construction project drawings

Why Should You Use Document Management System in Construction, and How to Find the Right One?

The construction and service industry is rapidly switching to digitalization as businesses are moving to the cloud and paperless offices. This ongoing trend has now driven businesses to have effective document management systems in order to fulfill their business needs and bring integration between core business facts, including job costing, service, accounting, etc.

What is a Document Management System (DMS)?

In simplest terms, it is an electronic system that manages and organizes business documents. There is a lot of documentation included in the construction and service industry, such as purchase orders, work orders, change orders, human resource documents, AP invoices, etc.

Why Does Your Construction and Service Business Need DMS?

For starters, a document management system is a paperless tool that ultimately saves you a lot of physical storage space and other costs. Moreover, it is not just a centralized repository to maintain your business record. Rather, advanced DMS automates your workflow and approval processes. In a nutshell, DMS brings efficiency and better internal control in your business. However, before selecting a suitable document management system for your service, you need to focus on a few key features.

Six Must-Have Features in a Good Document Management System

Selecting the right document management system for business can be a challenging task for many employers. Well, we have made a list of those features which are mandatory for a good DMS.


Convenient Retrieval

Office girl overwhelmed by piles of documents

The most frustrating thing about the paper documentation system includes keeping "tonnes” of files and documents in your office. Of course, it covers a lot of physical space as well. But a document management system can simply replace it with digitalized records maintained effectively.

Moreover, your employees won't have to come to the office every single time they need any document for business purposes. Rather, they can easily access it from anywhere, and this is even more helpful for "work from home" businesses.

Searchability is another very time-saving feature of the document management system. That said, if you or your employees need a specific record, they may have to go through a lot of files to retrieve it. However, a DMS allows you to find the file instantly with its optimized searchability. Searchability simply means that you can easily find a document with the help of any file feature. That said, you can find a file by its name, type, content, category, or by searching the name of the employee who created or uploaded the file.

Full Automation and Integration with Your Construction Software

A good DMS must be able to integrate with the construction software of a business completely. This allows improved visibility and better coordination among owners, project managers, field foreman, service technicians, other employees, and even suppliers or customers.

Lesser transparency is another major drawback of paper documentation. For instance, it is possible that your manager may become aware of several purchases or invoices at the time of signing the payment checks. Moreover, paper documents can be easily lost during the interdepartmental transits even if there is a proper manual system.

However, a document integration system can automate these processes. For instance, an invoice will not be posted until it is approved. This saves your employees from fixing the allocation after or crediting the invoices.

Moreover, a DMS allows you to improve the workflow, remove the double entry for information, and boost approval processes. A DMS software automates your documents' movement through different parts of your business's construction management software.

Business Compliance

Stack of lego bricks with: compliance, laws, regulations, control, standards and policy

A DMS allows employers to automate processes. Therefore, it is highly recommended for employers to add a rules-and-guidelines checklist for business and government compliance to ensure that your business follows all protocols set by the government before submitting or approving the documents.

There are many internal and external time-consuming transactions that occur in the construction business, such as payroll management, completion of paperwork for a construction project or a service job, etc. However, businesses can save valuable time if they implement these protocols earlier. This will eliminate the need for revisiting or resubmitting the documents.

Version Control

Retrieving and identifying the latest version of any document is essential. It makes sure that any incorrect information does not cause improper work or miscommunication. Version control becomes more important in construction work for changing the orders or viewing the invoices.

A good document management system keeps a record of old and updated versions of all files. It also maintains a record of all changes (i.e., time, reason, and the person who made these changes). This gives a complete picture of everything related to any specific file.

Moreover, a DMS allows you to track your documents accurately if you use it as a single source of document storage and retrieval. Also, a DMS gives you the freedom from handling different versions of paperwork or the administrative mistakes that may occur due to working from multiple systems. It also "liberates" you from completing or editing hand-written paperwork.

Document Security

The security of your business data and your employees are definitely the most important thing for you. Therefore, a construction document management must have security features such as authorization patterns for particular employees and departments. This allows a business to keep confidential data, such as employees' information or specific job data, safe or improperly shared.

One of the highest priorities of your administration is to ensure the security of the documents

Furthermore, it will be easier for you or your IT staff to retrieve the data easily from the cloud or other backup systems if things go wrong due to a natural disaster or physical disaster such as floods, fire, storms, etc. But paper documentation does not offer this luxury.

Cost Reduction

Paperwork/documentation needs a lot of office space or filing rooms. That's why businesses that switched to a document management system had more office space and better business opportunities. If you don't need extra space for paper documentation, it means you don't have to pay an extra amount on your lease. And of course, you can reduce stationary costs such as ink cartridges and papers.

