By Maureen “Mo” Elinzano, writer at eFileCabinet
What if the file cabinet that sits under your desk (or the many that occupy a full storage room at your office) could be completely transferred onto your computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone? eFileCabinet makes virtual offices a reality. With this cutting-edge document management system, you can easily scan important documents, transfer any type of file from your X-Drive, and fully integrate with Microsoft Office and Outlook.
Dropbox, the popular Cloud storage system, is handy for personal use—such as sharing and storing photos—but it isn’t ideal for businesses.
Here are 10 important reasons why eFileCabinet is better than Dropbox at work:
1. Structure
An organized document management system is integral to any successful business. eFileCabinet is definitely organized—just like your regular old file cabinet, you’ll have digital cabinets and folders in your desktop, online or mobile eFileCabinet account that keeps everything together in a user-friendly format.
It gets better—templates (sub-folders) are easy to create and are organized into your existing cabinets. Dropbox is scattered, but eFileCabinet has everything streamlined.
2. Retention
Say goodbye to old documents clogging and cluttering up your file cabinet! Gone are the days of worrying about how long you have to keep a physical file or worrying about losing documents somewhere in the cloud! Manage the life-cycle of a file or document by choosing how many days, months, or years you want to hold onto a file.
It gets better—move the file, archive the file, copy the file to another location, or purge (shred) the file. With a convenient prompting before choosing an action, you can be assured that you’re making the right decision for your document.
3. Permissions
Give permissions to access your cabinets to anyone you want and manage whether you want them to view the file, edit the file, or delete the file. Unlike Dropbox, where others can only view or edit the file, eFileCabinet gives you three options that give you more freedom with how your files are seen and used by others.
It gets better—the fourth option, the “Push Down,” allows you to give permissions to others to edit pre-existing files and documents at any time. Dropbox only cares about the present, but eFileCabinet has your past, present, and future covered.
4. Audit Trail
Dropbox isn’t secure, but eFileCabinet is—very secure. The audit trail keeps track of every user in eFileCabinet and everything that they do. From templates to profiles to retention—anything searched or done to a file or document is logged.
It gets better—the Audit Trail can’t be deleted—it’s there forever! If your business accidentally deleted a file, eFileCabinet allows you the capability to check the audit trail and restore the file if necessary. Better yet—eFileCabinet allows external auditor capabilities so that an auditor outside of the network can audit files and documents at their convenience. No more traveling or onsite visits! Save both time and money by having the ability to audit anytime and anywhere online.
5. Compliance
Compliance, like security, is very important to any successful business. eFileCabinet is HIPAA, SEC, FINRA, and SOX compliant—Dropbox isn’t.
It gets better—compliance is a complicated and ever-changing world. You don’t have time to worry about keeping up with all the necessary laws and regulations. eFileCabinet does all of that for you. It’s never been more important to stay compliant, as it keeps your business safe from legal and financial vulnerability. Why risk everything with a file storage system that doesn’t put compliance first?
6. Workflow
Workflow is what truly separates eFileCabinet from any other company in the industry. With eFileCabinet, you can assign processes to each and every file and save you and your employees immense time and headaches.
It gets better—you can easily upload a file and instantly assign a workflow. The file is then stored automatically and routes to a profile or is assigned to a user or group (who will be alerted about it right away). After the necessary steps are completed with each file, it’s stored in the right location. It’s a quick and efficient process that makes sure your files are correctly and securely stored, shared, and utilized.
7. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and Full Text Search
Can you find documents by searching for keywords in files and documents on Dropbox? Nope. But you can with eFileCabinet! Store a file or document in eFileCabinet, OCR-enable it, search for a word, and all files and documents (even those 500-page legal briefs) in your account that contain that word come up in the search. It saves you time—a lot of time.
It gets better—you can preview documents right in your account instead of having to fully open the document. Just think of what you can do with all the time this incredible feature will save you and your employees!
8. Sharing (Internally and Externally)
Share with other eFileCabinet users internally and share with guests externally through SecureDrawer—it’s our (better) version of Dropbox. You can send your guests documents, videos, attachments, etc. without size limitations, and they can sign and return documents, even if they don’t have an account!
It gets better—the “Notify” button in SecureDrawer sends files and documents externally and it sends them securely—the 256-bit encryption is strong both in-transit and at rest. It can’t be broken! Also, you can assign a password and an expiration date to the guest to make the file even more secure.
9. Alerts
In this age of electronics, we’ve become pretty dependent on alerts for reminders. eFileCabinet has a comprehensive alert system.
It gets better—there are personal alerts to remind you about your own tasks, internal alerts within eFileCabinet that you can attach to files and documents that remind other eFileCabinet users of what tasks that they have, and external alerts that remind guests (utilizing SecureDrawer) of their tasks. It’s truly complete communication at its finest.
10. E-signature
With the help of RightSignature, which is integrated into your eFileCabinet account, you can electronically sign and date any file or document. Both the sender and the signer will receive alerts that a file has been signed.
It gets better—both the signed file and the original file go right back into eFileCabinet. It doesn’t get much easier than that!
It’s time to get rid of those hefty filing cabinets by thinking outside of the box, and we think the choice pretty simple. If you want to store some family photos in the Cloud, Dropbox may work for you. If you want to protect your business by utilizing the very best document management system available on the market, choose eFileCabinet.