in tow

In this era when people from rank and file to management are all working from home, how can anyone get the proper approvals for documents that the higher ups need to green light? An email trail may not be the most efficient nor the most integrity-filled or audit-friendly method of approvals, but something has to be done with documents to be approvals, right? Thus, to make electronic approvals in this time of remote work as flawless as possible while still adhering to legal standards, you need to regulate requirements and rules for electronic signatures and utilize electronic signature software that is compatible with legal standards.

Getting documents approved in a structured, timely fashion is one of the more understated challenges in project management. You might have everything lined up perfectly, but if a key stakeholder doesn’t give the ‘okay’ on schedule, things can go downhill quickly.

(Via: https://www.workamajig.com/blog/document-approval-process)

Documents are a pain to maintain when you’re not at the office, and if you’ve lost them because of laptop drive failure, it can be horrific.  Don’t hesitate to contact us, we will help you.