Use the buttons below if you are interested in more information related to LogicalDOC's document management system, or feel free to contact a LogicalDOC Product Specialist or Request a Demo.

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cloud images of technology

The 5 main advantages of cloud computing in the smart working regime

In recent years we have been hearing more and more about Cloud Computing, but what is cloud computing in practice?

Cloud computing is the technology that allows a supplier to distribute its services through the internet, thus allowing customers to take advantage of applications that do not require installation (and therefore hardware infrastructure), configurations and maintenance.

In particular, the most used cloud systems are those that allow the processing, sharing and management of data across the network between multiple users, especially in this period where one of the most used words is smart working.

The use of business applications in the cloud

Speaking of business applications in the cloud, we can say that in recent years there are many companies that are transferring a large part of their systems to the cloud, overcoming the fear of having their data on the network to make their work processes more agile and streamlined.

The reason for this change is mainly economic because developing business applications is expensive, "heavy" in terms of software and hardware, also and above all for the necessary maintenance and for the constant necessary updating that requires technical personnel to be employed.

Therefore, cloud services become more sought after and appreciated because they allow to eliminate a good part of these problems and these expenses. In this way, the client company purchases only the features it needs, updates occur automatically, scalability is guaranteed as well as security and backup.

Applications based on the cloud, as well as our LogicalDOC Cloud Document Management System, have short implementation times and are much more competitive than in the past, but above all they allow you to organize your archive and share documents in a simple and fast way: you open the browser, log in with your credentials, and you will find the documents you need in the blink of an eye!

Business applications increasingly Mobile

Businessman in a datacenter with a smartphone in his hands

We have therefore seen how cloud computing has become an increasingly considered reality when it comes to choosing business applications, now the question is in today's scenario that has forced us all to smart working for a company it is better to use applications in the cloud or create internal infrastructures to be accessed remotely?

If we take our LogicalDOC document management system as an example, we can make two distinctions by looking at the price list:

On the one hand, installing document management software on your servers allows you to save on the software itself (LogicalDOC in the Enterprise and Business versions has a one-off cost).

On the other hand, however, the topics just discussed return: hardware has a cost, must be maintained and updated, dedicated staff are needed.

But above all, the crucial point is another: if our collaborators working remotely have to connect and download documents often, the upload bandwidth could be clogged. Maybe other important business applications are installed on the same server and this can cause freezes and slowdowns.

Therefore, we can define a definitely smarter choice using the cloud application to allow all our collaborators to work efficiently remotely without burdening the upload bandwidth of the company server and maintaining a high level of efficiency of all processes.

By the way, did you know that LogicalDOC has recently released the new app for Android devices ?!

Click here for the video on our YouTube channel

In summary the advantages of cloud computing

So, let's make a summary of the 5 main advantages that cloud computing offers compared to the installation of applications on company servers:

1. Greater flexibility

The company has the ability to deploy applications according to their needs, increasing or decreasing them with agility without always having to consider the investments in physical hardware.

2. System security

Data and networks are protected with specific protocols and are practically always equipped with backup procedures (with LogicalDOC the backup is incremental and equipped with disaster recovery procedures).

3. Faster speed

Immediate availability of data and information, thanks to dedicated data bands with high capacities.

4. Mobile access

This can obviously also happen with a system on a company server, but the use of cloud computing allows you not to burden the company network. The data connection can thus be made in any place, time and from any device: smartphone, PC, tablet.

5. Saving money

Cloud computing allows great savings on investments in hardware and does not require maintenance, updating and monitoring personnel.

These are the main reasons that are making cloud computing emerge more and more, proposing it as a more than valid alternative already in the present, especially if we consider that more and more companies are promoting smart working (now out of necessity but in the not too distant future it could be become the norm).

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Computer Screen Showing MRI, CT Image Scan of the Brain

Preview of DICOM images

The acronym DICOM: Digital Imaging and COmmunications in Medicine, is an international standard that defines in the biomedical field a series of compliance of files thanks to which it is possible an interchange between equipment belonging to different manufacturers.

DICOM declares the criteria for the visualization, communication, printing and archiving of information in the biomedical sector and also allows to incorporate and process parts of text in documents of various types, for example PDF.

DICOM LogoThe DICOM standard covers both the formats to be used for the storage of digital medical images and the related digital data, and the protocols to be adopted to implement different communication services that are useful in the medical imaging workflow.

DICOM was born in 1993 on the initiative of the American College of Radiology (ACR) and the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA). At the time, the previous ACR-NEMA standard was radically transformed into version 3.0 in which numerous services were added and the TCP/IP and ISO/OSI network protocols were implemented. The new standard was identified with the term DICOM, and its integration into the specifications of the TCP/IP network protocol made it increasingly popular.

