Technology has transformed many things – snail mail morphed into email, rolls of film turned into instant and endless albums on our smartphones, grocery shopping can be done from the comfort of your own home. Even your filing cabinets have gone digital! This digital world that we live in was built to increase efficiency and encourage organization, but that doesn’t mean our lives are any less cluttered.
Take document management for example – our filing cabinets may have gone digital, but the flow of communication and work moves fast these days, leaving us with folders upon folders of all sorts of documents, ranging from PDFs to spreadsheets. For commercial real estate professionals, that archive of documents can span back decades, and range from lease agreements to marketing materials. So, in this digital age, what’s the best method for organizing your documents and having them readily available for easy collaboration? Keep reading to find out.
The Age Old Keep or Delete Debate
If you’re like me, you enjoy a nice “spring cleaning” no matter the season. This usually involves taking an inventory of everything in the folders on my desktop and then waging a battle between saving the documents or dragging them to the little trash can in the bottom corner of my screen. But before you send your important documents straight to the trash, let’s talk about the most common types you might find on your journey to a clean desktop.
Lease Documents
No matter if you own space, lease space, sell space, or any combination of the three, you probably have a mountain of lease agreements hiding somewhere in a dark corner of your computer. Just thinking about all of those amendments, assignments, dates, rent schedules, and other big scary data lurking around makes me shiver. Not to mention those files that are a combination of new documents and grainy scans of faxes from 1985….
Images
Smartphones have made it so easy to quickly capture a moment. Starting a new TI project and want to track the progress? Take a picture. Stumbled upon a new listing that you think might interest a client? Take a picture. Finally decorated the lobby of your new office in Denver? Take a picture. Except it’s all fun and games until the dreaded “Storage Limit Reached” message pops up on your phone and you have to decide what stays and what goes.
Receipts
“Need a receipt?” Be it right or wrong, my usual instinct is to say no, because receipts ALWAYS end up crumpled up in every possible corner of my car. But when it comes to commercial real estate, we aren’t talking about a $6.00 charge for a snack and a soda. The receipts that you’re holding on to are probably related to major purchases or projects.
And let’s not forget about the space plans, meeting notes, insurance policies, and work letters that are floating around. But you get the point – every process related to your real estate involves a long list of important documents. Before they get lost or you forget where they belong, it’s time to invest in a system that promotes organization amongst your files and supports collaboration and flexibility.
Quarem Vantage Document Management
You’ll never lose an important document again or forget where it came from in the first place. With Quarem Vantage, your documents are neatly organized and easily searchable within the cloud-based platform. The best part is that each and every document is associated with the proper lease, property, project or FF&E asset that they relate to. No matter where you are, you can access your information with the click of a button and invite your contacts in for seamless sharing.
Stop wasting time searching for your documents, and schedule a demo of Quarem Vantage instead.
