We explore why instead of using email, every business should have a document portal.
When considering the fast-moving Business world of today, information sharing has to be both secure and effective – not simply one or the other. For ages, Email was the preferred way for communication and sharing files but as business grew up so were its limitation. Here come document portals, a solution to share sensitive information in safely and be also compliant.
This article explores why a document portal is essential for your business and how it compares to email in terms of security, efficiency, and functionality.
1. Superior Security & Cyber Protection
Email is, by nature, a very insecure system. With an increasing number of cyber attacks promising to hit major businesses at any time due to phishing scams, malware and hacking endeavors data sent via email is more likely than ever fall in the wrong hands. Document portals, meanwhile:
Documents must be transmitted safely via end-to-end encryption, and quiescent at rest.
If requested from the posrgds team: 2FA (two-factor authentication) on access to portal users.
Transparency from being able to view who access and seen/edited its documents (audit trails).
With the help of a document portal, companies can avoid any breaches in their sensitive data and hence lessen unauthorized access greatly.
2. Increased Compliance with Laws
For example, healthcare, finance and legal services are industries that have a lot of regulatory requirements (e.g. HIPAA or GDPR) about handling sensitive information properly. Compliance: The document portal is made to be functional and has the following features;
Continuous compliance checks for your business to comply with industry standards.
Strict access controls on which files can be viewed or downloaded by whom.
Document storage data retention policies to help business comply with the regulations.
On the other hand, email does not have these built-in compliance functionalities and is ultimately a bad choice for organizations handling confidential or regulated information.
3. Document Management and Organization
Email is notoriously unwieldy to use, especially when it comes to managing documents and large piles of attachments. Documents can be lost somewhere in a long thread and it becomes confusing to manage multiple file versions. The solution is the document portals that allow for better organisation of all data.
Storing legal paperwork in an accessible single place for all authorized users.
Version control that follows the changes in documents and ensures every person has an access to the most current version.
Ability to create folders and categories based on projects, clients or teams- Helping in keeping the documents organized in one logical place.
Such meticulous planning can go a long way in helping businesses keep their written papers under control, prevents loss of vital information and eliminates inefficiencies.
4. Seamless Collaboration
Email collaboration usually results in conflicts of versions, lost updates and scrambling communication threads. This provides a smoother and more interactive platform:
Live editing tools that enable multiple people to work on a document at the same time.
Collaboration functions like commenting and task assignment in the document itself, so communication with other users does not require long email threads.
Share Out – Share out your documents restricting associating view, edit or comment access rights.
Due to these collaboration functionalities, document portals are the best for teamwork and serve as a productivity-enhancer that also helps in automating workflows.
5. Transfer Big Files
Most email platforms restrict the size files that can be sent as attachments, usually around 25 MB. These can be problematic for businesses that are often dealing with large files like high-res images, videos or extensive reports etc. Document portals allow for:
Bulk file uploads, sometimes allowing for files up to 1 GB or greater
Bulk uploading and downloading for managing large numbers of filesGateways make it easier to share with in big quantities
Compression & optimizer tool (for file compression and storage optimization so that large files does not hamper performance of the portal.
It also means you can Fly larger files and don't have to stress about compressing, splitting up or sending them via third-party filesharing services.
6. Restricted and Permitted Access
However, with email, you cannot also control who forwards or shares the file once it is sent. By offering document portals, businesses have the power to:
Configuring user permissions at a somewhat granular level (i.e., by role or department)
Controlling who gets to see your documents (their access is limited by the users or groups within your organization)
Revoke access to shared documents, ensuring that it cannot be forwarded without permission.
Using a document portal, you can control access to protect your sensitive data using better practices of permissioning.
7. Streamlined Communication
Emails can tend to have a lot of noise either through long-winded information or having lengthy forwarding-conversations which often detract from actually spotting the real message. Streamlined communication: Document portals help with this by;
Embedding comment at page-or-document level,for team members to discuss or feedback directly in the software.
Putting all communication about a document in one place rather than having long email chains
Sending notifications to affected parties when a document gets updated or reviewed so that everyone is essentially on the same page.
This pinpointed communication leads to less noise and misunderstanding which can frequently occur with email threads.
8. Automated workflows, reminders
Document portals are like email on steroids when it comes to workflow automation, especially for businesses with multiple projects and deadlines. These include:
Document Workflows that automatically send work to the right team member for review or approval.
Notifications and reminders for deadlines pending tasks that cannot be missed.
Progress Tracking and Accountability in Task Assignment
This automation not only saves time but also guarantees that tasks will be executed efficiently and in the least manual way possible.
9. Scalability
Document sharing requirements mature along with the growth of a business Seeing those rising volumes of files, and team members…and emails manage it all can be downright overwhelming. Document portals are scalable and can be built to grow with your business by offering:
Providing Flexible storage to accomodate increasing data volumes.
Offering powerful search capability so documents can always be found, regardless of the size of repository.
Easier support for more users as we added team members and collaborators.
Scalability, so that as your business grows – the document management solution remains effective.
10. Cost-Effectiveness
Free email services may appear to be saving you money at first, but the costs of inefficiency, security risks and compliance challenges can quickly accumulate. One way to solve the storage problems is document portals, which are cost-effective for many reasons.
Less reliance on individual file-sharing and collaboration tools.
Data breaches, which can be extremely expensive in both money and PR.
Increased productivity, resulting in less burdensome work load and usage of time/ resources.
Businesses can save time and prevent the confidentiality of files, thus trimming down operational costs through an investment in a document portal.
Conclusion
Email has always been one of the most popular means for Business communication, years back and probably till now but being at its hay day threatened by some limitations when it comes to security, efficiency or collaboration; this isn't very much what people in 2019 would ever want from a document management system. The correct terminology for what a document portal does is “More Than Secure Document Sharing with Admin Tools to Scale and Make Compliance Easier.
In order for a business to remain competitive and secure their sensitive data, making the move over to document portal is no longer something they have an option with. Make sure you get a document portal to benefit the secure Public Share and beyond.