Keeping in mind how essential your data is to your business, the ways that you store the data are equally important. Nowadays, a filing cabinet will not suffice for all your documents since most of them are probably electronic, or will be as technologies develop.
You’ll need a very simple, flexible, and scalable system with secure access for your authorized staff. If possible, you should try to have all documents stored electronically and make sure new documents and data are backed up daily in a separate, secure location.
It’s important that you can instantly find all of the documents that you use to manage your business, which includes any contracts and Best Practices documents. Furthermore, your paper and electronic documents should all be named in the same type of syntax or manner, and possibly alphanumerically coded if you produce a particularly high volume.
Giving your documents long names with applicable keywords will likely make them easier to find when sought online or in print. There is free software called X1 (www.x1.com) that you should use to immediately find any data on your hard drive.
Cryptic document naming would make it hard to find what you are seeking. Thus, naming should be done using plain words. Likewise, subject lines in emails and memos should include the topic and project at issue, so your system is organized and information is easy to store, sort, and find for future use.
