10 Reasons Your Document Management Strategy Is Failing

Today, businesses operate through documentation, and a company can thus create a great deal of documentation as it expands through invoicing, proposal generation, forecasting, contact tracking, internal documents, and recordkeeping. As an organisation grows, however, the processes that have previously allowed it to link documents together to achieve success may no longer work. Many times, organisations will hear complaints from employees about document searches taking too long, not finding the right version of a document, receiving an incorrect approval, etc.; the true source of most issues is that the strategies used by organisations to manage their document management systems (DMS) are broken. These document management challenges are becoming increasingly prevalent as businesses scale.

In this article, we will examine the most common DMS implementation problems that many organisations face and provide recommendations on how to solve them to improve efficiencies, protect data, and maintain compliance.

Understanding these document management challenges is crucial for developing effective solutions.

1. You’re Still Relying on Disconnected Tools 

The possibility of disorganisation in document management systems is high in an office setting with the utilisation of emails, WhatsApp groups, shared drives, and the many folders we have scattered throughout our computers. Workers often spend hours every day looking for stuff, asking for updates on and so forth, looking for matching versions of files. 

Why does it end up failing? Because of fragmentation in document management systems, we are losing production and increasing errors. 

The solution is to implement a single DMS (Document Management System) with a unified, structured, AI-powered search platform.

2. Poor Version Control Leads to Confusion

A common problem with document management is having multiple copies of the same document version floating around. Team members have no idea which of these copies is the final, approved, or the last one to be used. 

The answer is to have automated versioning and audit trails, ensuring that every edit is accounted for and no change to the document goes unaccounted for.

3. Workflows Are Manual, Slow, and Broken

If you have to email multiple people asking for documents or sending them to obtain approvals, you are wasting time and accountability. 

The creation of manual workflows creates: 

• Delays 
• steps skipped 
• no visibility 
• errors re-occur 

These are the reasons why so many organisations continue to experience inefficiencies with their document workflows. 

The remedy for these issues is to build automated workflows which have pre-established roles, reminder functions and status tracking. 

4. Lack of Clear Ownership Creates Accountability Gaps 

Without assigning an individual to own a document process, the process will likely derail quickly. If “everyone” is responsible, no one is really responsible. 

To solve this problem, it is important to create a clearly defined document process ownership, develop clearly established access to the documents, and clearly define the responsibilities assigned to the document process owners.

5. You Don’t Have a Standard Naming or Storage Structure 

If you’re using random naming conventions for your files, it doesn’t matter how good your Document Management System (DMS) is – you WILL have issues with it. 

You cannot mitigate these problems caused by bad document management practices if your employees continue to save documents in random, inconsistent ways, e.g., 

• “final-final.pdf”. 
• “revision 2.docx”. 
• “abc-new-okay-use-this.xlsx”. 

Solution: Establish document naming standards and a centralised folder structure within your DMS. 

Know More: Best Document Processing Automation Tools (2025 Edition)

6. Search Is Slow, Inaccurate, or Non-Functional 

If your team spends more time searching for files rather than using them, the DMS has failed to be useful. 

Solution: Upgrade to an Intelligent DMS with metadata support, full-text searching, OCR, and indexing to allow you to retrieve any document in seconds. 

7. Security Permissions Are Too Loose or Too Complex 

TWO EXTREMES lead to poor document governance: Being Too Open (Allowing sensitive files to be accessible by anyone on your staff) and Being Too Restrictive (Not allowing staff to access the files they need to do their job). Both present a significant risk for poor document management. 

Solution: Create Role-based Access, Multiple Levels of Permission, Encrypt Sensitive Documents, and Have Clear Data Sharing Procedures. 

8. Compliance Requirements Are Not Built Into the System

If your organisation is manually managing retention policies, audit readiness, and/or is required to maintain compliance documentation, errors WILL occur. If you have not implemented an automated solution to deal with these important processes, you will incur the following risks as a result of compliance failures:  

• Legal Penalties. 
• Loss of customer trust. 
• Operational Delays. 

Solution: Implement a Document Management System that automatically manages retention schedules, audit trails, and compliance workflows.

9. Outdated or Legacy Systems Slow You Down

Each year, Microsoft Dynamics 365 (DMS) is adjusted to accommodate an ever-changing industry; however, older platforms are limited by their inability to scale, integrate or support the automation of today’s businesses. 

Mistakes occur when the DMS implementation is not understood by those using the DMS.

10. Employees Are Not Trained Properly

Training is vital for the successful implementation of DMS features and functions. 

Lack of training results in: 

• Inconsistent use. 
• Skipping steps in the process. 
• Lack of adoption of DMS functions and features. 
• Continuous mistakes. 

Correct: Implement structured training sessions and designate employees within your company as your DMS Champion to guide their colleagues. 

Conclusion

The majority of organisations struggle due to a lack of strategy, not a lack of tools. The following list of ten document management challenges illustrates how simply implementing new tools can lead to the introduction of inefficiencies, risks and breakdowns in your organisation’s daily operations. Updating your document management systems with modernised systems, implementing clear guidelines for proper use of your document management systems, automating the process of creating documents and training your staff on how to use the new tools effectively will allow you to avoid document chaos, increase productivity, and provide an easy flow of information throughout the organisation. 

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