Reimagine Document Organization

In today’s digital world, sensitive documents are often the target of hackers and cybercriminals. From financial assets to wills and testaments to enterprise-level customer information, documents that are stored online face a common threat. In addition to security problems, businesses and individuals alike struggle with traditional file storage systems that aren’t user-friendly, boast little in the way of organization tools, and are not collaborative enough. This is why secure document organization platforms like SideDrawer are so important.

However, not all document management and collaboration systems are equally secure and user-friendly. In fact, many of the common platforms individuals and businesses use today are more complex than they need to be and lack the security aspect that is sorely needed for document organization.

At SideDrawer, our mission is to change the way individuals and enterprises alike manage their documents. Our approach to document organization is a more thoughtful and appropriate way to organize files and data, and we believe this reflects the needs of real people more than traditional file storage platforms can offer.
Let’s break down why secure and simple document organization is so important, the downsides of traditional file storage, and what SideDrawer is doing to change how people organize and secure their online documents.

Why is Secure Document Organization Important?

The days of using paper from a business and individual perspective are long over, and for good reason. In a write-up for Forbes, Foxit founder Eugene Xiong noted how the move from traditional paper document organization to document management systems has grown through new technologies and automation.

“New technologies like artificial intelligence and e-signatures are making the move to paperless processes easier and more productive than ever,” noted Xiong in the article, “The move toward paperless automation is rife with benefits for virtually any business, especially for organizations that are highly reliant on forms and contracts, such as healthcare, financial services, law firms, insurance and government. It behooves every manager to investigate just what they can achieve by accelerating the journey to a paperless business.”

Document management systems are important simply because of how rapidly our world is becoming digitized. There has been substantial growth in business data, and companies are constantly creating and monitoring huge amounts of documents, contracts, licenses, etc.

While the move from traditional paper documentation to digital documents has been beneficial, there are still issues with using digital platforms. Businesses face some substantial document challenges. In a global survey of IT professionals in 2012, the IDC found that 21.3% of productivity loss could be attributed to poor document management. Just as well, Harris Interactive surveyed around a thousand employees who worked online regularly and found that a whopping 92% of them were collaborating over documents using email. This is simply not very secure, and it’s also not very efficient.

For the average consumer or advisor, this really isn’t so different-- Families need to keep their important documents and information in a safe place. From financial assets to passports to bills, all of this information was once kept in physical filing cabinets. Now, everything is more or less stored online with the opportunity for more (or less) security and ease of access.

Secure document organization can only really be facilitated with document management software. A good platform will be as user-friendly as possible and allow for collaboration between various involved parties. In the event you need to find an important document as quickly as possible, a decent platform will be built around your needs and ease of use.

Unfortunately, many traditional file storage platforms do not make this easy. Nobody wants to be stuck needing an important document, only to find a sea of little beige folders and no easy way to track that document down.

The Downsides of Traditional File Storage

Have you ever needed to find a file in the middle of a meeting? Perhaps a major change happened within your family, and you needed to quickly find a stored asset document quickly?

It’s frustrating, plain and simple. And this struggle is a common one associated with traditional digital file storage.

Traditional file storage platforms like Dropbox, Google Drive, and others will give their users unlimited folders and subfolders. This may seem beneficial, but it can actually be a huge headache for businesses, advisors, and individuals alike. Having unlimited folders and subfolders at your disposal can lead to difficulty in finding files you may be looking for.

With paper document storage, it was at least easy to tell if your documents were a mess and needed some organization or cleaning up. With traditional digital file storage, the organization of your files can easily be overlooked. This is because you can’t really see the mess you’ve accumulated and may not recognize that there’s a problem-- until you need to find a specific document quickly.

It’s also worth mentioning that many of these traditional file storage platforms aren’t as secure as they should be.

At SideDrawer, our approach to document organization reflects a true filing cabinet in the real world. The actual “drawer” of our platform represents the company or individual using the platform. The green folders represent the various categories available to the user. The beige smaller folders represent individual items within them, and these folders contain the individual documents that have been uploaded to the platform. You won’t have to deal with multiple beige folders within beige folders with seemingly no natural organization algorithm in place.

Let’s dive a little deeper into how SideDrawer actually works.

How SideDrawer Works

SideDrawer is a very simple user-focused document management and file storage platform. The software itself keeps things simple with a handful of pre-determined categories, rather than a sea of beige folders, to simplify the organization of important documents. Our versatile platform can be customized for enterprise, advisor, and family or individual use.

