How Network Monitoring and Document Management Work Together

Manual or paper-based processes are sluggish and outdated in our current business climate, and companies are discovering that in order to stay afloat, switching to digital processes becomes a necessity. After all, today’s businesses not only have to stay one step ahead of security threats, but also competing organizations. In order to do this, network monitoring and document management are two areas a company can invest in to secure their data and streamline processes, making their business practices as safe and efficient as possible.

You're undoubtedly familiar with network monitoring and how it can benefit your organization. It keeps you one step ahead of outages and security breaches, and can deliver a substantial ROI for your organization by minimizing downtime, helping you meet SLA’s, and reducing support calls. But how much do you know about digital document management and its benefits?

Digital Document Management

Digital document management allows you to go paperless by electronically managing the entire lifecycle of your documents—from automated data capture, to editing, saving, or routing for approval. Paper documents can be scanned in to the document management system, and existing digital files can just as easily be imported in and managed there as well.

Document management software like Webdocs acts as a centralized repository that can replace your cumbersome filing cabinets, keeping all your documents securely in one place. Similarly to network monitoring software, document management is about keeping things secure and protected from possible intrusion. WebDocs comes with advanced security controls and version tracking to ensure no one can access a document unless they’re supposed to.

But what similarities do network monitoring and document management share? And how can they work together to take your business to the next level?

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Using Network Monitoring in Conjunction with Document Management

First and foremost, using network monitoring software can greatly help to protect the business data saved in your document management system. After all, the success of your document management depends on having a functional and secure server on which to store your important business data. For this reason, using a network monitoring tool like Intermapper with a document management solution like Webdocs ensures that the centralized repository you’re storing your documents on is protected and always available.

Here are other ways these two solutions work together to increase the overall benefit to your business:

Securing Your Data

In recent years there have been a handful of high-profile data breaches that unfortunately resulted in the loss of important customer information and, ultimately, trust. When a company suffers a security breach, their reputation—and sales—suffer. When you implement both network monitoring and document management software, however, you greatly reduce the risk of such an occurrence. This isn’t just because your network monitoring software can alert you to potential problems on the server where your document management software is running, but also because a high-quality document management system should come with advanced security measures that allow you to control who has access to documents from a department, subgroup, or even document-type level. Fortunately, Webdocs comes equipped with such capabilities, along with version controls and extensive document tracking abilities. 

Helping to Keep You Compliant

Staying compliant with both internal and external regulations can be an important part of keeping business running smoothly. With network monitoring software, vendors and customers can document performance, which can help you uphold service level agreements (SLAs).With document management software, there is always a clear audit trail to see where a business document is in a workflow process, what document actions have been taken, and by whom.

These kinds of digital audit trails are extremely important for both external regulations—like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act or the Federal Information Security Management Act—as well as your own internal corporate records. If someone deletes a file or attempts to steal information from within your company, you’ll be able to clearly see who has taken those actions, as opposed to dealing with paper documents that can go missing at any time without evidence as to who was responsible.

Streamlining Workflows

Both document management and network monitoring solutions help your company the most by streamlining inefficient, sluggish processes and increasing productivity. Manually monitoring a network day in and day out is exhausting for an IT department, and introduces human error as a potential factor in the monitoring process. But with network monitoring software from Intermapper, you can rest assured that your network is being watched even when you aren’t there to physically monitor it, bringin you up-to-the-minute information on the health of your network and alerting you to potential issues before they cause major problems. 

Similarly, document management software like Webdocs makes your company more efficient by removing bottlenecks in your workflows. Implementing this type of solution reduces redundant data entry and speeds up business processes. Invoices are paid on time, documents needing signatures are moved to the appropriate departments for approval automatically, and reports are delivered on a set schedule.

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A Two-Part Solution

In conclusion, both of these solutions can give you the competitive edge you need to take your business to the next level by improving sluggish processes and helping you be more productive. Used independently, they offer the separate benefits of monitoring your network and storing your data; used in conjunction, they offer a secure and stable way to make sure your network—and all the data on it—can be securely managed, stored, and routed when needed.

Say goodbye to inefficient, paper-based processes and manual monitoring with these two digital solutions that will streamline your workflows and keep your business data as secure as your server.