Why EDM for accountants

For such a records intensive profession, it is amazing that so many accountancy firms and company accounts departments have not embraced electronic document management. For those that haven't, the pitfalls are many and costly; but for those that have, the benefits are significant.

The accounting profession, whether in practice or in industry, generates and receives huge amounts of documentation (both electronic and hard copy). In professional practise there is a plethora of client files (tax, audit, corporate finance, VAT, correspondence etc.) and in industry there are archives of purchase orders and invoices, sales orders, stock records, costings, payroll and many more. These records are often paper-based but increasingly information is stored electronically. Records and their storage highlight a number of key business issues, including:-

• Space and rental cost
• Retrieval cost
• Completeness
• Customer service
• Degradation
• Disaster recovery