SideDrawer can storage a wide range of different types of files, from basic text to instant photos to preexisting document files. We use a camera-based document and data capture system to make uploading documents even easier-- no scanner needed. Simply use your phone’s camera to take photos of your documents or assets and upload them remotely and quickly.

An API-based solution, SideDrawer’s platform focuses on privacy and security before anything else. We made sure our solution was a developer-friendly one as well, complete with over 350 API endpoints for developers to customize. Our platform is also very easy to integrate with a number of different storage providers. Users can streamline their business or organization’s workflow by plugging in their clients’ SideDrawer account to the existing structure on the company’s chosen storage provider. That means you can enjoy all the benefits of SideDrawer and other file storage platforms like Dropbox and Google Drive, but with superior security and organization in place.

Secure distribution is at the heart of our product. There is no need for email, sensitive links, or risky file exchanges with SideDrawer. The robust collaborating and sharing controls we’ve created are based around assigned permissions, meaning our users can add collaborators and customize what they can and cannot access via the account.

Our platform also offers insights and analytics by leveraging native metadata directly from your account. Users can see any and all activity via the Timeline on their dashboard. Being able to see who is accessing what in your account at any given time is very important, especially when dealing with sensitive information or a business account with a wide range of added users.

SideDrawer is also quite scalable, making it ideal for any type of business or financial advisor. Our platform’s architecture is based on distributed microservices that are hosted around the globe to support distributed data. Our platform is also compliant with global security regulations, so it can easily be used in businesses that plan to scale to a global market. We also use Amazon Web Services to supply 99.999% uptime availability, so your business won’t have to deal with substantial downtime.

The Benefits of SideDrawer

For Enterprises

Businesses, especially B2B companies, deal with the documents of a number of different clients and professionals on a regular basis. SideDrawer makes it possible to seamlessly add all of a business’s professionals and their documents into one easy-to-navigate platform, making it easier to expand one’s network and scale.

Along with excellent document organization for businesses, SideDrawer is also quite flexible in terms of collaboration. One business account can assign specific users and individual permissions with different access limits. With this ability, businesses can allow leaders, managers, teams, and clients to access various categories or individual documents within their account, all while keeping private documents secure from users who do not have permission to view them.

Just as well, SideDrawer also has complete audit logs for users to track activity that takes place in their account. That’s just one way our team is tackling the issue of unsecured digital document management.

For Advisors

For financial advisors, document management is very important. Just as well, collaboration tools are also very important. Advisors work with their clients and their families regularly, so it’s vital to have a very simple and easy way to communicate directly and upload documents as needed. This communication outlet must also be extremely secure.

Financial advisors have traditionally exchanged documents and discussed sensitive information with clients in person. During the pandemic, that certainly changed-- but financial advisors have fallen behind in terms of secure communication tactics. In fact, a recent survey found that 46% of financial advisory clients have communicated with their financial advisors via email in 2020. That’s a worrying statistic, especially since email is a very insecure way to communicate and send sensitive financial documents. In a world where 34.9% of phishing email scams are directed at financial institutions and advisors, it’s clear that security needs to be more of a priority.

With SideDrawer, there is no need to use email anymore. Financial advisors and their clients can collaborate with one another via our platform. We designed this software to be as user-friendly as possible for both financial advisors and their clients. All of the features of this platform can be accessed through any device, which can be substantially beneficial for your clients. You can also see all of your clients via a simple dashboard and grant access to files remotely. Files are sent back and forth on our platform with ease, making the need for email virtually disappear. Helping your clients plan their future has never been easier or more secure!

For Families

SideDrawer is flexible enough to work well for businesses and individuals alike. Every family has documents that need to be organized and kept safe, including financial assets and identification documents. Unfortunately, many families opt to use a variety of different digital storage programs, which leaves their sensitive documents fragmented around the internet. Many don’t know exactly where their important documents are-- and that’s quite a problem.

With SideDrawer, all of a family’s important documents can be kept in one virtual drawer. For scenarios such as a sudden death or a major life change, it’s very important for verified family members to be able to access this virtual drawer quickly and remotely. That’s why we created a collaborative element to SideDrawer in which access can be granted to multiple individuals within the same account. The main account user simply needs to invite collaborators to be added to the account. You can also assign permissions to different users as well, so your documents can only be accessed by the individuals of your choosing.

Safe, secure, and organized document management. Our mission at SideDrawer is to make this a reality for businesses and families.

Are you ready to change the way you organize and secure your sensitive documents? Get in touch with the team at SideDrawer today to learn more about how our platform can benefit you.