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You’ve decided (or are considering) that it would financially benefit your business to allow employees to work from home. With budget cuts, you’ve tried cutting expenses in other areas, but it’s just not enough. Although you’ll potentially save great amounts of money with remote workers, implementing the work-from-home-option now brings you to worry… how do I keep my business information protected? Here’s how:

With remote workers, you need remote access. The best way to provide remote access is via the web. Combine web access with a software-as-a-service document management system, and you have secure web access to documents that are protected and stored securely in a central location. No more documents floating around on employee laptops.

Use a method that ensures strong authentication. Using a system that requires access with a secure log in and that encrypts information as it travels across the Internet should be required. This easily restricts who can get to mission critical documents and important information. But remember, it is also important to log out of the system when you are done working so information is not accidentally left on the screen for unauthorized eyes. Look for an application that will automatically log you out of the system once a certain amount of time has passed.

Just because your workers are sitting in their home offices, doesn’t mean you lose all control, or really any at all! Many document management systems allow those authorized to set up restricted access for each user. This prevents remote employees from roaming around in information they really don’t need to see.

Whatever you do, implement a system or policy that ensures all document edits and changes are monitored. It’s your business… you should know what’s going on! Not to mention, you don’t need the worrisome anticipation of surprise audits that always seem to happen when you’re not prepared. So do your homework, be prepared and choose a system that allows you to view all document history.

Allow for online collaboration. One of the biggest challenges you will have in transitioning your employees to a remote office is collaboration. Without the opportunity to walk down the hall, or gather in a conference room to discuss a contract, proposal or any other company information, it will be challenging to collect information from a group to create final versions. Luckily, the right online document management system can help you overcome this challenge by providing an easy way to upload information, collaborate and track versions of each change within the document. Never again clog up your inbox with attachments, miss an edit, or worry which version is truly the FINAL version.

Managing employees remotely has its own set of challenges. By automating workflows, you can make sure that your remote staff is productive. You can push work or documents to remote employees and populate their task lists automatically. An automated workflow ensures that your employees are working on the priorities you set and still maintains control over your business documents.

So while budget cuts are a reality in business today, your organization does not have to suffer. With remote workers, you do not need to put your confidential information or intellectual property at risk. Using document management software via the web helps make sure that your remote staff is productive, and that your information is secure. Best of all, document management on the web does not have to be expensive because it’s delivered as software-as-a-service.

Want to find out more about document management, then visit the DocuVantage site on how to choose the best document management software for your needs.