Intelligent Online Document Management for Cellular Retailers

Improving the handling of important documents through secure web-based storage

Business documents are vital financial and intellectual assets that play an essential role in every cellular retail organization's business processes. Items such as contracts, registration forms, and any other important documents are absolutely vital to the successful management of daily operations. However, the endless amounts of documents grow exponentially as the retail organization grows. If left unchecked, cellular retailers can begin to face a severe document management crisis.

Important documents are often located at different locations across the organization. This is especially true in the case of multi-location organizations or Master Agent and Subdealer relationships. Manually coordinating, managing, and storing documents often proves to be costly, leaving the organization at risk of security issues and loss of important information.

A recent PriceWaterhouseCoopers study illustrates the high cost of manually managing documents. The study found that employees spend 40% of their time each week on tasks related to non-essential documents. Also, organizations spend on average $20 to file each document, and spend $120 searching or recreating each misfiled document. To attest to the inefficiency of manual document management, the study found that organizations lose 1 in 25 documents.

Intelligent online document management, which includes the online storage and organization of important business documents, helps to streamline business processes, enhance communication, improve data organization and accessibility, as well as increase security and privacy.

Streamline business processes
Intelligent online document management provides cellular businesses with secure real-time access to vital company information — thus increasing overall efficiency while eliminating excess paperwork. Online document management allows retailers to create "virtual file cabinets" wherein their POS and CRM records are stored along with any and all important documents, including carrier activation contracts and copies of customer ID's, that are deemed necessary and vital to the organization and the way in which it does business. These documents are then made accessible to all authorized members of the company from anywhere, at any time.

By converting paper documents into scanned images, cellular retailers can upload and merge their paper and digital information in one centralized location. They can then organize and link relevant information for faster retrieval and tracking from anywhere there is an Internet connection.

Intelligent online document management would not be "intelligent" if it did not provide smart management features, such as advanced search capabilities, folder management, and permissions management. Advanced search allows a user to track down any uploaded document, across the entire organization. The ability to search for more than simply a name allows users to "zero in" on the exact document that they are looking for. Folder and Permissions management allows retailers to not only define where and how documents are organized but also who has the ability to see each and every one of the documents. For example, a Subdealer can quickly find any of the customer contracts with activation dates for a specific date range that they have uploaded. Additionally, their Master Agent can do the same with regards to finding documents related to specific Subdealers.

More importantly, with online document management, Master Agents can set specific documentation requirements for each and every phone activation, such as copies of each contract and customer IDs. This ensures Subdealer compliance, without the Master Agent wasting time and resources by calling and following up with each Subdealer.

With all important business documents in a centralized location, retailers are better positioned to make timely and effective business decisions based on real-time data.