5 Tools to Improve Your Document Workflow While Working Remotely

Thousands - if not millions - of businesses have been forced to transition their employees to remote work because of the global Coronavirus pandemic that is upending all our lives in 2020. Obviously, this negatively impacts how a business handles its document workflows. How can a company overcome this seemingly insurmountable challenge? To help you overcome these challenges, we’ve come up with the top 5 tools that will help improve your document workflow when working remotely.

1. Slack

Slack self-styles itself as a replacement for email, and it does a great job of it. Essentially a chat messaging platform, the product has now developed an entire ecosystem of integrated tools for document sharing and other collaborative tasks.

It’s well-integrated with all the major cloud storage platforms like Box and Google Drive, allows you to search for documents using keywords, host private chat meetings, make video calls, and even call using third-party apps like Zoom and Google Hangouts. It is a must-have tool for remote employees to take control of collaboration and document sharing through better communication and enhanced coordination to boost productivity.

2. G Suite

Putting all your documents in the cloud is the best solution for any collaborative environment, and Google takes that a step further with its G Suite collection of office productivity tools. It gives your work-from-home (WFH) employees a real-time platform to work on documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and more.

Document productivity is further enhanced with advanced tools for scripting, commenting, annotating, file conversion, and other key features. The big advantage with G Suite is that most of its applications are organically integrated with each other, making them interoperable at the deepest level. The combination of cross-application integration and a real-time editing environment makes G Suite an absolute essential for remote working.

3. PDFelement Pro

PDFelement is an affordable solution that caters to the document workflow needs of small and large companies alike. Essentially a PDF editor, PDFelement Pro is capable of handling all your document needs, from creating PDF documents from 300 different source files to scanning documents into editable PDFs. It offers everything from the most basic document tasks, such as page reordering, to the most advanced, like converting Word or Excel forms to fillable PDFs with automatic form field recognition.

The most compelling features include:

• Digitizing physical documents to create an indexed library of content
• Creating documents for distribution, e-signing, reviewing, etc.
• Converting PDF into other formats
• Merging, splitting, and managing PDF files and pages
• Editing content directly in PDFs without having to convert to other formats
• Protecting document workflows with powerful encryption algorithms
• Sharing documents via popular cloud storage services for better collaboration
• Directly scanning documents to PDF to save time
• Archiving PDFs using ISO standards

4. Confluence

This amazing document management software from Atlassian, the makers of the project management tool Jira, is an excellent choice for managing document workflows, version control, archiving, indexing, real-time editing, knowledge management and more.

The user-friendly interface of Confluence is complemented with extensive product documentation and webinar training to bring your team quickly up to speed. For greater access, it can be deployed via the cloud to facilitate collaboration across multiple physical locations. It comes with a host of custom options and plugins that companies can leverage in order to better streamline their document workflows. It’s also integrated with other Atlassian products like InVision, Trello and Jira.

5. NetDocuments

NetDocuments has been around for more than 20 years and is a leading document productivity platform. It’s a web-based SaaS tool and can be hosted on public, private, and hybrid clouds based on your data sovereignty requirements. Ideal for large document workflows, there are options for offline access, file conversion, OCR, file recovery, collaboration, indexing, archiving, retention, version control, compliance (with tracking), and much more. If you regularly handle a steady and large stream of documents, this could be the ideal solution for a remote work scenario where your employees can collaborate on documents with all the necessary tools.

Going paperless

The purpose of these document workflow tools is not only to provide accessible platforms for collaboration and document management but, more importantly, to do it from any location in the world. However, an often-overlooked aspect of such productivity tools is that it allows your workforce to go completely paperless where possible.

Digitizing your document workflows with tools like OCR (PDFelement 7 Pro), real-time collaboration (G Suite), version control (Confluence), and regulatory compliance (NetDocuments) helps save the environment in the long run. For the bulk of these tools to be deployed, all that’s required is a basic internet connection. As long as your employees have access to connected devices, these tools will help them be more productive and feel like a team even when they’re physically separated.