The presence of DICOM as a digital archiving method is indispensable in the radiological sector, where images of radiological data or radiographs themselves are commonly called "DICOM images".

Today the advanced compatibility of the DICOM standard allows the archiving of images even in a compressed way using JPEG, JPEG Lossy, Jpeg Lossless and others, which allow universal management with reproduction and printing devices.

Starting from LogicalDOC 8.3, the preview of medical documents in DICOM format is available.

By activating the preview on the side menu or clicking the link preview from the contextual menu, the pre-visualization mode is activated.
LogicalDOC recognizes documents in DICOM format from the .dcm file extension
Within the DICOM preview module, many functions are available: modification of brightness, contrast, color filters, Zoom, tools for measuring distances, angles and areas.
Other interesting functions are also available such as the animation of sequences, threshold filters and the freehand and guided drawing tools.

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organized workspace

8 Ways You can be More Effective in the Office

Working in the office although great, can sometimes be a bit challenging and as anyone who has worked in an office before, it becomes more tasking to stay focused and productive both in the short-term and long-term basis. It is because of this obvious problem that we've highlighted 8 tried and trusted ways to stay effective in the office. Check it out below and see.

1. Make a daily plan

There is a common adage that says he/she who fails to plan, plans to fail. By making a well written out plan of all the task you have to do at the office, you are already on your way to having an effective work day. With this, you can plan the necessary details without leaving anything to chance. A well-detailed plan helps you to focus on the essentials, and it helps you to achieve your desired goals.

2. Prioritize your task

Set a priority on all your tasks. After you've highlighted a detailed plan on your work schedule, ensure you highlight the once that are most important and ensure you do those first. With this, you won't leave yourself stretched thin doing the right thing at the wrong time.

3. Take out time for yourself

You need your "me time" if you are going to be effective all day at work. Taking mini-breaks can do you a whole lot good and help you refocus and stay on track. Small breaks at scheduled intervals will help you refocus and re-energize yourself for what is ahead.

4. Set time brackets for each task

If you've written your plan out in detail, it is essential you set a specific timeline on each task. This allows you to place complete focus on the work you have to do at each particular time. This will add to your confidence, focus, and productivity all through the workday.

5. Organize your workspace

Having an organized workspace is always beneficial to you on any workday. Imagine having so many clutter around you, it will dampen your productivity. But if you clear out the clutter, and organize your office space, and desk, it will do you a whole lot of good and enhance your productivity.

6. Going for lunch

It sounds weird but trust us this can be a bonus for you in so many ways. Going out for lunch can help you change your environment and have an experience with another environment, and when you do get back to your office, you will observe that you are more productive than ever before.

7. Engage in what makes work enjoyable

Try and engage in a couple of things that make work more enjoyable for you as well as enhance your productivity. For some, it could be by listening to music, and for others, it could be by having a 5 minutes chit-chat with a colleague. With this, you will be more motivated to do your work because you are finding it enjoyable and fun.

8. Positive attitude

Having a positive attitude is the last step on our list on becoming more effective at the office. A positive attitude will make you feel about yourself and about the work you are doing, and it will make you see the positive side in everything.

So, there you have it, 8 ways via which you can remain productive in the office. Try them out and see.

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Business process management automation, mobile technology, gears

The 4 Perks of Workflow Automation

Workflow can be described as a process of automating business operations rather than relying on several documents. Automation presents business with a more efficient and consistent way to manage their information and documents. Highlighted below are some of the reasons to consider automation your business;

  1. Communication:

Several reports on why employees leave their various organization have revealed that the lack of communication or ineffective communication channels are the reasons for their leaving. Through automation, issues with the way and manner communication are carried out can easily be solved. An automated workflow environment will allow for easy sharing of information among all employees. The risk of a person not getting a particular information is limited as information can be shared simultaneously.

  1. Micromanagement:

As a result of automation, businesses can easily figure out which area or department is slowing or hindering the entire process. Therefore, individual employees can be held accountable for the job they do, thereby eliminating the need to micromanage employees. Also, automation helps business by ensuring that the information provided as well as procedures to be taken are always accurate.

  1. Employee Productivity

Knowing that automation allows business to track their employee’s progress and process, it makes it easy to motivate employees to be more productive. Employees knowing that they are accountable will often put in more effort to ensuring that their work is done properly, quickly and accurately which would in turn help increase the overall productivity of the company as well as its reputation. 

  1. Errors

Automated workflow allows for easy audits as changes, errors and deletion can be easily tracked. With every employee being conscious of the fact that they are accountable their work, errors will be closely monitored and fixed. The presence of automation also means that the amount of paperwork to be done will be reduced. Should the company or business to provide cloud services or digitalize their documents for easy access? Automated workflow will make such operations easy as ensures the business as well structured system.

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