by Jesse Wood, CEO of eFileCabinet
Home document management software is a tool that can turn niche employees like consultants, freelancers, and independent contractors into powerful, market-disrupting professionals.
Niche trades and occupations are those that comprise the lowest percentage of American workers. Although entrepreneurship has seen an uptick in the past decade, most professionals in the western world still work for companies cutting their paychecks.
The perks of working for a company are well-documented, and among these perks is comfort and stability. However, niche workers can ensure more comfort and stability for their roles as solo workers through home document management software, and for the following reasons:
Consulting and Freelancing as a New Records Management Paradigm.
Home document management software doesn’t just let people work from home — it lets them do everything that comes with that privilege, including the reduction in cost it would take to lease commercial real estate — a huge price tag in some of America’s most consulting-driven geographic areas.
Additionally, using home-based document management software solutions lets independent workers condense the amount of space an office would actually fill in their homes.
If someone is able to make everything digital, backed up, and secure, that person will completely eliminate the paper workload and the storage space it requires, meaning a lean and spare work-space is all one would need to get started.
Home Document Management Software as the Organization Facilitator.
When consultants and freelancers go out on their own to become harbingers of certain expertise in their industry of choice, each of them is one individual tasked with the responsibility of managing many people’s information.
This means that there is arguably more pressure on the consultant, freelancer, or independent contractor to stave off information chaos through document management solutions that won’t cost them an arm and a leg—especially in the first years.
For instance, psychologists, as professionals licensed to provide mental health and care for their patients, are bound by the demands of HIPAA compliance. The psychologist will be managing an array of patient records that are to be kept private and secure.
Relying on a simple cloud storage solution won’t provide the data back-up, file interchange security, and other technical and privacy safeguard facilitators that these workers need to keep their licensure.
Understanding Competitive Fees from The Consultants’ Perspective.
One of the primary benefits of hiring a consultant or freelancer instead of hiring a full-time employee is the fact they don’t take up as much space on a company’s payroll.
This of course varies in terms of experience, but no matter what the level of experience a consultant or freelancer has, he or she can drive down the costs of their services by becoming more efficient—and this helps them stay competitive in a marketplace driven by competition and fair pricing structures.
However, that doesn’t mean consultants and freelancers are chocked full of business opportunities—they must still strive to reduce the cost of using them as an asset by as much as possible.
Home document management software creates the efficiency necessary to remain competitive in the fee structure of the consulting market.
Some of eFileCabinet’s users even claim they can reduce the steps in their workload by 50% with the solution, and others claim it saves them tens of thousands of dollars annually.
Understanding Consulting as a New Wave of Project Management.
Project management has evolved to account for the complexities of the consulting and freelance trades.
What most consultants and independent contractors do not understand about home document management software, is that it is arguably a more complete project management software than project management software itself.
Why?
Because project management has become too complex in scope and purpose to be manifested in an array of software features. Documents, however, will always remain part of any business, and therefore account for an ever-changing and complex landscape of new business procedures.
In this Line of Work, Your Reputation Will Always Precede You.
There are numerous ways to assess the performance of a contractor, but arguably the most important metric is what previous clients will say about the work he or she has done for them.
Any company prospecting you will want references before giving you their business, and those references will be predicated on the following three things), all of them items which home document management software makes a reality for its users:
- The accuracy of the work completed
- The efficiency of the work completed
- The professionalism with which information is handled
Home document management software, when used as it should be, makes it practically impossible to misplace a file or retrieve the file slowly.
AIIM’s paper-free day paper free hero, Chris Beebe, could find things so quickly in eFileCabinet that he even timed it for fun one day just to see how quickly he could find a document he was looking for.
And, when it comes to the bullet point of efficiency, letting technology handle where all your information is contained is much quicker than attempting to handle it all yourself. Take those hands of the steering wheel, sit back, and be paid for your expertise—not your ability to manage mundane, document-related details. However, some people (although very few in number) enjoy playing the role of a librarian even though it’s not their official job title. For these luddites, eFileCabinet Express definitely isn’t the solution.
Home Document Management Software is a Demand Driving Agent.
So many companies are struggling with the idea of using technology to solve their business problems that they are hiring management consultants to solve these issues.
Whether you’re a graphic designer who needs to keep track of document details for a re-branding project or a psychologist in need of maintaining HIPAA compliance, home office automation of redundant document tasks will simplify the process of demand generation for your services.
Jesse Wood is the CEO of document management software vendor, eFileCabinet. Founded in 2001, eFileCabinet, Inc. began as a cutting-edge tool to digitally store records in accounting firms. As it grew in popularity, eFileCabinet developed into a full-fledged electronic document management solution designed to help organizations automate redundant processes, ensure security, and solve common office problems.
